A rash of sex-scandals have turned out to be dicey diversions from the dour financial scams and the dreary poll din that dog our hours. Snoopgate – the alleged surveillance of a young woman by Gujarat authorities with the blessings of the rulers there – and a sexual harassment complaint by a lady lawyer against a Supreme Court judge were already raging. This has now been topped by the Tehelka sex-scandal – a sort of reverse sting for the magazine and the media itself. The editor now faces serious and self-confessed charges of sexual assault on a junior colleague, a friend of his daughter incidentally.
I have always demurred at the insensitivity of statistics. But the fact that the rape statistics are not static but soaring cannot be ignored. The rising graph of crimes against women reflects very badly on our society and its statutes. Laws and lofty assurances have no meaning, for, how can women feel safe when they are really not safe? India’s public spaces that include work places have consistently given room for such a generalisation of late. The ‘high-profile’ cases alluded to above at best prove that the roving male wolves roam about in all kinds of physical and intellectual attire and that such crimes are most egalitarian, cutting across all strata, from the five-star elite to the platform dwellers.
All practised polemics perennially peddled by a patriarchal mindset are passe. Telling women what to wear or how to behave will no longer behove of even a doting father or a concerned brother. It is unacceptable because it is unfair by the modern gender scale. The issue is all about how to make men behave, as it should be. A relative of mine who drives her car often tells me how men drivers hate to be overtaken by a women and respond in a nasty manner on the road. Male prejudices can be so petty with molestation and rape as their zenith. Such a deeply ingrained cultural and character flaw cannot be expected to change itself overnight. The correction has to be imposed by statutory strong medicine and implemented through, shall we say, surgical strikes at the predators when necessary. Suffice to say that even after the gory Delhi gang-rape case, the law remains inadequate to deliver true gender justice. Otherwise, why would a genuine victim hesitate to even file a complaint?
And there are other villains in the hiding. The high voltage gender debates pose problems for the choice of words and articulation of even well-meaning views. One has to be sensitive but one cannot also be too careful. A point has to be made without it becoming too pedestrian or totally preachy. Nuances need to be sacrificed at the altar of niceties. Anything can be misconstrued and distorted, while the issue itself gets diluted. For instance, how does an individual or organisation respond and protect self from boomerangs when a woman happens to be an offender, say, in a theft? What of tele serials that routinely cast women as the vilest of species? Or the role of web porn that is so freely available on handhelds? Sorry. But clearly, the scenario does not make for a conducive setting for coherent arguments and concerted action.
Also, we have been frequent witness to the futility of fury in a flippant world. Rape has been belittled no end by the nocturnal candlelight vigilantes, who just make hay while the moon shines, as they nonchalantly move from one fad to another. Agitating mobs on streets only trample on the victim while the offender slips through the smokescreen. Primetime pundits and the politicos aggravate the agony. The two ensure that whatever the human side of a crime against women, it will ultimately land and be dissolved in the political pot, to be stirred to boiling point and salt added to the injury in all bad taste. A victim is deprived of dignity a million times after the first assault.
Females should not sacrifice their freedoms. But they do have to be extra wary and raise their defences — as must law-enforcers — emotionally and physically. While the perils of the world makes this true for all folk, women also have the opposite gender, its prejudices and predatory instincts to reckon with. That’s quite a loaded dice, as of now!
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