In Bangalore, 2017 had a bitter start. 1,500 police constables had been deployed to maintain order during New Year’s Eve celebrations at MG Road, Churchgate, Brigade Road, and other places. But they found themselves horribly outnumbered when a crowd of drunken men began to molest women party-goers, right there on the streets. The Bangalore Mirror reports that the situation had gotten so out of hand, that the police were forced to hang back, while women kicked off their shoes and ran to safety.
As frightening and nerve-wracking scenes from that night surfaced online and in the papers, you couldn’t help but think, a little resigned, that were it not for the sheer number of people present, and were it not for the date, the issue of molestation and sexual assault might have gone entirely unnoticed.
And if this wasn’t enough, almost as soon the news broke, we had to suffer the resurgence of that dismissive hashtag – #NotAllMen. Mumbai journalist Sachin Kalbag has blasted this tendency in a series of tweets, (fondly called a rant). In them, he points out exactly what’s wrong in responding to gender-based violence with the reminder that “not all men are rapists and molestors.”
1/ What people (both women and men) need in times of distress is empathy. With #NotAllMen hashtag, men have conveniently run away from it.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
2/ The #NotAllMen hashtag aims to protect a few men’s perspective on gender, when women want acknowledgement of violence and swift justice.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
3/ Of course women know that not all men rape and molest. They don’t need a hashtag for it. Men will possibly never understand this.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
4/ Instead of #NotAllMen, perhaps an apt hashtag could have been #WeWontTolerate.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
5/ Or better, teach your sons from an early age that women are people, like you. For that, adult men have to change first. Women, too.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
6/ By putting the responsibility of decorum on women, society has skewed itself towards meaningless, dangerous patriarchy. Stop this now.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
7/ Which is why you have people like the Karnataka minister or Abu Azmi spewing nonsense about “negative western influence”.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
8/ Therefore, we need to not only silence these voices, we need to ensure they don’t rise again. That requires swift justice.
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
9/9 The strongest pillar of a just society is a fair criminal justice system. In its absence, no woman or man will feel safe on all 365 days
— Sachin Kalbag (@SachinKalbag) January 3, 2017
Feminists have been calling out this bullshit for years, but maybe Kalbag – a real live man – can actually get through to these #NotAllMen brigands.