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While we understand physical abuse, we rarely comprehend that verbal abuse too can have serious consequences for women.
If you’re already wondering about the title, let me illustrate with an example to give you a closer look as to what harassment of women is.
Harassment in simple words, is any abuse or violence, physical or mental but in most cases, while we know what physical wounds look like, we forget that injuries to your mental health too need to be cured before they turn into bruises like depression and severe anxiety attacks.
Recently, (a week before the lockdown began), my widowed mother, my brother and I had to move out of my father’s home. Reason? Simply put, mental abuse. Abuse can occur in the form of any gestures or words that make one feel severely depressed. This is what happened to us too.
The background to this was that we had some family land which my uncle (who is brother-in-law to my mother) used for cultivating his crops and hence paid us the rent regularly. This time something happened due to which he got a little late and didn’t even talk to my mother regarding this. She being a single parent got a little tense (as she has some severe anxiety issues). She decided to ask him and when this happened they abused her saying that she has no right to the property and that it only belongs to us, her children, and so when we are legally privileged, we can get the information (I am 17).
Later on, the dispute grew stronger and she was accused of having an evil eye on my father’s property from the very beginning and when she decided to move out, they said that she was leaving to “have fun” with other guys. My mother is a woman in her late 30s, and couldn’t bear all this; as a result, she has developed depression.
I see her taking pills each day and my heart shrinks at seeing all this. We have taken some legal help now, but the accusations and gossip she faces each day are becoming ridiculously cheap. If this isn’t a form of mental abuse, then what is?
My sole purpose of sharing this all is, if you are the one facing such things, don’t keep quiet or just ignore it (if it’s affecting you). Raise your voice! Sometimes, silence is the worst thing you can offer, in a situation that demands your courage and words.
Image via Canva
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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