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A woman is often targeted; everywhere - in personal life, in public, online - everything and everything considered par for the course, just because she's a woman!
A woman is often targeted; everywhere – in personal life, in public, online – everything and everything considered par for the course, just because she’s a woman!
She has to feel like the sun could burn her if she stands directly under it without the protection of her multi-layered attire.
So when a girl walks out wearing clothes from neck to toes, she wonders if she is safe, because her mother insisted she would be.
She knows she’s not.
People tell her “You’re safe! It’s all okay!” but it’s not and it’s not the sun that scares her!
From childhood to adulthood girls are never allowed to show skin, ever.
If at all at any point they do, they’re slut shamed for it verbally, physically, mentally, emotionally, by parents, friends, relatives, and strangers on the road.
Until man decides to whack them for no reason at all when they’re on the street and he masturbates as they walk by, just because.
She knows someone somewhere is watching her, just because she’s a woman.
She knows someone somewhere is plotting to hurt her, just because she’s a woman.
When a man whistles at her as she walks across the road, she thinks it’s her fault. She immediately thinks of the mole between her breasts and curses, wondering if her kurti has too low a neck.
When a man ogles at her, she thinks she made him do it. She may have looked at him for a second too long, or maybe she had it coming because she wore a t-shirt that covered her completely, but that’s never enough and she knows it.
When a man masturbates, he enjoys her terror at the realisation of what he’s doing. She thinks she should’ve acted slower, gotten him caught in the act and made sure that she took slow steps towards the matter.
When a man rapes her, she is made to feel that it was her fault and she invited it. The worst part is that if it isn’t rape, it isn’t even a crime. So long as her senses have suffered, but her ‘body is still pure’, she is considered to be fine.
To the world, I, am a woman only if!
Only if, I have become the living avatar of Goddess Kali and taken my revenge.
After all, I cannot feel mutilated before I feel anger, and once I feel the anger, I’m acting irrationally.
So when men do things to us, look at us in a way we know is wrong, touch us in a way we don’t want, force us to feel things that make us cower in fear as we cross the street in broad daylight, we feel men don’t care if a woman feels, screams, or breathes.
It feels like they’re hollering, “She’s a woman. She knows what’s coming to her.”
We are never allowed to feel completely safe, because we are baby making machines.
Every time something bad happens to one of us, we try to subdue the pain thinking at least it wasn’t a bad as…, till it gets as bad and then worse and there’s no way out.
Published here earlier.
Image source: pixabay
Professionally, I am a content developer and editor. Other times I'm involved in various activities as a freelance blogger/writer, volunteer in my college's alumni association, career coach, tattoo and skating enthusiast. read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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