Actor and media personality Shenaz Treasury has had an eventful week. As a spontaneous reaction to the Uber rape case in Delhi, she posted an open letter on her Facebook page. The letter was addressed to influential thought leaders in India, all of them men incidentally. She shared personal episodes of violation and stated that the shame if any was not hers but of men and society at large that allowed gender crimes to unfold.
She repeatedly asked ‘powerful’ public figures to ‘save us.’ Before she knew it, the post had gone viral. Women shared their personal stories of violation with her. Many applauded her bravery and then the backlash began. Had she timed the letter to coincide with her latest release Main Aur Mr. Riight? Was this just a publicity stunt? There followed a spate of open letters to her. A few seriously questioned her ‘paternalism’ that expected men to save women from other men. It was not the debate over her demand for a death penalty for rapists or the criticism of the seemingly patriarchal solutions to gender violence that bothered her but the personal attacks.
Says she, “I do Hindi films as a hobby. I have a real job to go back to in New York on Comedy Central. I spend my time, writing and producing TV shows like Culture Shock and Smile with Shenaz. I don’t care if I don’t do another Bollywood film. The thought that I wrote the letter to promote a film is laughable. I wrote this letter on my Facebook page and it went viral. Could I have predicted it? Why haven’t I written about this issue before? I have! ‘Where was I all this time,’ I was asked? Well, where were you? I have written many letters and articles before. This is the first one that went viral.”
She continues, “The Uber rape made me write this. And the look on the rapist’s face. I am sorry that my film coincided with the rape! The cynicism that greeted the letter makes up for just 10 per cent of the three and a half million shares.”
She questions the criticism from women, “who have no idea what it is to grow up without cars and drivers. My plea for help was not about them or me. It was for women who are found dead in ditches. This was not meant to be a fight between them and me. It was about us collectively standing against the rapists.”
Virulent responses from men were also posted on her page and she reacts, “Men who are scared of women’s empowerment see my letter as a threat.” The dark male psyche first revealed itself to her when she went to Mumbai’s Gaiety theatre to watch Bandit Queen with her sister, years ago. She shudders, “The scene where Phoolan gets raped made us recoil in horror but the men in the theatre whistled. What was meant to be gruesome and terrifying was considered somehow arousing by them.”
And why does she think, gender equations are so warped in India?
She responds, “It boils down to education and parenting. Women are looked at as either property to be protected or whores. Any woman who flaunts her sexuality deserves to be raped- that’s the attitude. When I posted on my page, ‘No matter what I wear, no matter how late I stay out at night – nobody has the right to touch me,’ the comments showed how men look at women. They think, women dress in a certain way to tempt men. Men of course are not supposed to have any control over themselves.”
About the scores of women who have written to her, she says, “A girl told me how she was raped for years as a kid. I have over a lakh of such messages about abuse committed by a 75-year-old driver, doctors, family members, uncles. The abuse happened to women of all ages. Some men have been abused too and it is important to speak up. And put the shame where it belongs.”
The laws she feels need to grow tough. “Sexual offenders need to be locked away forever and not be out on the streets. There should be no bail a rapist and fast courts must act fast. “
About the criticism that she addressed only ‘powerful men’ to rectify the situation, she says, “Of course women should speak up too. And they have been. I am asking men to now stand up for women. Not by imposing curfews on us or telling us what to wear but helping us to feel safe. I am asking the good men to not turn a blind eye. I am asking the public to intervene and look out for women. And if a man is attacking a woman, he will be intimidated by another man or men. That is how he is wired.”
She continues, “Men are both vile perpetrators of crime and the most powerful legislators. These particular men I addressed have the ear of rapists like Yadav who was driving the Uber taxi. He’s not going to take Priyanka Chopra seriously but he will take Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar seriously. And women need to stick together and not fight each other.”
She hopes to see stronger women protagonists in films and signs off, “The ragging and teasing of women in films needs to stop. And they need to stop depicting the one in the salwar kameez as the wife and the one in a low cut blouse as a whore. I am not a fan of some item numbers either.”
with The New Indian ExpressReema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and just be.