Let me give you some background before I begin – I am a 21-year-old student in the city of Pune, India. The year is 2019 and the month is January. I am a woman. It is 7 PM and I have just picked up my laptop from the service centre at Camp. They told me they can’t fix it and now I need to plan its funeral before coming up with a plan of action that will lead me to the required funds for another laptop. I am looking for an auto and needless to say, the city is bustling and bursting with life. I am not sure if it is the life I want to be a part of, for it is noisy and chaotic, but you know what? One of my new year’s resolutions is being more optimistic, less cynical. I decide to stare at a tree nearby and think about how wonderful life is. Is it working – is the cynicism falling off of me? Maybe, I think so.
I make my way to the other side of the street after four minutes of trying to cross the narrow road. A few ‘autowallas’ surround their autos while three of them seem to be in negotiations with two women. Your usual Pune routine. After proceeding with the customary haggling, that results in the 150 rupees to Viman Nagar falling to a 100, we’re on our merry way. Usually, I’m not much for chitchat, but I was in a good mood. Yes, this is after the news of my laptop being a vegetable for life.
The auto guy asked me where I was from, to which I said Delhi. He proceeded to tell me how he’d been born and raised in Pune and had gone to Gurgaon a few days back with his brother. He mentioned how he thought the place was noisy and rowdy, to which I agreed and remarked that it was a special kind of hell for women, No-no, not your usual ‘I am a woman and will be objectified’ hell. More like the ‘I am being stalked and may get raped’ kind of hell. The ‘autowalla’ turned around at a red light to look at me and mentioned that men weren’t the only ones to blame and some women, especially those in Delhi, have a bad reputation. I asked him to elaborate. You know, he said, the kind who wear short clothes and drink and hang out with men. The next twenty minutes, being the non-confrontational feminist that I am, I tried to explain the concept of consent to him.
Something about what I said really got him riled up. But major props to him for he was prepared to listen. He was prepared to have a civil debate on the matter. I decided to do my part and listen to his side. As a modern feminist, I may have thought that some of the ideas were invalid, even regressive, but those were his views on certain matters. Does playing the blame game help? Hell no. After all, we are all, to a large degree, products of our environment. Education, a good education that is, allows us to begin questioning aspects of our own worldview that we have held dear for so much of our life. You take out education from the equation and you’re left with the worldview being internalised as the absolute truth, that one we hold closest to our mind and heart – something that defines us. So when someone who has not been handed these tools agrees to listen to you, you listen.
He told me to envision a hypothetical situation: say a woman and a man have been having sex for a few months (consensual of course; thus the term “sex”, not “rape”) and then the woman says no and they still do it (the man puts it in regardless of the lack of consent), then is that sex or rape? I explained that the idea of consent is simple – a no is a no. Period. The tea example that has become wildly popular on the internet over the last few months came to good use at this stage in the conversation. If you’re not going to force tea down somebody’s throat just because they decided to have tea with you one time, why would you decide to put it in if she doesn’t want it? The first few months may have been sex, but that one time was rape regardless. The explanation seemed to bite something inside him but he couldn’t say anything further. There was a moment of silence.
Few seconds passed by before he agreed with me. He mentioned how in our country, a woman and her family’s “honour” are deeply tied to her virginity. I asked him if he had seen any man ever count the number of girls he’d had sex with. If they did, it was something to gloat about. A woman, on the other hand, is often assumed and expected to be a virgin till marriage in the majority of the cases in India. Sex is a matter of pleasure and a man and a woman both have an equal right to this pleasure. Until you’re not harming any other person, do as you please and if that means banging because you like to, bang on. I didn’t say it in these exact words, but you get the ballpark image.
“There is a reason for that, ‘didi’ (sister) if you don’t mind my saying it”, he replied. “The woman gets loose if she has a lot of sex”.
All right, I appreciate the candour. I took in a deep breath and contemplated the best way of explaining to him what was wrong with this way of thinking. This idea may be considered backwards in the mainstream, but what was not backward was his openness to discuss this and to hear me out on it.
“Well, see, that may be true or it may not. The point here is, when you say it will get loose, you’re looking at it from the perspective of a man. A woman would not worry about it much. The problem is for the man and the amount of pleasure he derives. When you do that, you’re saying that men have the first right to sex. They own pleasure or the right to it. What you don’t hear people talk about often is how women also like sex. They have as much right to pleasure as men do. So I say, let people do it as much as they please as long as it is consensual. You know, men don’t own sex” and with that nugget of information, I was at my doorstep.
I handed him a 100 rupee note and exited the auto, slightly proud of myself for having engaged in a civil debate with someone with whose views varied significantly from mine. Sometimes all it takes is listening to the other side, rather than aiming to “beat” the other person.