Just when you thought the world could not get more ignorant, we present to you the Principal of a college in Bombay who says ‘PCOD occurs when women dress like men’. Awareness and knowledge related to PCOD , or Polycystic Ovarian Disorder, is still not very widespread but we bet no one could have come up with a finding more far-fetched than this lady here.
Swati Deshpande, principal of the Government Polytechnic College in Bandra, goes on to give you a detailed explanation of this figment of her very wild imagination. Deshpande says and we quote,
“I have heard theories on why girls suffer from PCOD at an early age. When they dress like men, they start thinking or behaving like them. There is a gender role reversal in their head. Due to this, the natural urge to reproduce diminishes right from a young age and therefore they suffer from problems like PCOD.”
There. So now you know how your uterus responds when you wear ‘clothes like men’. You cannot even shut this lady up with a ‘no uterus, no opinion. retort. Let alone the havoc this wreaks for any form of feminism that might have taken birth in the college, the statement makes us worry for her sanity. Let’s just hope Donald Trump does not ever meet her or hear of her, lest he asks his staff to ‘dress like women’ to avoid suffering from PCOD.
PCOD is cause by hormonal imbalance and while an affected woman would have slightly higher levels of testosterone, the clothes naturally have nothing to do with it. Speaking from a platform of her level, such a statement by Swati Deshpande is scary at several levels and not to mention often contagious.
The polytechnic college already has gender-segregated spaces inside the canteen, apparently all with good intention. Just like women are locked up inside houses after the sun sets, all with good intention and in their best interests. Didn’t we just say this stuff is often contagious?
Deshpande does not just pass a statement on how women should dress but goes on to co-relate it with their ‘urge to reproduce’. So basically its not a choice to reproduce that controls your urge, but the clothes you wear. Also, it’s beyond comprehension how PCOD affects one’s ‘urge to reproduce’. Maybe Deshpande thought the uterus is inside one’s brain and hence controls such urges.
We here are at a loss of grey cells to make sense of what this principal said and wish you good luck with transcribing it in its right meaning. Do tell us what you make out of it though.
