It often strikes us later than it should!
As I stood engulfed in dilemma, staring at the enchanting fall of the leaves from the Ashok trees overlooking my department of journalism, I wondered about my choice of response towards my batch mate. There had been a brief but heated argument over the joke about rape. After the ‘nirbhaya rape case’, Jaya Bachchan said that men can sympathize but can never really understand the trauma of rape. The statement has stayed with me throughout the years because time and again some one or the other irrespective of gender has made sexual harassment a joke. It appals me even more though when women fail to understand or even pass on rape jokes as normal, despite being the centre of every form of harassment all their lives.
It started years back with one of the men I was dating; he randomly made a joke about several men raping me and insertion of unnatural things in my vagina. I was dumbstruck with terror. And as I often respond when I am angry, by being silent, I remember being horrified the entire day. That was my first encounter with the ‘the rape jokes’ and it started with being on me. I could not decide which was worse, as it dawned on me that it was not some special kind of people who are labelled as ‘criminals’ that think like that but random ‘civilized’ people around you, including the boyfriend characters! Or that a person who I was so intimate with mentally and physically could think of such things about me and that too with amusement. However, I ignored and the jokes continued till one day when I wasn’t feeling particularly too cheerful that I responded to one such joke furiously in a rant that went on for quite some time. To my surprise he apologized and made a sincere effort to understand female perspective ever since, I know this because it has been years and we are best of friends now and I have seen him transform. But unfortunately my objections over rape jokes not always end up in realizations or even a little effort for understanding. Some people tell me that I just can’t get a joke and maybe I need to ’lighten up’ and there are some who just never talk to me again! Not that I derive pleasure in having conversation with people once I get a glimpse of their deep rooted misogyny but I feel guilty for judging men for something that they have been learning from society since childhood. Having said that I also believe that humans are a product of their choices and not really the consequence of society and environment, though the latter is perhaps the strongest factor.
The media is so full of rape news and articles that it now comes across as routine, so much so that sexual harassment/exploitation or advancements are merely reduced to masala stories for entertainment. More than 34000 cases of rape were reported in 2015 by our country’s National Crime Records Bureau, the victims ranged from female children younger than six years old to women over 60 years. And it’s not limited to women; people somehow dismiss male sexual harassment as a myth which can be attributed to patriarchy of course. And then there are those that are not reported and the harassment that women live through every day.
Rape victims live through years of depression in fear, pain, anxiety, loss of self-esteem and confidence, embarrassment, emotional numbness and innumerable other emotions. Some never come out of the depression, some commit suicide. If only people could feel a hint of what they go through, it would cease to be funny. We cannot get used to the idea of rapes and harassment as just another thing, sexually assaulting people is not a joke, harassment is not normal, there is nothing funny about genitals and also there is nothing cute about chauvinist boyfriends (and even girlfriends), if they choose to be dim-witted assess, dump them! And as for the people who think I can’t get a joke, maybe they need to raise their standards and make better jokes!
Thumbs up👍🏻
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