This week, a 35-year-old man barged into the house of a 100-year-old woman on the outskirts of Meerut and raped her. The woman could only manage to utter feeble cries in protest and she died the next morning as an aftermath.
On Monday, a 23-year-old woman was attacked by 4 people as she tried to keep them from raping her sister. She, too, succumbed to her injuries.
Just last week, an inebriated man raped a woman in broad daylight in Visakhapatnam and of course, onlookers deemed it fit to videotape the incident, instead of stopping him.
Every day, our newspapers and newsfeeds are inundated with horrific cases of rape and sexual assaults – from infants to minors and senior citizens, from celebrities to homeless women, no one is ever in the position to escape the harrowing gaze of a sexual predator; not even the street animals! And yet for all, our lives move on. We, as a society, express our disdain from time to time, but nothing changes. Disgusted yet, or are you just too used to it?
We need to acknowledge rape as a systemic problem. How have we come to a position where literally no space – public, private or at work – is safe for a woman? Rape is not a sexually-charged individual seeking validation, it is an act of power play. Of a man trying to put a woman, or a physically weaker individual for that matter, in their place. Of someone aggressively asserting his physical prowess because more often than not, he is not going to be held accountable for it.
It doesn’t matter how we are dressed, how much we’ve had to drink, what we look like, where we are, or who we are with. Women are not the problem. Some men, ARE.
I live in Delhi where, just a day ago, a doctor was arrested for allegedly raping his patient after drugging her. A woman can’t even let her guard down in the doctor’s chambers? Every time I think this world cannot disappoint me any further, it hits me with a double whammy.
We cannot let the anger die down, considering the forces we are battling, we women need to be OUTRAGED, all the damn time. Name and shame every time we are bullied online, or someone crosses the line at work or when someone invades our private space on a public transport.
From the leader of the free world, to actors, producers, industry leaders – rape culture is far more pervasive than we think it is. ‘Grabbing them by the pussy’ is not accepted behaviour and a culture that normalizes violent behaviour towards one half of its population by not acknowledging the extent of the problem, is just as responsible. It is about effing time we change that.
Or are we just too used to that, too?
GIFs: Giphy
