Why am I not part of #MeeTo campaign, even though I was sexually assaulted that too in public place! The very essence of campaign is to highlight the magnitude of stigmatized sexual act against woman but why can’t there be more experiences highlighting how did they coped up with it?
My Facebook, Twitter and other social platform is filled up with #MeeToo feeds, there isn’t single incident guiding me or other girls to deal with such acts. Are we sharing that how weak a girl, lady, or woman can be in these situations?
Mine was not worst, though there are many such incidents like, once a man was rubbing his ‘manhood’ to my shoulder and trying to grab my breasts in lieu of heavy rush and jerks in public transport. I retaliated by pointing him out first, later I forced my elbow on his ‘jingle bells’.
Another incident, my elder uncle (husband of my aunt), he is epitome of sincerity, achiever and highly qualified person in my entire family. There was a family function in their place and I got the opportunity to sleep with my uncle and aunt. My aunt came late to sleep as there were bunch of relatives in their house. My uncle got the chance and started grabbing me from behind and I started reacting. I asked him directly, what are you doing, I am not liking it? And he stopped. Next day I behaved like has nothing happened. Didn’t even told anyone. Just made it sure that my younger sister never faces such encounter.
Purposely, I didn’t mention the age. In first incident I was 23, a budding lawyer such reaction is expected! In second incident, I can’t even remember my age( since the incident was gruesome, it is soaked in my whole body), but it has to be around when I was 12-13 years old.
Why i am mentioning my age is matter of fact here! We should stand for ourselves, irrespective of age, relations, stigma or incapacity.
Instead of writing how helpless we were at that time, we should start writing how fearlessly we dealt with it. We are not here to shame opposite gender with such powerless incidents, we are here to give them message how do we cope up with it and how much brutal we could be, when we are saving our respect. Also it is a message to other females who haven’t faced it up yet or, are facing it silently and using such incidents for part of campaign, Please stand up for better cause.
I know many woman around will not agree with my next issue. I was going through so many jokes and memes over #MeeToo and to be very honest I was giggling upon few of them too. But then I came across with an ongoing discussion on my Facebook news feed. There is this boy from my college who is famous for his humour. He was not a studious type nor was not a part of other curricular activities but one thing he has always maintained was his dignity. He updated one such funny status from his Facebook account. And there, one of her junior girl got a chance. No body knew her from our college and there is sole victim and miss-famous-for-female-rights. She took screenshot of his status and started backlashing him with unwarranted hypothetical huge post.
Girl are you serious? You just updated #MeeToo as your status representing those helpless crowd of woman who could not even took their stand when they were being sexually assaulted [ Yes, for me they are! Because if you are part of any campaign you should come up with its solutions rather showing how vulnerable one is! ]. And then you got a poor guy (who just copy pasted a joke) to prove that you too can stand. Please stand where you need to!
I know the magnitude is high but we have to take a stand against it. We can’t change ‘men mentality’ because this is something which has been inbuilt to most of them, but one thing we can certainly do is stand for our safety, respect and rights. I am a practicing lawyer, I have seen n no. of false rape cases implicating helpless guys. Every time playing woman card is not right. We should not generalise it and held all men against this menace.
#IStand.