What we sow, shall we reap!
My older sister always had a problem with people telling her that she couldn’t do something only because she was a girl. A small remark like ‘stop gossiping like a girl’ or ‘you must like pink because you’re a girl’ or ‘swimming can’t be a career choice because you’re a girl’ would invariably annoy her. However much I love her, at times I found her irritation for such small remarks/sentences more annoying than the remarks themselves, which i thought could be easily ignored and forgotten. After all, nobody really meant them that ways and of course peace in family was a higher priority – or so I thought! I was half too young to understand and half too delusional about the world. Growing up with boys in school who took male teachers more seriously than women, going to college in a metro city where a bus ride can be a shortcut to molestation and going to work at places where jokes are invariably on women/wives and learning about increasing brutal crimes happening against women around the world; I’ve only learnt to respect my sister’s indignation over small things, more each day. I’ve come to realise that small things make a difference and small things lead to bigger changes. She knew unlike most women at a very young age when she was being treated wrong!
How many of us really knew? How many of our mother’s really knew? How many of us even know today?
As a child I thought things could be ignored, ignoring them is the best you can do, we were taught. I remember when my friend from school had shared her mother’s advice with me. “Whenever some uncle tries to touch you unpleasantly, remind them that you’re like a daughter to them”, she had said. Today, I doubt I would like to pass on the same advice to my daughter. Ignoring remarks has led to wrong ideologies being reinforced and subtler actions/reminders have lead to more heinous crimes. Shenaz Treasurywala made a very valid point in her open letter, “it’s the shame of perpetrators and not of the victims.” It’s time we can teach our daughters to not be subtle about it. Hearing about more crimes each day, there’s been a rising pain in my stomach. It’s unbelievable to know about India’s Nirbhaya #2. She’s only a six year old from Gujarat. She wasn’t even out at night. She was only playing in front of her house with her brothers. India has many daughters and none of them deserve to be raped or molested. Camps are split on the heated debate related to India’s Daughter. There’s been a ban on the documentary. It’s true it doesn’t show India in the right light. Possibly a lot of western opinion has labeled India a rape nation when there are relatively more rapes happening in their own countries. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s an elephant in the room and we can’t ignore it any longer. A change that we expect to happen in men has to begin with a change in us. As long as we keep sweeping things under a carpet, chauvinism grows, perpetrators embolden and predators persist. Besides, raising boys in times of rape couldn’t have been a bigger challenge.
If you find your baby boy staring at a lingerie mannequin in a mall, would you try to tell him that it’s not the right thing to do and when he grows up, he must harbour respect for another person’s body? Or instead put his picture online as a laughing gag saying – ‘men will be men’ for him to know how cool you thought his actions were! It’s time small decisions lead to bigger changes.
Preeti Lamba
Latest posts by Preeti Lamba (see all)
- What we sow, shall we reap! - March 16, 2015
