Change society as a whole to stop this crime-Rape.

“WE WANT JUSTICE !!”

“DON’T QUESTION MY OUTFIT, QUESTION THE ACT OF RAPE !!”

“NO MEANS NO !!”

…..

…..

These and many such slogans seem like they have become a part of what you would call ‘Daily hassles of national life’. Why I used this somewhat irrelevant terminology here is because of the fact that it correlates to what we see in news these days; one girl-child/girl/woman gets raped and a very few number of people come out to protest against it with these slogans that have almost no effect on the deaf ears, be it that of government, parents, people in general, leave alone having it any effect on delinquent mentality possessed people. My question here is What are you doing about it practically and substantially??

• Blaming the laws
• Blaming the government
• Blaming the culprit
• Or very conveniently blaming the victim??

For a change why don’t you blame yourself ?? Yes, sounds harsh but appropriately so, blame yourself for this heinous crime incidents. You come out on roads to protest only when the incident has already happened, but hats-off to you that you still have the guts to stand against it openly; some of you put their display pictures of facebook, whatsapp and other social media sites saying “I am with (the name of the victim)” some share the so-called heart-touching posts regarding the victim (showing pity towards her??); some stay silent being very busy in their life as they are too sure that it can never happen to them or to their near and dear ones; some ignorant folks even don’t know what is happening in society, they are very satisfied in their self-contained illusionary world; and then lastly, comes the category of those misogynist people (both males and females) who are again going to blame the victim because their uneducated and prejudiced minds cannot accept that rape is a crime against a female, not by a female. Many might argue that laws must be much stricter in regard to punishments. But they don’t understand that the remedy of this crime is not in punishments. Provisions of stricter punishments might have deterrent effect on the minds of people, provided they know the punishments in the first place, but it cannot eradicate the gist of the crime.

The nucleus of the act of rape lies in the obnoxious mentality of the culprit which is the result of faulty gender-biased mentality of the society as a whole. The reasons for saying this are numerous, primarily being;

• Patriarchal pattern of society and associated prejudices-

Indian society follows patriarchal pattern in which male leads and female is supposed to follow his decisions. The plethora of prejudices engulfed in this pattern against women is manifold, and in every aspect of life, be it preference to male-child birth, better education to male-child, choice of career, selection of life partner, during and after marriage submission the requirements of husband and in-laws, domestic violence (including marital-rape), etc. The basic right of freedom to females is shackled. They are expected to be docile and obedient in behaviour, and anyone not being so and standing for her rights is considered as someone mal-adaptive and anti-social. Apparently and ironically, the person standing against delinquency is considered a delinquent because it is against their orthodox principles. Whereas males are most ofter privileged with unlimited freedom to do anything as per their desire. Arguably, some will disagree to this contention of unlimited freedom to males but here I am referring to these words only comparatively to how much freedom is given to females. This kind of biases start corrupting the minds of a few people (males). They begin to think that they can do anything and would not be held liable for their actions against women. It forms the seed of rape in their minds.

• Taking women as a property rather than a person- Even in the modern era, women are taken as property rather than human beings. The harsh wording here is for a reason. ‘Woman for a man’ is something that is still in the back of everyone’s mind.

• Gender-biased moralisation by society- In our society, if the males show their sexuality, it is very common (obviously) and they use abusive or sexual terminology, again, it is completely acceptable but dare a female to do the same, it’s becomes an offence to all of her relatives’, neighbourers’ and colleagues’ cultural, social and traditional “values” like they have been abused by her for just using her freedom; even using the word sex openly sometimes feels like a crime when it comes out the mouth of a female whereas males openly use outrightly obnoxious words. I am not pressing upon that that females shall be taught to be overly abusive, but males shall be taught to be well-mannered right from the time their schooling begins at home or At Least Both Shall Be Given Equal Freedom to express themselves. This will lay the foundation of complete moralisation of society as a whole, rather than half of it.

• Indifference and ignorance towards the crime of rape, generally- Believe it or not, some people do not even talk about rape incidents. For them, it has been a taboo since eternity. They will shun the voices of even those who can think about and against it. On an extreme end, some do not even think that it’s a crime by a man (because men are like that only, women should know their limits-Their Thinking). Whereas some people will just scroll through the newsfeed or newspaper thinking that it keeps on happening, and thus it has become their normal to know about it. The same indifferent and ignorant people would leave the victim being abused continually despite her cries for help.

• Lack of proper sex education- It’s not only about the abusive mentality of those who commit this heinous crime but also about what leads them to that act. When somebody is shunned to think or talk about something openly or even know about it right from the childhood, then that topic ingresses inside the mind of that person to ‘explore’ it and it’s in human nature to feel high by doing things that he/she gets to do or knows about the least normally. If children be taught about sex properly at the right age (before puberty), then they would not grow as adults overly-excited about sex and the rate of this crime may drop drastically.

• Lack of vigilance over thoughts and activities of children- People generally realize it what their children have become when they grow into adults, but how many people keep an eye over the kind of words their child uses? How many ask their kids questions to know what kind of thoughts they are having? How many parents scrutinize what their children are watching and reading on the internet and for how long? Since the inception of internet, it’s very easy to have access to any kind of information and now-a-days when social media is more active than ever in which sexual abuse and pornography are taken as something fun, what do you expect children to learn from that? Parents need to keep a close vigilance over all of their children’s activities; whom they talk to, what they talk about, how they behave and what they see or hear on the internet, otherwise they may soon be either the abuser or the abused one.

In the end, I can say that it’s all in your hands. Even one effort can make a huge difference. Don’t be ignorant and create a mishap of imbalance in society more and more.