Dear Indian mothers, if your dearest wish is to see your child become a doctor, there’s an easy solution: Make a lab-coat your everyday attire, even before your child is born.
Just wear it as many times as you can, and maybe add a stethoscope around your neck to complete the look.
What’s the connection, you ask? Ask the venerable botany professor from Kerala, Rajith Kumar.
Women who wear jeans and shirts and dress up like men, what will be the character of the child she gives birth to? These children are called ‘transgenders’ or ‘napumsakam’ – Hijra.Rajith Kumar, Professor
Who knew it was this easy?
Their Future Is In YOUR Clothes!
All mothers (only mothers, mind you) who wish to see their children ace the engineering field, don’t worry. Just figure out what the ‘in-est’ dress code for the country’s most successful engineers is, wear it daily, and your future kid is guaranteed a position in the upcoming Googles and Facebooks!
Would you rather see your kid join the Indian Army and fight for the nation instead? Just don the best knockoff Indian Army fatigues religiously, and your yet-to-be-born child will make you proud of his patriotic endeavors, several years from now.
The right kinda training? Entrance exams? Their own choices and abilities? Pssh! What kind of backward thinking is that?
The key to your kid’s future is in the clothes you wear today. Even if that kid isn’t born yet.
But warning against actions that cause transgender children is not the only pearl of wisdom Professor Kumar had for us all. He went on to say that parents have been unwittingly causing autism in their children by ‘rebelling’.
The children born to rebel men and women have this new disease called autism.Dr Kumar
Yep, this guy believes that a parent’s choice of attire decides a child’s future – no, not just their future in terms of personality or behaviour, but even their sexuality, any disability, their DNA!
Not to mention the fact that 'Dr’ Kumar had ‘transgender’ confused with ‘hijra’ or intersex individuals, which aren’t the same thing.
‘Transgender’ refers to someone who doesn’t identify with the gender the sex of their birth is associated with, while ‘intersex’ or ‘hijra’ is broadly used to refer to people born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that don't seem to fit the typical definitions of ‘female’ or ‘male’.
If you are going to insult a whole section of the population, at least do some basic research about them?
Teachers, Give Us a Break!
As if it wasn’t enough to have State Ministers giving moral policing lectures on ‘lesbian behaviour’, or college professors slut-shaming girls for not covering their breasts ‘properly’, now we have a professor who blames women and their choice of clothes for their kids having Autism or being transgender.
It’s high time we find some real educators who base their teachings on facts, research and scientific findings instead of their own fantastical gibberish and sexist attitudes.
Maybe we should all collectively dress up as teachers in the hope of producing better educators in this country.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)