Saying Something Nice Wednesdays Some Gentleman Edition

Sir Richard Gere: hunk gone gray, humanitarian, Buddhist, and now inadvertant exposer of draconian sexual mores that make our own look enlightened by comparison. His recent enthusiastic pecks on the cheek of the lovely Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty at a charity event sparked raging controversy across India and a warrant for his arrest. Admittedly I'm not very familiar with that culture, and certainly don't intend to disparage it, but I was rather disturbed to find this passage in one response in the Hindustan Times to his actions:

I hope it has become abundantly clear to you that we care and respect our women enough that we cannot accept your immoral behaviour. Had you proceeded to rape Ms Shetty (with a condom on, of course, in line with your prevention of AIDS advocacy), we would probably not have found the act as offensive.

While you would be in trouble with the law, the people of India would have not had any issue with you as this is a common occurrence for them.

I hope you have learnt your lesson and in the future rape an Indian woman before engaging in heinous act of kissing her in public. We could be in trouble with law in both cases but at least if you rape her, people will not say that you are inhuman, insensitive and immoral.

Wait, WHAT? So Here's to Gere for unintentionally highlighting a culture possibly more hung up about sex than our own! In our country, it's somehow a sexual impropriety for a woman to breastfeed in public! It's a crime worthy of angry letters and astronomic FCC fines if a lady exposes her boobie on regular TV! (Think of the children!) Vibrators are illegal in certain states! And so on! What a country!

I don't know why I'm so exclamatory today!

Credit: quickpua.blogspot.com