RE: [nukkad] Burka Vs Bikini

["arya" <>]

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Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty. 
-Jefferson Davis, confederate president (1808-1889)
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Copyright TruSelf Inc. 1996. Reprinted by courtesy.

PARALLEL COURSE

For men with a religious bent, as a focal point of interest, what is under a
woman's shirt runs a close parallel with how to worship God.

In many cases they look upon a woman's flesh and lips with fear, and then
either turn to shroud her, or turn away entirely into a male society of
zealots or seekers or sadhus or Sufis.

Both attempts have proven disastrous, rapacious and demeaning for women in
particular and the society in general.

Even when no particular religious dogma is involved, men have perceived a
threat in woman's being and have sought to halter, bind, restrain and
destroy her.

FRACTURED FEET

Over centuries, men in China regularly bound the feet or growing girls in
restrictive bandages so she grew in the body but became crippled in the
feet.

Little Lotus was the quintessential playful girl, the darling of her mother
and aunts. Till she was seven, she would play at dolls and romp in the yard,
cuddle the pigs and eat the figs which grew wild behind the little farm.

In the year of the Dog she turned eight, and everything in her world
simultaneously turned grim and painful.

On the 3rd night of the new year, she was awakened by her aunt and mother
and elder uncle and led away, half asleep, into the prayer room where the
ancestors were enshrined and Gods worshipped.

Out of the shadows two men came forth, one recognizable as Lin Chin, High
Priest in the local shrine on the hill, in full ceremonial regalia.

They lit incense, which was soporific exclusively for minors so the child
would not resist. By the flare of lamps, the ceremony began, with the tiny
feet being placed on a white cloth of muslin with red tassels at four
corners. Oils were brought out of old glass bottles and while one man
chanted the Priest began application on the tiny ivory feet.

In the destruction of girls and mutilation of women, men regularly fall back
on God and ritual and scripture, as though not having the nerve to do the
deed on their own.

Hence old texts were brought out and quoted, talismans waved over the
swooning child's head, and all the while the mother and aunts and father and
brother watched on, grim in face and with dead deadly eyes, for the Gods
were being placated.

The Chinese are matriculate and involved at anything they do, and by that
right the weaving of cloth on the feet took on a sinister turn, when red
strips were brought out, and then black.

A red band was placed on the arch and a cheery stone soaked in a rare oil
was positioned under it to sit on the curve of the main metatarsal, the arch
bone of the 3rd toe. The cloth was pulled taut and quickly black strips
followed at strategic points. Covering all were strips of wet pig skin and
atop all ceremonial red and gold swaths, followed by festoons and tiny
bells.

When the child woke up in the morning she felt a dull pain when she tried to
walk. She was told the Gods had come in the night and made her their own and
left their token of love on the feet.

In the days and months which followed, there were renewed wetting of the
thongs and resettled bandages. In time the child grew used to the ache which
became a part of her life. Men depend on this reaction from women, so that
the worst degradation and ravage is taken as part of living, a condition of
conformity in a male dominated world.

When Little Lotus turned 13 she began to menstruate. Predictably, this
depleted her Great Black Water Qui energy, which drained her spine, which
depleted her long bones, which in turn cracked her metatarsal just when it
was becoming sturdy.

With that horrendous experience of pain Little Lotus became a woman, and a
cripple, and a slave who could not escape, all at the same time. The Priest
had done his work well.

She never ran again, and never smiled.

Arya.
































































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