The Hyderabad Feminist reading group meets again for the 4th session of our beautiful reading group :) As always: 1. Newcomers are more than welcome. 2. Here's the link to this session's readings: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12VQIKMwwlGo6E5EWbM95kzWsLl5GN7af?usp=sharing

I picked two readings for this session. The first one is a classic, and has been highly recommended to me by a lot of attendees from the previous sessions: "Five Faces of Oppression". In it, Iris Young, starts by reflecting on the conditions of the wide variety of groups said to be oppressed by these movements. (She has a helpful list of the groups in mind). She then goes on to give a systematic account of what oppression means. And since it is probably not possible to define a single set of criteria to describe the oppression of these groups she gives a five categories: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence.”

The second reading, is from a biologist. Before you frown, this is not one of those misuses of science where we'd find oversimplifications of research findings about nature of gender, sex and love. Nah. Instead, its a short, juicy and exciting reading about whether there are hormonal/development markers of sex in the human brain (answer: no). The lesson from reading is to not "get stuck trying to divide nature from nurture.” Instead, remember that human bodies are dynamic systems that develop and change in response to their social and historical contexts.

Last time we forgot getting samosas to our table, so this time we'll get that done. At Lamakaan. Saturday morning.

See you all there!