Pink Chaddies

The Pink Chaddies campaign is everywhere. On Facebook. On people's blogs. In the news. Everyone seems quite excited about it - a symbolic protest against the moral police. But, I have my reservations about it. As a symbolic protest, it just doesn't work.

The protest reminds me of Paromita Vohra's documentary film, 'Morality TV and the loving jehad'. I remember being thoroughly entertained throughout the film, laughing at the statements being made by the custodians of morality. But when my laughter subsided, I felt that if I was a conservative watching this film, I wouldn't be laughing or even understand that my views were being mocked by the filmmaker. Instead, I would be shaking my head in agreement with whatever these custodians were saying. And so, at the end of the day, the film, to me, was a wasted effort. It was like sharing a private joke between the filmmaker and her audience, and the butt of the joke just didn't know he was being laughed at because it was not in a language he understood.

This is exactly the problem I have with the Pink Chaddies. Instead of making the perpetrators of the Mangalore incident feel even a tinge of remorse at their actions, it is only going to act as further justification. "Women who send their chaddies to unknown men deserve to be beaten up."

So, the Consortium of Loose, Pub-Going and Forward Women, protest in a language these men understand. Target a bar at random, enter with a posse of women and TV cameras, and beat up all the men for not taking care of their families.