Last night, my friends and I were finally able to execute a movie night we had been planning for months. Since Three Idiots won the popular choice award, we decided to begin our movie marathon with it. We were having a great time; all was going well until that ‘Balatkar’ scene came up, and a couple of my friends started laughing. I lost my shiz, smacked them and left the place.
At that moment, I felt very proud for standing up to my feminist values but late at night when I started with my over thinking ritual, I felt I over reacted. I realized that before I started college and studied Sociology I also used to laugh during that scene.
Why did I do so? Why did my friends do so? Why do we find rape jokes funny? Are we all perverts? Well, the answer to it is super easy. We’re taught to laugh at it. We’re never told that rape is an assault. Instead, we’re taught that rape is an insult.
From a very young age, we’re taught that a woman’s honor lies in her vagina, and a man’s in his sisters’, mother’s & daughters’ vagina.
‘Bhenchod, Maachod, Betichod’ are few terms, which are used so generously & casually that if they were taxable even the educated elite Indians would go bankrupt.
Sub-consciously and consciously, parents introduce their children to rape culture and society contributes its bit by normalizing it.
There is beautiful quote I read sometime back. It reads ” THE VIOLENCE WE TEACH OUR SONS IN TEACHING THEM TO BE MEN IS THE SAME THAT KEEPS US UP AT NIGHT WORRYING ABOUT OUR DAUGHTERS”
Your daughters won’t be safe in streets (or sheets) until you raise your sons right. Until you teach them that women are more than sandwich and baby making machines.
It’s high time people stop trying to protect their women from getting raped and concentrate on preventing their boys/men from turning into rapists and misogynist assholes.
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