A friend once shared how her daughter was stopped by a teacher in her school and told , “Your breasts are too big for you to walk like that.”
She went on to develop an apologetic, stooping posture for life.
Shame is coded in the DNA of a young girl. And docility is force fed. And God forbid if she refuses to feel ashamed of her body. Or to be obedient. But the warfare against her autonomy, her body and her mind, begins very early.
I remember families where visitors were asked to keep their voices down because a son was preparing for a competitive exam but a daughter, also studying was told, “Uncle ke liye pani lao.”
I remember a distant relative forcing multiple abortions on his wife after the birth of three daughters because he wanted a son.
I remember the Latawa sisters decades ago in Chandigarh , hanging themselves because their parents felt they were not enough and had finally succeeded in having a son.
I know wife beaters and child abusers who have been treated with more respect and deference in families than was accorded to their victims.
I remember my mother being shamed for having produced a daughter.
I remember a relative comparing me to sons who were prosperous and daughters who were well-settled because I had failed both the success and the domesticity litmus test and hence could not afford my self-belief even though I was in my forties.
I remember her commenting derisively on the changes in my face and figure.
I remember her saying, “kapde bhi to aise pehen ke gayi hai, “ to my mother who was worried about my safety at a late hour in Chandigarh. I was wearing a full sleeved dress with a jacket.
I remember her occasional phone calls where she would without fail ask in her sweet, sing song voice, whether I had put on weight.
And just like that, all the years I have spent cultivating my mind and spirit would be tossed in a trashcan because I was after all just my body.
Because regardless of what feminist writers insist, women continue to be reminded again and again that their anatomy is indeed their destiny. And no, they must never display anger when their minds and bodies are cornered.
While anger in men is contextualised and empathised with and validated in families and in the media and in cinema, anger in women is considered to be unnatural. Like their bodies, it is a thing to be erased so that the world can go on unperturbed.
That is why women are shamed for ‘over-reacting,’ for ‘creating a scene,’ for being ‘drama queens.’
Even though they are triggered everyday by how their bodies are viewed, observed and on bad days, violated.
Everyday, a news report about another brutal rape puts them back to the blistering square one of non identity no matter how hard they have worked to feel strong, to rise about the sense of victimhood, the vulnerability of their anatomy.
They are reminded everyday that they can be mocked, raped, belittled, disrespected and there is nothing they can do about it.
When they tell their stories, they are blamed for milking their trauma.
Or for misreading a situation .
For coming forward too late.
For not walking away from predators soon enough.
For oversharing because aren’t there women who had it worse but managed to not inconvenience anyone?
For certain kind of men though, every woman is a trigger. Of some kind.
Some are offended by ‘parkati, ‘painted and dented women.’
Some think single women of a certain age are desperate for male attention.
Some like to undermine women at work.
Some gaslight , humiliate or beat up their partners to feel better about themselves.
Some stunt the career growth of their wives by dumping child rearing duties on them.
Some abuse politically aware women online.
Some send random requests to profile pictures.
Some just snuff the light and joy out of the women in their life.
Some cat call, whistle and shout obscenities or expose themselves in public.
Some crack rape jokes.
Some rape. And then burn their victim alive. Or pull her entrails out.
And conditioning works both ways.
I have heard a woman say, “Rape cannot technically happen till a woman wants it.”
I have heard a woman say, “Why did she walk into a bus full of strange men?”
I have heard a woman say, “Why did she fight so hard?”
Shireen Mody , a renowned artist and mother was recently killed in Goa at her home because she had an argument with her gardener.
Perfumer Monika Ghurde was raped and killed also in her Goa apartment in 2016 after an argument with a security guard over an umbrella . Like someone said in a comment thread after she passed, “Women should know how to handle these kind of men.”
The truth is though women should not be needing to handle so many situational, virtual, and human triggers everyday. It is not our job to make men not want to hurt, rape, gaslight, humiliate or murder. We have enough to deal with. We are born unforgiven.
But there is something very common among men who abuse and rape and hurt women. They not only feel no shame, they have a sense of entitlement and invincibility that makes them believe they can do anything and get away with it. And be forgiven. And often they are.
They also have a comical sense of self-importance.
Be it the Speedo clad Yoga guru Bikram balancing himself atop bent female body to show off something only he can articulate. Or a Netflix documentary showing him shushing a female attorney because she dared to ask him about the rape charges against him and then getting up and walking away in a huff . And then starting a new life unchallenged, and brazenly in a new country.
Or Trump despite rape charges and an impeachment process in motion against him , tweeting a picture of his face plastered on Rocky Balboa’s body.
Or dictators and aspiring despots all over the world walking red carpets with blood on their hands and not a single wrinkle on their souls.
With women, even after they are dead, the accountability doesn’t end.
In 2007, Dhananjoy Chatterjee became the only convicted rapist in India to have been judicially executed in the 21st century.
Yet a film questioning the verdict was recently made by a film maker who thinks Dhananjoy was hung because he was a victim of circumstances and because the authorities wanted to make an example of him.
He cites lack of circumstantial evidence to vouch for the dead man’s innocence. So Dhananjoy was innocent but Hetal wasn’t? Especially in the light of new “findings” that allege that she was not a 15-year-old but perhaps a sexually active 18-year old and had gone through consensual sex before being killed?
Yes, because, women, dead or alive must continue to prove that they are above culpability. As the maker says, “Mass hysteria has to be curbed. It is high time that society stands together to do something, to understand what kind of wrongs mass hysteria can do.”
He adds for good effect, “ They are doing to me exactly what they did to Dhananjoy. But somewhere, I still have a lot of faith in the world and I think Dhananjoy would have got justice.” His faith is not misplaced. In his world and ours, the Dhananjoys, guilty or not, rarely not get a second chance. The Hetals rarely get any.
Remember Suzette Jordan? She too was raped in Kolkata, lived to tell the tale and yet was not believed but shamed and made an example of.. as the woman who was perhaps asking for it. The point is just this. We have zero compassion for women in this society. Horrific rapes and murders of women and little girls can be communalised, contextualised, excused, dismissed, even celebrated or simply forgotten.
The rage over Dr Priyanka Reddy’s rape and murder will dissipate too. She was after all just a woman. In her case too, anatomy was her destiny. She simply could not have escaped it.
**Reema is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US . She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.