E. Gaza

Ed’s note: Smoking is injurious to your health and the health of others around you.

Upstanding citizens have recently been standing up to right the wrongs of a civil society about to go rogue. Wow, that was hard to put together. Just like it must have been to watch a woman light up a cigarette in public on Rajshahi’s Circuit House Road last week.

All she wanted was a puff to help coat over her worries and insecurities with a soothing layer of tar and nicotine. The woman was sitting with a friend, who was a male by the way, on the side of the road when public figure Barrack Oh-Mama felt this was just so wrong. He politely shouted at her to snuff out her momentary lapse of judgement and walk away.

“Men can smoke. Women can’t smoke. They can only be smokin’, if you know what I mean,” said Mr. Oh-Mama. Smoking causes about 90% (or 9 out of 10) of all lung cancer deaths. More women die from lung cancer each year than from breast cancer (fact from www.cdc.gov) or from cleaning households. While many condemned his rebuke, others formed a crowd thinking his caring and altruistic nature towards women should really be the discussion.

“Smoking is bad. And she was a woman. Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said a bystander who prefers to be Anonymouse. No, not a typo. They are part of a large group of social welfare activists that call themselves the ‘Liberated Manly Men Front Against Moral Decay’, or ‘Anonymouse’ for short.

A woman doing what a man does is a dangerous thing apparently. According to the members of Anonymouse, women shouldn’t smoke in public or secretly in toilets. Young girls will see them and be prompted to do the same.

“Imagine the chaos if more women start doing what men do,” said a very worried man. “Today they sit in the open and smoke. They even drive scooters but not to deliver sandwiches. They might even want to run a country someday. What will happen then?”