[BhavdeepSethi]

"Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply".

I've seen educated folks doing this as well, so, sadly yes. It is true. Most women follow it because their mothers/sisters have been doing it. Since it is so common, people tend to accept these superstitions more easily.

[apalmer]

No REALISTICALLY

If as stated in this article in these regions during menstruation:

1) The woman uses dirt, sand, ash and rags which are never sterilized but just reused month after month.

2) 70% of all pregnancy related medical issues can be tied back to this lack of hygene

Then its not unreasonable to say that the women are unclean in this period and should not have contact with the village water supply... its actually good sense.

[jt2190]

  > ... its actually good sense.

It's only "good sense" if, and this is a big if, (a) we have a strict scientific understanding of what we mean when we say "unclean" and (b) we know that we have literally no other way of mitigating this "uncleanliness."

Just as surgeons learned to sterilize themselves and their equipment once they had a scientific understanding of infection, we now have lots of scientific understanding of human menstruation and cleanliness. We should therefor look upon those that insist that women be treated as "unclean" and kept away from the village water supply and temple the same way we'd view a surgeon that insisted that there was no need to wash up before operating.

[apalmer]

No one knew scientifically for thousands of years why pigs were unclean. Or shellfish, or 80% of the stuff that was considered 'unclean' food according to the first testament. Now a days there is a particular scientific explanation for it...

traditionally it was the pig rolls around in its own feces, and smells bad, and folks seem to get sick from its meat...

the menstruation situation, its bloody, it smells bad, and the women seem to be in pain when they have it... maybe we should not have them handling or washing their clothing and rags in the communal drinking water does not seem like an irrational conclusion.

It seems pretty rational to me...

[jt2190]

Ah I see. You failed to define "village water supply" as an open stream or river.

You also failed to explain why only women are "unclean" in this scenario, since men and animals are also covered in dirt and germs when they bathe. Wouldn't all people and animals be "unclean" then? Seems like the "pretty rational" behavior of keeping women out of the water fails to account for "unclean" men and animals as well.

Please explain.

[Crake]

>Seems like the "pretty rational" behavior of keeping women out of the water fails to account for "unclean" men and animals as well.

I really doubt that they'd let a guy bleeding out everywhere do much of anything either. On a fundamental level, blood has a strong association with injury and sickness for what I think should be obvious reasons.

[sizzle]

last time I checked, these rural villagers do not have running water which affects how they bathe, clean clothes, prepare food etc. Add in religious rituals and you have some powerful persuasion to do things in a way that seems backwards to us.

[ballard]

These are the same areas that unfortunately still have honor killings. Regardless, cultural judgements are not an absolute truth, and so other ways, no matter how extreme or foreign, can be tolerated. The frontier that can be helped is hygiene and self-sufficiency. If can start a sexual equality revolution in India, build a bazillion of these machines. A 3d printer as it were.

[sizzle]

I think you have your facts mixed up. Honor killings are not an Indian ritual by any means and unheard of in even uneducated villages.

[josephschmoe]

You should also consider the culture these myths create. It forces women to depend on one-another for a significant portion of the time, which, among other things, is a good anti-rape mechanism.

Certainly, these are crazy and superstitious, but given the realities of the times they come from, many of them were a net benefit to their rural society (or have minimal impact) - which is how they've survived to this day.

We have better knowledge now, and we should embrace it, but someone isn't necessarily stupid for following these rules.

[lostlogin]

I've got to dispute this - India has appalling rates of abuse, rape and mistreatment of women, and I don't believe any systems in place there are helpful. Have you got any citations that might change my opinion?

[cubancigar11]

It is a myth that India has appalling rates of rape. Rape is appalling, but it is fun nowadays to portray India as particularly bad when in reality it is pretty average statistically.[1] For example, rapes per capita: USA (27.3), Sweden (63.5), India (1.8), Canada (1.7). The counter argument generally is that India has lax laws, but to me that is a non-argument.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Rape_statistic...

[testos]

Following your link : "This list indicates the number of, and per capita cases of recorded rape. It does not include cases of rape which go unreported, or which are not recorded"

Hey don't you see any reason for a victim of rape to not report her/his aggression? Once you find one or two, think about how they may influence the results in the US and in India. Does the comparison hold?

You can play blind if you want, don't try to convince others. Your statistics cannot be used for international comparisons.

[cubancigar11]

"Following your link : "This list indicates the number of, and per capita cases of recorded rape. It does not include cases of rape which go unreported, or which are not recorded""

And unreported rapes will be higher in India - much higher - than Botswana (92.9), Panama (28.3), Jamaica (24.4), Belize (6.7) because?

"Your statistics cannot be used for international comparisons." Glad I was able to bask in your unabashed superiority, testos. Btw, they are not 'my' statistics, which show that Canada has several degrees higher rape incidents that go 'unreported, or which are not recorded' than USA. That data point was left in the comment just for your argument.

[testos]

I just pointed out that the statistics you provided as evidence to make your point are irrelevant.

It's good to quantify things but you need to understand the limitations of the figures.

[ygra]

... per 100000 capita. 27 rapes per person would be a bit high.