Tag: sexual exploitation

R & S – Rape & Stigma

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Rape has pretty much become a word that is used in general conversations these days. All thanks to rising crime rates and the inability of the government or the police to curb it. And, of the course, the inability of the male population to control their wild untamed libido. The worst part is that most of the accused admit that the rape was not only an act of forced sex, but majorly a power play. They wanted to show the women where she belonged. As much as the society is progressing in terms of men women equality, people like these are pulling it back in the opposite direction as much.

There is another aspect of the rape phenomenon that is happening these days – the blame-the-victim game! I think it started with some moron saying that girls out on the streets past a certain time of the night were inviting troubles. And then the mockery never stopped. Someone said, it was the jeans and revealing clothes that were the cause of men raping the said women. Then someone said Mobile phones were responsible. Another one said chowmein was. A political honcho said boys tend to make mistakes. And that they should not be hanged for them. Another one said, the girls are an equal participant in the act, and hence they must be punished too. Well, to say the least, I feel disgusted. I don’t want to comment on the above remarks and give them any more attention than they have already been given.

As if raping a woman wasn’t enough to snatch away her basic right to say no, to be the way she wants to be, the society attaches all the stigma to the victim. And the accused have an easy run getting a bail, and leading a normal life.  Why does a woman who was raped and brutalized has to spend the rest of her life fighting the stigma and being called a rape victim? And the accused always gets called by his name. It is high time that the women be accorded the basic respect they deserve. The least we can do is, not to rob them off their identity for the rest of their lives and accord them a generic and very demeaning “rape victim” tag. And apart from improving the men’s mentality about women and punishing them, it is the guilty who must be referred to as a rape accused for the rest of their lives, if they are not hanged, so that they are the ones who are looked own upon, and are not allowed to lead a guilt free life after destroying someone else’s

Q quotes Queer!

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Queer means strange. Something that is different from the usual. It is also used as an umbrella term to denote the LGBT community. In layman terms, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. I would find this reference to queer by someone as naive as a child ok. But when grown ups find homosexuals or gays strange, I can only nod my head in disappointment.

If one man/woman loves another, what is so strange about it? I mean, how can anything that has love in the middle be strange? I know, it is not normal. Because love is a feeling that out pars the normal. It takes a lot of strength and courage to actually love someone other than yourself. And when that someone is of your own gender, you have the added responsibility and baggage of proving your worth to the society and family. It takes lots of guts to come out the closet, and out in the open and accept it as a part of your identity in a society as judgmental as ours. And we find that queer?

You know what I find queer? When a girl is openly molested on the road and the passers by become a mute audience. When they take out cell phones to make videos. When a girl is gang raped and brutalized to an extent that is difficult to fathom. When kids as young as months old are sodomized and sexually assaulted.  To hell with that “straight” sexuality that makes you an animal.

I find all you perverts queer who rape a women and children everyday in your mind and with your hands and with your body and with your mentality.

 

Will the Real Men please stand up?

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Even as I write this, there are thousands like me and you who are out there on the streets of New Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Simla, Mumbai, Patna and various other states in India for they are angered. Nirbhaya or Damini or whatever name you want to call her with, the girl who was brutally gang raped in Delhi in a moving bus last week finally succumbed to her grave injuries today. Her death has instilled a fear in each one of us that we could be the next.

Even as her death is deeply troubling, so are some other issues that have happened since the incident.

I wrote about the gang rape just after it happened, and the article and my subsequent post on FB saw a lot of men taking offence.

They said I was attacking their gender.

Why didn’t I write about the cases where women harass men and even kill them?

That women are misusing dowry laws to take advantage of men.

A virtual reader Partha goes on to say that “Whatever has happened in Delhi is barbaric (if true and no media exaggeration)”.
Partha also says that “on one hand women always object to objectification and on the other hand they want to look sexy and wear all those revealing clothes to show off how independent they are. If men look at them or call them sexy that becomes harassment for them. If men do not look at them, those become impotent.”

I was quite mortified after hearing Abhijeet Mukherjee’s comments on young women whom he called hypocrites because they held candle light marches in the day and wore make up and went to discos at night. He also called the women “dented and painted”. A few hours (and possibly a kick in the ass) later, an apology was issued by the President’s son and the way he said “I want to withdraw my statement. It was not meant to hurt anyone’s sentiment” clearly showed how it was just a cover up and he was completely unapologetic about it. But it did give us a fair amount of idea what kind of minds are ruling our country. But then, we have known that for a pretty long time. We are not new to moral diktats from the police or the govt. like “she invited rape by dressing in a certain way”, or “by being out of the house after 9 P.M.” and so on and so forth.

But what really churned my gut was when some fellow virtual people started attacking me for my blatant article which said that “anatomically having b***s doesn’t make you a real man. If you are a real man, learn to protect and respect your women. Otherwise you are just another animal. One that needs to be herded and chained and invariably killed one day.”

I still stand by it. And I also want to address the above questions one by one.

Attack on a gender: 

Now, I am really confused here. Are women raped by women? No. Raped by men? Yes. Who am I targeting here? Men. Isn’t LHS = RHS? What gender am I attacking? I am just stating the facts.

It’s quite sad that because of a large population of indecent, lewd, uncultured men, a whole gender is being targeted here. BUT. If you are a real man, I expect you to understand that. I didn’t expect some of you to have such shallow egos that got hurt at the mere mention of rape. Did you ever think about countless women who have to experience something as horrendous, then face police and system apathy and get on with their lives?

YOU come out of your cozy bedrooms and get real.

2) Why didn’t I read write about the cases where women have harassed women? 

Tell me, if your house was on fire, would you call up the fire extinguisher first or get your faulty plumbing fixed first?

The point I am driving at is the country and it’s women are facing an unprecedented number of sexual exploitation cases in the form of molestation rapes, gang rapes and forced prostitution. In this regard, a lot of laws have been made and maybe a handful of women misused them for their own benefit. But does that take it away from the real issue its brutality? Don’t you realize the gravity of the situation, if gangrapes start happening in the heart of the city, inside public transport ? What is the working class women supposed to do? Sit at home, to defend her honor? Not venture out of the house at all?

I did say in my article that we need the strictest punishment for the culprits. So what’s wrong with it? I still demand it and I stand by it!

And we HAVE to address and fix this issue; before we go on to amend the existing laws at a human level and not on a gender bias.

3) Mr.Partha or whoever you are:
You don’t quite believe in all the cases of women harassment that media has reported because you think that they are possibly dented and painted too like the women of this country.

You seem to be a spurned lover whose advances got a sharp reaction from a girl. Let me tell you something. The way you have the right to look at a girl (to admire or to scorn at her), the same way, the girl has an equal right to either allow your advances or put an end to it. Be man enough. Learn to take it in your stride.

If your ego is the size of a dinosaur, it’s better to turn to men who will understand your signals better. May be you will never have to “prove” your (im)potency to anyone, ever again.

People like these guys have no right to tell us women what we do/don’t do right! Even if a women walks naked on the street, NO man has to right to force himself on her. We live in a civilized society, not in a jungle, where you pounce on anything that looks like a prey.

I don’t know if capital punishment is a deterrent, or chemical castration is, or efficient policing and fast track courts et al. What I do know for sure is that if all the men around us pledge to protect us, to see us as equals and not as objects of sexual gratification, this country will be a far better place to live in. Where no mother will ever have to loose a bright and brave girl like Nirbhaya at the hands of drunk and perverted men.