I was studying 11th Std in a rural school. There was an oral exam in Tamil language and we were to deliver a speech on any topic before the class. The teacher was so generous that she would anyway give away 10 out of 15, even if the student attempt to speak before the class, but to get 15 on 15, one must speak.
I was discussing about the topic to speak on with one of the best speakers in my class, but I couldn't come up with a conclusion. So, he advised me to go to the dais and speak whatever came to the mind at that moment. So, I came totally unprepared.
Then the teacher entered and announced that girls would speak on that day, which gave boys an extra day for preparation. There was this dynamics in my class and girls would follow everything a teacher would say, and boys had the compulsion to maintain the pride of not following anybody's words.
So, every girl spoke whatever they had memorised the previous night. There were a few speakers, who had a great tone, accurate pronunciations, and smooth rhythm. I was wondering, if I could ever speak like that. Then I started to listen to what they were speaking.
Most of the topics were about women empowerment and how women had achieved so much in the world. I hated that so much. After each speaker, the teacher pointed out that boys in the class had to learn from the girls and deliver better speeches, instead of being lazy and coward.
It touched my ego. As a boy, I had to stand for the pride of men. Since, I considered girls to be intellectually and morally inferior to me (the order of superiority was me, other boys, and girls), I wanted to avenge the girls for the boys. Also, I believed that women empowerment was a failed ideology.
So, the whole evening I prepared a four page speech (technically six to seven pages, since I had a miniature hand-writing) on why women empowerment was stupid. Obviously, the main reason being women were intellectually inferior to men.
When I showed the speech to the best speaker. He asked me to tone it down and remove a few sentences, because he thought that the speech was offensive to women, and since the teacher was a women, she would punish me. I thought that it was the only place, I would ever gonna speak, and it was the last chance for me to express my ideology. Also, I wanted to prove girls were wrong about women empowerment, and honour the boys by showing everyone how stupid the arguments of feminists were. (Frankly, I didn't know that there was such a word called "Feminist" back then. Also, the first time I heard someone calling me a chauvinist was almost five years later by which time I didn't know the meaning of chauvinism either.)
When I was on the stage, the teacher made fun of me. So did the whole class. They weren't ready for it yet. I smiled at everyone like a joker and wanted them to settle down. Then I said, "I offer my salutations to everyone. I am here to talk about how ruined the lives of Indians in 21st century".
There was a small pause and I found out that people were noticing me. I continued, "The reason, why our culture, tradition, and lives are ruined is because of all the freedom that we had offered to women". The teacher was stunned to hear this, and then started to laugh. The whole burst out in laughter. I signalled them to calm down and started to list out why freedom to women was based on false ideologies.
"Yesterday, the girls spoke a lot about freedom to women, but all the quotes they had used in their speech were told by men such as Thiruvalluvar, Bharathiyar, Bharadhidasan etc. Nobody could find even a single quote supporting women's freedom, which was told by a woman, not even from the poets such as Avvayar, Karaikkal Ammayar etc. The same goes with people such as Kalpana Chawla, who were quoted by most of the girls yesterday as an example of what women's freedom could make a girl into. It statistically indicates that educated women do not want other women to get educated. Even to speak for women's freedom, you need a man's support. Given that, how would you say that women are not dependent on men for anything? It is only the kindness and generosity of the men, which made them say such words. Even they wouldn't have meant what they had written on poems."
I thought that girls would have been enlightened after hearing that, but no. There was another round of laughter. The teacher asked me to continue. She was looking at the class's reaction instead of me. The class started to loose focus on me, as I started to get serious. Somewhere, in between this line came out.
"Even great scholars such as Chanakya argued that women should not be given freedom"
The teacher stopped me right there, and asked me, "when did he say that". I was prepared for that question, and already made up a quote: "If we give freedom to women, families will be ruined, which will lead to a man-made catastrophe in the world". I knew at that time that people would take a quote to be true, if we add a famous person's name to it. They wouldn't validate it. At the same time, if I had said the same thing, they would have asked me to prove it with scientific, mathematical, psychological, and political methods. So, technically I was a keen player in developing the fake news culture.
The day was a success to me. There were moments of laughter and I gained enough attention in the class. More than everything, there was no argument against any of the data that I had presented to prove that women's freedom was unnecessary and at times catastrophic to the society. So, I reconfirmed based on that statistics that I was intellectually superior to everyone in the class.
It took me a lot of years to learn about Simpson's paradox, I understood what kind of blunders I had committed while preparing the speech. Most of the statistics, which I had used were partial, and partial data could give a totally opposite conclusion. May be one day I would write up the role Simpson's paradox in making me a better person.
I was discussing about the topic to speak on with one of the best speakers in my class, but I couldn't come up with a conclusion. So, he advised me to go to the dais and speak whatever came to the mind at that moment. So, I came totally unprepared.
Then the teacher entered and announced that girls would speak on that day, which gave boys an extra day for preparation. There was this dynamics in my class and girls would follow everything a teacher would say, and boys had the compulsion to maintain the pride of not following anybody's words.
So, every girl spoke whatever they had memorised the previous night. There were a few speakers, who had a great tone, accurate pronunciations, and smooth rhythm. I was wondering, if I could ever speak like that. Then I started to listen to what they were speaking.
Most of the topics were about women empowerment and how women had achieved so much in the world. I hated that so much. After each speaker, the teacher pointed out that boys in the class had to learn from the girls and deliver better speeches, instead of being lazy and coward.
It touched my ego. As a boy, I had to stand for the pride of men. Since, I considered girls to be intellectually and morally inferior to me (the order of superiority was me, other boys, and girls), I wanted to avenge the girls for the boys. Also, I believed that women empowerment was a failed ideology.
So, the whole evening I prepared a four page speech (technically six to seven pages, since I had a miniature hand-writing) on why women empowerment was stupid. Obviously, the main reason being women were intellectually inferior to men.
When I showed the speech to the best speaker. He asked me to tone it down and remove a few sentences, because he thought that the speech was offensive to women, and since the teacher was a women, she would punish me. I thought that it was the only place, I would ever gonna speak, and it was the last chance for me to express my ideology. Also, I wanted to prove girls were wrong about women empowerment, and honour the boys by showing everyone how stupid the arguments of feminists were. (Frankly, I didn't know that there was such a word called "Feminist" back then. Also, the first time I heard someone calling me a chauvinist was almost five years later by which time I didn't know the meaning of chauvinism either.)
When I was on the stage, the teacher made fun of me. So did the whole class. They weren't ready for it yet. I smiled at everyone like a joker and wanted them to settle down. Then I said, "I offer my salutations to everyone. I am here to talk about how ruined the lives of Indians in 21st century".
There was a small pause and I found out that people were noticing me. I continued, "The reason, why our culture, tradition, and lives are ruined is because of all the freedom that we had offered to women". The teacher was stunned to hear this, and then started to laugh. The whole burst out in laughter. I signalled them to calm down and started to list out why freedom to women was based on false ideologies.
"Yesterday, the girls spoke a lot about freedom to women, but all the quotes they had used in their speech were told by men such as Thiruvalluvar, Bharathiyar, Bharadhidasan etc. Nobody could find even a single quote supporting women's freedom, which was told by a woman, not even from the poets such as Avvayar, Karaikkal Ammayar etc. The same goes with people such as Kalpana Chawla, who were quoted by most of the girls yesterday as an example of what women's freedom could make a girl into. It statistically indicates that educated women do not want other women to get educated. Even to speak for women's freedom, you need a man's support. Given that, how would you say that women are not dependent on men for anything? It is only the kindness and generosity of the men, which made them say such words. Even they wouldn't have meant what they had written on poems."
I thought that girls would have been enlightened after hearing that, but no. There was another round of laughter. The teacher asked me to continue. She was looking at the class's reaction instead of me. The class started to loose focus on me, as I started to get serious. Somewhere, in between this line came out.
"Even great scholars such as Chanakya argued that women should not be given freedom"
The teacher stopped me right there, and asked me, "when did he say that". I was prepared for that question, and already made up a quote: "If we give freedom to women, families will be ruined, which will lead to a man-made catastrophe in the world". I knew at that time that people would take a quote to be true, if we add a famous person's name to it. They wouldn't validate it. At the same time, if I had said the same thing, they would have asked me to prove it with scientific, mathematical, psychological, and political methods. So, technically I was a keen player in developing the fake news culture.
The day was a success to me. There were moments of laughter and I gained enough attention in the class. More than everything, there was no argument against any of the data that I had presented to prove that women's freedom was unnecessary and at times catastrophic to the society. So, I reconfirmed based on that statistics that I was intellectually superior to everyone in the class.
It took me a lot of years to learn about Simpson's paradox, I understood what kind of blunders I had committed while preparing the speech. Most of the statistics, which I had used were partial, and partial data could give a totally opposite conclusion. May be one day I would write up the role Simpson's paradox in making me a better person.
