Incidents like the molestation of a sex robot at a tech fest and of a woman dying at a stampede in Mumbai shows a gloomy picture of the world. It conveys that in the age of skyscrapers, Artificial Intelligence with all that globalisation reforming the world in every way, we have failed to reform and refine our thoughts about a woman and secure her status in the society.
A sex robot, Samantha was displayed at the Arts Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. But this became a nightmare for her developer, Sergi Santos, as she was heavily soiled by the visitors. Another grave incident took place in India. A day after the stampede on the foot overbridge at Elphinstone Railway Station on September 29, 2017, a video showing a man putatively molesting a woman, who succumbed to her injuries, went viral.
Since time immemorial, women have been struggling to see a safer world for them, one that’s on par with men’s. There is no time in history that women have been safe in public and private spaces. There is no stopping these atrocious crimes against them. Historically, women have been a prize of wars.
It’s quite ironical when people make religion the basis to uplift the status of women. If we go by major religions, God created the world only for men. The woman was born out of the primal man from his rib to be his ‘apt helper’ and not as a separate being.
So what’s the way ahead? Why is it that when there is every law in place, still the number of crimes against women are on the rise? The incidents mentioned above very subtlely indicate two things. One, that we refrain to comment because of the fear of consequences and two, we refrain to respect the victim’s right to have her say. To verbally consent to the sexual act.
When in both the cases, the victims were not in a position to have a say, men’s internal drive came to the foray. This is a total failure of our value system which imbues men with this sense of confidence that whatever they do, they will be no consequences.
Our values need a complete overhaul. I, however, might not be in a place to suggest how. Till now our approach has been of treating the symptoms rather than the disease. Can that alone make the world safer for women? I honestly don’t think so.