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Mentality of men in Indian society has reached a new low with many disgruntled cricket fans giving MS Dhoni’s 5-year-old daughter rape threats because her father is not playing well enough.
Cricket is one game that unites our entire country. Fans go crazy for their favourite teams and their favourite cricketers. It’s very common for angry fans to lash out on the crickets and blame them for match-fixing if they lose a match.
But one more thing that has become very common with the advent of social media is giving violent threats to a cricketer’s wife or girlfriend if he doesn’t perform well.
In a recent disturbing incident, our society has stooped down to its utmost low.
On Wednesday after Chennai Super Kings lost a match to Kolkata Night Riders in the ongoing Indian Premier League, CSK’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Instagram post comments were filled with rape threats. These threats of rape and physical violence were directed towards his 5-year old daughter Ziva Dhoni.
Read that again! Several comments were giving out rape threats to 5 year old Ziva. Mind you, not one, not two but several comments were made in the same vein.
I can’t stress this enough. Trolls gave rape threats to a 5 year old girl because her father did not perform well in a few matches!
This is not just sickening but is also a mirror to the toxic masculinity and rape culture that breeds in our society. Something that makes it very easy for 40-year-old men to send out casual rape threats to a 5-year-old kid. A mentality that makes men think that abusing women is the only way of venting out anger and frustration.
After MSD’s Instagram comment section was filled with such disgusting comments several users on Twitters condemned the incident.
A cricket player’s 5 yr old getting rape threats shows what we have become. Or were we always this; and social media is now exposing these people? Unless the Govt and Police take cyber crime seriously we are all unsafe. But then where does the Govt have the time for this?— Chinmayi Sripaada (@Chinmayi) October 9, 2020
A cricket player’s 5 yr old getting rape threats shows what we have become. Or were we always this; and social media is now exposing these people? Unless the Govt and Police take cyber crime seriously we are all unsafe. But then where does the Govt have the time for this?
6 Year Old Ziva Is Getting Rape Threats Because Dhoni Didn't Play Well Yesterday. pic.twitter.com/4mDlxEzVFp— Ayush Verma (@ayushastic) October 8, 2020
6 Year Old Ziva Is Getting Rape Threats Because Dhoni Didn't Play Well Yesterday. pic.twitter.com/4mDlxEzVFp
Just saw that Dhoni's 6-year-old daughter Ziva is getting rape and death threats because he didn't play well in #IPL2020Do people realize what shithole we have become? Can you even imagine where we are heading as a country?Morally dead and decayed nation! pic.twitter.com/tYF9CsMleY— Aryan Srivastava (@aryansrivastav_) October 8, 2020
Just saw that Dhoni's 6-year-old daughter Ziva is getting rape and death threats because he didn't play well in #IPL2020Do people realize what shithole we have become? Can you even imagine where we are heading as a country?Morally dead and decayed nation! pic.twitter.com/tYF9CsMleY
According to recent data provided by the NCRB, an average of 87 rape cases were reported in India per day in 2019. Note the word ‘reported’. The real numbers can easily be much bigger, given the abysmal rates of reporting rape in a country that stigmatises the survivor, not the perpetrator.
Despite this data being out there for everyone to see, in our country, men dare to casually send out rape threats. If they don’t agree with a woman they’ll send out a rape threat, if they don’t like something a man did they send out rape threats to his mother, wife or daughter. There is just no fear at all.
In our so-called modern world, even today shamefully, sexual violence is often considered a way to avenge any kind of insult or injury. This notion leads to women being treated as ‘property’ and their ‘sexual purity’ being held synonymous with the family/clan ‘honour’ and most cases self-honour as a woman. This is the very reason that behind anonymous tags trolls have been shamelessly sending out rape threats to vent their anger. There is no curbing to stop them, they cannot be identified, and the very reason that they feel that raping a woman is right is what gives them the courage to type such horrifying messages.
What can be done?
On a platform level to curb cyberbullying, social media platforms can take proactive measures and zero-tolerance against online sexual harassment and abuse. Accounts doing so should be completely taken down.
Platforms should work to make the internet a safe space, representative of equality and opportunity, and not one filled with sexual predators. One where women shouldn’t feel unsafe just looking at their screens.
Secondly, real-life actions and arrests should be hassle-free. Finally, a mindset change has to be bought. It’s high time we teach our boys to respect women rather than try to abuse them.
Rape is a heinous crime. And to use it to threaten someone or to show your anger just shows the deep-rooted patriarchal mindset of society. Something which believes in harming the ‘woman’ of the family to take revenge from someone.
This incident is not just sick and disturbing it’s also a mirror to our society. On how we are raising our men!
I read, I write, I dream and search for the silver lining in my life. Being a student of mass communication with literature and political science I love writing about things that bother me. Follow 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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