Education in the truest sense which is exposing someone to as many pieces of information as possible. Full stop. I say full stop because the rest is up to them. Different people act in their own ways. Nazi’s took eugenics to mean the destruction of all unapproved examples (people). Singaporeans took eugenics and used it to bolster family love for daughters in a predominantly Han-Chinese country as well as bolstering the drive for higher education through the very same eugenics initiative. Comparatives can go on and on. Only when the information is there do we see a genuine trend for overall betterment of our species.

I had not heard about that deeply disappointing conflict over selecting which kinds of women would be allowed into a group of women. I cannot imagine banning a woman from a group for women simply because she has a Y-chromosome. I can only imagine that such instances are rare.

Child-abuse is the most sensitive topic for me, ever. I cannot handle it. As in, a scowling father on television makes me stop watching, because it MIGHT lead to an act of abuse, and I don’t want to risk seeing one. So, the fact that I was not really concerned about the girl in question is a strong indicator (to me) that this girl was not the victim of abuse. Would I, as supreme lawmaker for all humans, allow parents to cut their children? Well, no. But on the scale of child-abuse, this certainly rates lower than yelling at your child, which some parents seem to think is perfectly reasonable.

As you suggest, religious discrimination and ignorance are at work, probably beyond care for the child’s physical well-being.

Almost a thousand years of cultural onslaught have left Hindus
apologetic about their beliefs. They are keen to mould them into the
framework dominated by a monotheistic mindset which holds sway even when
it is mutated into terms such as rational, scientific and even atheist.
Such is the power of monotheism that it infects even ideologies which
purport to be antagonistic to any form of religious belief and it does
so without most of us even realising.

De-Monotheising the Human Mind the Hindu Way
http://www.chakranews.com/de-monotheising-the-human-mind-the-hindu-way/2138

Out of curiosity, who are your top three queens for this season?  I’m really digging Sharon Needles and Chad Michaels, and I’ve a bit of a soft spot for The Princess, though realistically if she doesn’t pick up her game, Milan, Madame La Queer, and Latrice will have a fight on their hands for third in my affections.

The bathing of images and such that you describe (and which also happened in Egypt–Egypt and India have so many practices in common it’s astonishing!) is a beautiful example of this sort of thing in action.  As someone who, when I lived across from a lake, did a yearly bathing of my principal image of Antinous at dawn on Summer Soltice for a few years, I can state specifically that it’s quite a moving process to be a part of something like that, and I can only imagine what it would have been like to have a riverside temple, with a whole community of onlookers and well-wishers, and a whole choir of other priests and functionaries chanting hymns, putting on a procession to and from the temple, etc.

I’d go as far as saying that almost everything “interesting” and “fun” in many religions, often that involves processions and such, is an example of idolatry of this sort put on exuberant display, and it’s wonderful to see it happen, I think!

Interestingly enough, these things are exactly what my Imbolc celebrations are all about, every year.