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I salute my friend’s fiancé for supporting her. I realized that many women end up doubting themselves when faced with an inappropriate touch!
In a recent incident, my friend was touched inappropriately by her fiancé’s friend. She faced a huge dilemma even after facing her harasser. The dilemma was: did she somehow give him a ‘green signal’ to harass her?
When I dug deeper, I found out that there were many women who end up questioning themselves when it comes to facing an inappropriate touch.
Many times, women don’t even realise they are being harassed unless it is pointed out by someone else or years after the incident. I salute my friend’s fiancé for helping her in every way one can, but this is not always the case. As a person who has seen this happen with relatives and family friends, I rarely see anyone taking the girl’s side. We can shout as much as we want on social media but alas, we get turned into a meme or are called ‘feminazi’.
And this is not just the case of men not calling out harassers but even the women keep up with this tradition. Society tends to give justifications for inappropriate touching. Some examples include:
Let me talk about some incidents from some women I know.
Now, in all these incidents, where was the signal? The girls told their parents as well but no one listened. Was the signal her body? Or her friendliness as a kid? Or her going to take a nap? And in almost all of these incidents, the girl has been blamed.
People say that girls are known to cry and turn the argument in their favour. If it is deemed so wrong, then what happens when the culprit cries and victimises himself? Why do we believe the guy then? Because men don’t cry? Dude, everyone cries as a child. They grow up and the crying reduces. But many of you might have seen your friends, irrespective of gender crying and not crying.
What do we need to do? Well for starters, let’s take some scenarios:
Then, what is the only signal that exists? Under no pressure on the girl, when she tells the guy that she wants to get physically close! Nothing else! Stop ruining a whole new generation by making them believe stupid norms And more importantly, girls & women, stop questioning yourselves on these so-called ‘signals’.
Babies get harassed! Kids get harassed! Adults get harassed! Old people get harassed! Period.
Let’s stop blaming the harassed and start calling out the harassers instead!
Image source: Still from Pink
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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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