While the wave of female emancipation is fast gaining force in India, it still hasn’t been able to break the same old conservative mindsets of the society.
REPORT
This is exactly what we saw on the 30th of April 2019, when a video surfaced and went viral on the internet showing a group of girls confronting a middle aged woman about her critical comments regarding the length of one of the girl’s dresses. They alleged that the woman -who has since been dubbed as Aunty Ji by the internet- had told them that their dresses were too revealing and it is because of people like them that rape takes place in our country. She apparently even went on to tell the 7 other male diners in the restaurant to rape them. The girls, infuriated, followed her to another store, demanding an apology, while the middle aged woman refused to back down from her words. This whole incident was recorded and went on to become the viral video that we’ve been seeing.
THE PROBLEM
It is an undeniable fact that the woman was wrong, and it is also very important to note that her comments reflect the views of a lot of those around us. Those who believe that a woman’s clothing, her sobriety or her personality encourage men to rape her. This mentality normalizes rape to such an extent that people hold the belief that unless women's bodies are policed and their freedoms are taken away, it is inevitable that they will be raped. It is important to realize that this isn't an issue of individual women being against each other but about an entire patriarchal system that represses them and reinforces such regressive thinking. A system that brought up this woman in such a way that she felt the need to give a deeply misogynistic opinion to complete strangers.
By norm, in our country women and girls are required to wear non-revealing clothes and we leave it at this, blindly agreeing to it, just because society says so. However, if we take a deep dive into this situation, we realize that the ideology behind this is flawed in itself. It promotes rape culture. When you tell someone to wear longer dresses, it is so that they can avoid the undue attention that comes with wearing these “revealing” clothes, but the fact of the matter is that there shouldn’t be undue attention coming in, no matter what anyone wears.
THE DEBATE
The majority of the conversation also manages to rest on the manner in which the women chose to bring this episode to light. The society is mainly divided into 2 sections; one which feels that the women who shared the video did the right thing, and the other which say that they could have taken a different approach to share their frustration and anger.
Some people believed that keeping in mind the fact that the women had been physically threatened, by ‘the Aunty’ telling the men present there to rape them, they had every right to record and post everything that she had said. Others think that the women reacted to the incident inappropriately and they should have responded more calmly, taking a more civilised approach towards the entire incident.
Considering the comments that had been passed at them, shouldn't the women's anger in the situation be considered valid and not be held up to judgement? And even though their anger is understandable, did they take the correct steps afterwards? After all what may have started as a way to raise awareness about a still-existing backward mindset in our society, quickly developed into to an all out social media attack on this woman’s image.
Is it justified to publicly shame this woman all over the internet? To send her hate comments? And going as far as to send death threats or ironically, even rape threats to her?
In this scenario, it is crucial to understand that this isn’t supposed to be a conversation raised against a particular person, but against the views and opinions that have been formulated and accepted by the society that they’ve been brought up in. The ultimate aim shouldn’t be to punish this woman, but to re-educate her. Being shouted at by an angry group of people doesn’t only disallow a person from changing the way they think, but also closes them up from being open to different perspectives and makes them more defensive.
REACTION OF STUDENT COMMUNITY
The reactions of the Heritage student community to this incident, varied.
There were those were perturbed by the incident, and proceeded to call out the woman’s ignorance on their social media profiles. They shared the video, encouraging their followers to do the same and wrote about how disgusted they felt.
There were others who perhaps initially shared the same intentions, but their anger towards the entire incident made them go a step further. They encouraged sharing the video, not to make its message heard, but instead to send hate comments to the woman. Some even went as far sharing her Facebook profile and harassing or abusing her family.
And then there were those who seeing the hatred that this episode had started to generate towards this woman, were reluctant to associate themselves with it. Though they did disagree with the woman’s remarks, upon acknowledging the manner in which the issue was raised, they started calling out those who were sending hate comments and threats to the woman.
Moreover, the incident which was initially perceived as a very serious situation which had outraged an entire community of people, was trivialised the very next day through parody videos, memes and jokes floating on the internet.
This incident happened 12 days ago, and since then the woman has apologised and social media has quieted down. But it makes us question the manner in which the internet and social media has completely changed the way that we call out ignorance. The power of social media is boundless and thus, it is a tool that needs to be utilised with utmost care and responsibility.
It is important to understand that it is impossible to take down a culture of shaming by fuelling hatred. As people observing from a distance, we have to respond to situations like these with a bit more nuance and ensure that in the process of calling out the bully, we don’t turn into bullies either.
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