"Has the Sexual Revolution Been Good for Women? Yes" by Ann Patchett (Wall Street Journal)

Central Argument: The Sexual Revolution has done well to the women as they can now they can prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The sexual revolution made the idea of sex and other things related to it, like homosexuality, more open and accepted. With all this came unwanted pregnancies. But then the revolution also introduced many methods of preventions that helped reduce these pregnancies. It also legalized abortion in some countries. Women benefit the most from this as they are now able to choose when they want a responsibility of a child, or if they want it at all.

The sexual revolution also made more teenager of our age sexually active which increases the rate of teenage pregnancies. This has been one of the big issues in the United States in the recent years. The movie Juno is a good example of how teenagers get influenced and involve themselves in unprotected sex and in the end it’s the female that suffers. They are the ones who have to bear the society and also the responsibilities and the expenses. Introduction of simple prevention methods, like the use of condoms, can help such cases and make the state of such female teenagers better.

Just the other day in the school assembly a gentleman spoke about his experience of finding a woman in a street in Mumbai delivering a baby. She abandoned the baby three days after he was born as she was too poor to take responsibility him. This is common in India. There have been cases where new borns have been found in some public garbage can. When people don’t want a child, they should be able to choose not to have one. Naturally pregnencies just happen,  but it has become possible to terminate an unwanted pregnency with todays medicinal adancements and the sexual revolution. This not only benefits the women but also the unborn children who will be rejected after birth.

Reasons for terminating a pregnancy is not only an unplanned pregnancy but it can also be something like a deformed child. As the Emily Rapp in her article “"Rick Santorum, Meet My Son" says that she rather terminate a child who is deformed than to watch him not able to walk and talk properly. If we can find out that an unborn will not be able to survive for too long then there is no reason to give birth to it. It will just cause pain to the baby and its mother. Sometimes people can’t even afford to pay for a special child. As sexual revolution has legalised abortion in some countries, the lives of women have become a little better.

The sexual revolution has brough many positive things into the society. Before it, many families would take children as a liabily because they jut happened, but now with the introduction of so many methods of preventions and terminations people now have children when they really want to and love them because they always wanted them. They didn’t happen by accident. This way the parents and even the children are happy.

"Please Read This Story, Thank You" by Linton Weeks

Central Argument: The moral of today’s generation in not changing but the way the request or the gratitude is expressed is changing with time.

“Hey, can I borrow your pen? Thanks!” And the student replied “No problem!” with a big genuine smile. Maybe “Your welcome” would have been a better reply but there is nothing wrong with “No problem” when the person is showing his etiquettes through his or her tone and expressions. We cannot say that the student has not been brought up properly by her parents because she is displaying her moral values even if she isn’t using “Your welcome”.

"The Rise of 'Awesome'" by Robert Lane Greene says that we ought to change the meaning of words over time, like the word “awesome” was used formally in earlier times and now it is used for any and everything. In the same way, we change common phrases too. “Thank you” becomes “enjoy” and “sorry” becomes “my bad”, but the actual meaning remains the same. The person saying “my bad” is still accepting his or her fault and is apologizing even though the word “sorry” is not being used.

We are all familiar with what synonyms are. They are different words which mean the same thing, like “sad” and “unhappy”. More than 50% of the English dictionary has words that have synonyms. And if that is fine with everyone then there should be nothing wrong with synonyms for “thank you”, “sorry” and “you're welcome”. Even if different words are used to substitute them, the actual meaning remains.

 If the person is truly sorry, he or she will convey the message regardless of the words used. One should not always have to use the magic words to show his or her morality. As they say, “Actions speak louder than words.” I never apologies to my mother. I prefer doing something for her that will make her know I’m sorry than facing her and murmuring a “sorry”. I make her morning coffee or give her a card or something else that shows how I feel.  I am surely not losing my morality when I do that because I generally get a hug from her afterwards.

We all are different and we keep changing with time. And with time and us, the words we use also change.  That does not mean that we are changing how we feel. A human might change from the outside, but deep within he will gave the same feeling and emotions whatsoever. Even if the words used to express those emotions change, the meaning remains the same. A person loses his morality only when those emotions are not expressed at all in any way.

THE RISE OF "AWESOME" by Robert Lane Greene

Central Argument: The use of words change overtime.

We use the word “awesome” for anything we think of as even slightly good. “These shoes are awesome!” “The movie was awesome!” You are awesome!” Our generation thinks of it as slang. It is hard to believe for us that this word is actually used in the Bible a number of times. It describes God as awesome. In the Bible it is used more like a formal adjective then slang. It is true that words get transformed with time. Different generations can use words differently.

We can take the word “nigger” as an example. Americans used it at the time of slave trade in America ages before. It was just another word for black slaves. The slaves themselves called themselves niggers. In the book Roots, which is about the slave trade in Africa, the word is used absolutely freely and it even shows that the black slaves didn’t mind it even a bit. It surprised me a little as now, I’m pretty sure, an African-American could sue someone if he or she used the word. It’s like a swear word now. Blacks take it as a huge offence now as it relates to the slave trade.

I was having a really bad cold the other day and I was telling my friend how I used to use eggs to play Holi (an Indian festival where people put dry and wet colors on others). And she said that I was extremely sick. Well, I literally was sick with a blocked nose and an itchy throat. I wonder how the word “sick” started getting used to describe something disgusting. Its literal meaning is being unwell, but our generation uses it to describe anything repulsive and filthy.

We have a tendency to play with words and change the way they are supposed to be used. It might be because we forget about the real meaning of the word or it might be because of something historic, as in the case of the word “nigger”. The word came up because of the slave trade and the use ended as the trade ended. “Sick” just got transferred with time. It went from “I am sick” to “It makes me sick” to “It’s sick.” I guess we all want to all want to make things short and fast. That’s our generation. And we change the usage of words to suit us.

Article: Of Marriage and Single life

Writer: Francis Bacon

Central Argument: Even though people who are single are more resourceful and efficient, people who are married are more trustworthy, dependable and understanding which makes them better people in life.

My single friends always have a sense of pride in them every time they say, “I am single!”  The world looks at single people as cooler, funnier, fun to be with, carefree and just better in general. And the committed person in the friend circle is always thought of being the sissy or the serious kinds who does not involve himself in the “bad” stuff the group does. And generally, his friends blame it on the “she devil” his life. It’s true that people who are single are more fun to be with and are more efficient when it comes to something that needs dedication, but they cannot always be trusted and relied on, whereas, men who are in a relationship, or are married and have children of their own, are trustable and also more warm hearted. They are better people in general.

Everyone knows a guy who changed completely once he got a girlfriend. I’ve seen it happen to my friend. We used to hang out together. Play pranks on random people walking on the streets. Laugh on the silliest of jokes. Play the guitar and sing. Or sometimes just play air guitar! We never got serious about anything until, ofcource, he got a girlfriend. And I could see the way she was changing him. He stopped spending time with me, stopped getting involved in our group plans and pranks and we hardly got to see him. It angered me in the beginning, but I realised that he had started to become a better person. Before whenever I brought up something serious that bothered me, he always used to laugh it off or something like that, but now he has actually started talking to me. Actually talking, not just fooling around. He understood me better even though we were not spending much time together. He would make me feel better permanently when something got me down rather than making me laugh for a while and then letting me figure a way out on my own. He told me what was right and what was wrong. He had become a better friend even though I missed the previous him a lot.

His girlfriend made him like that. She softened his heart and made him look beyond just having fun. She also made him think about his future. Something like this Bollywood movie I watched in 2010 – Wake up Sid! – In which there is a young, single guy who has no care in the world, lives on his father’s money and all he does is party. But then eventually his father kicks him out of his house and he starts living with this girl who he met in a party. Without even realising he started to become more independent. He started to see beyond his parties and friends. He started thinking about his future and ended becoming a photographer in a leading magazine.

This shows how women influence men’s life. Women teach a man how to love, how to feel for other, how to care, and how to look further. I am not trying to say that women are born like this but they are more emotional comparatively which rubs into men when they start living together. A person with his own children will be more giving and warm hearted. Yes, a single person might be fun and more efficient, but when someone needs to be trusted and depended on, a person who is with a woman is better. 

Women in India are benefiting from the television

Orissa is one of the poorest states in India. My grandmother and I mostly spend our vacations there near the beach. I see my grandmother watching the most popular Indian serials on the television. I was surprised to see how these serials revolve around the issues in the society in India. One was about child marriage and how it was affecting the children in a negatively, the other one showed how some people prefer male children to female and how women in some parts of India are treated if they deliver a girl child. It astonished me how people were aware of all these issues and still there could be an abortion going on right now in the same town. And believe it or not, the next day when the maid came with the latest gossip in town, she told Grandma how a woman got beaten up in the streets last evening by her husband. As Joel Waldfogel said in his article, people in India are getting aware and ideas about the society’s issues, but there are not many steps being take by women to do something against it.

As I was reading Freakonomics, one thing got stuck to my mind. (Part of the reason being that it was talking about India, the place I belong to.) It says that even though, in recent times, India is being thought of as an improving country, and is seen as free of the social norms, there are millions of people with the same old mentality. There are still thousands of abortions taken place everyday, and thousands of women still believe that their husbands have a right to beat them. They still depend on men and take them as their god. There are thousands of girls that are not sent to school because their parents believe that a girl should be learning how to cook. Earning is still considered a “man’s job”.

Even though statistics in this article show that there have been improvements from 2001 to 2003 in the mentalities of women, majority of the men in villages believe that women do not even have the right to speak what they think! It is considered illegal and disrespectful and a shame if a woman goes against her husband. If they do, they are beaten up and embarrassed in front of everyone. They rather stay quiet and keep their ideas within themselves than being humiliated. And I have seen it because I have travelled to villages in India and seen their society. I have seen people young couples, with more than four children who, who can barely fill up their stomachs. I have seen wives waking up at 4 AM and going to bed at 11 PM and not been given any respect whatsoever by any male in the family. I have noticed parents giving preference to their son and ignoring their daughter.

According to me, televisions are seen more as a tool of entertainment. Women watch serials full of spices and gossips more than something that would educate them. And even if they do get aware, it hardly changes their personality. And there are a very few of them who actually stand up to fight for their rights but then even they are suppressed by the men. 

It should be a mothers right to choose to terminate her pregnancy when the child has a deformity she knows about

We talk about growing, we talk about technology, we talk about development, we talk about the changing mentalities, but then why are we stuck with the thought of terminating pregnancy as bad? There are a hundreds of more important issues that need more attention than playing with a mother’s decision. Emily Rapp, who has a son who has disability that can never be cured, herself, in her article, has written that if she had the choice of terminating her pregnancy before he was born, she would rather go through that than watching her two year old son choking. People have a right to make their own choices, and someone else has no right to take that right away.

Morals and ethics do play an important role when it comes to making decisions. And terminating pregnancies have been a major issue. Some say that it is not moral to kill babies before they were born. It is also against religion. But in the today’s world we cannot afford to be so backward. And according to me, making someone suffer, for no fault of his or her, is not moral either. When people can be put into jail for torturing someone, then how is it bad to save someone from the torture.

Some will say that abortion is killing a life. Well, scientifically a “baby” is not aborted. It’s the “fetus” that is aborted, which is basically just a bunch of cells. It does not even have the structure of a baby; it is literally a bunch of cells that are nothing without a woman’s body. So is taking out some cells from a woman’s body so bad that it is against the law in some countries?

But according to the law, we have the right to make our own decisions that don’t cause damage to others. So, if a couple makes a decision to remove some cells from the female’s body, that shouldn’t be a problem. It the woman’s body and the husbands and her decision to remove something from her body. When there is a choice, which does not harm anybody, then why is there no choice to choose it? And when the parents know that their child will suffer a lot after he is born, then it, naturally, is better not give birth to that child and save him or her from the torture. Not only does the child suffer, but also the parents. Their pockets get hurt and also their emotions. No parent would want their child not to be able to play, eat, sleep and enjoy life. There have been situations when disabled people themselves ask for death. But even that’s an ethical issue.

We all make many decisions in life. Some are small and some are very big. A good decision will be the one which makes life less complicated and painful. And terminating a pregnancy, which would produce a person filled with problems, is a good decision. It makes life better for the unborn and for the parents.

January College Essay 2

Who are the people who have done the most to influence your personal development and in what ways were they influential? (Carleton College)

The one person who, I think, influences everyone in some way, is a mother. She is someone who is with you since the day you were born. She teaches you your first words, she helps you walk your first steps, and she is the one who teaches you your first basic manners. To wish your elders, to say thank you, to apologise, to respect everyone, she teaches you what is wrong and what is right, and everything, from the way you eat to the way you talk, is influenced a little by her. And I can say that I am influenced a lot by my mother. I remember trying to copy everything she did when I was little. The way her hands moved when she spoke, the way she would cook, the way she would dress, put her make-up on, everything. But one thing she used to enforce a lot was speaking the truth. I would get a hard slap every time she caught a lie. And now my friends tell me I suck at lying. I’ve learnt a lot from her, but one thing I will always owe her is the strength she gives me. I look at her and her past and how she went through it and I always feel stronger.

Friends are very very important people in anyone’s life. You spend your days and sometimes even your nights with them. And as you start growing, they become more important than your parents, and your friend circle starts describing what kind of a person you are. Punks, emos, geeks, gossip girls, the bad boys, whichever group you belong to influences you a lot and it also shows when you become an adult and start working. As my Dad is in the Army, I kept changing schools and kept meeting new people and I think I can say I’ve been in all the kind of groups! And I have some wonderful friends from all over India and some of them encourage me to study hard, some emotionally support me, I’ve had some really amazing fun moments with some. So I am pretty balanced that way and its all because of my friends.