The BOISLOCKERROOM controversy spurred three-four days back and brought a storm of outrage among teenagers specially girls on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. There was an uproar of calling all men and trash and then a bunch of male users stood up with their stand of not all men. It all started when a group on Instagram which went by the name BOISLOCKERROOM was created by some a dozen teenagers and they started sharing photos of girls, their private chats with them, and commenting in the worst possible filthy way. Then somebody from that group leaked the conversation and soon it was on everybody’s stories
It’s been only a few months when the rapists of Nirbhaya were hung to death. After the rape of Nirbhaya similar kind of outrage was being seen but it was on roads, people came out on road, did candle march, demanded justice for Nirbahya. However it still took years for the mother of Nirbhaya to get justice for her daughter, dates were increased several times, some human rights activists demanded the end of capital punishments because capital punishment won’t end the rape culture and the rapes will not stop.
It looks like they were right, we have heard the news of rapes every day even after the rapists of Nirbhaya were punished by hanging them. But one thing that’s important to see in the BOISLOCKERROOM issue is that these boys were not some primary school dropout labor’s son, working as a helper on the bus. These kids, aging from 16 to 19 are from elite schools, living in south Delhi and south Bombay. They had the best possible education for themselves, in these schools, their sex is also not a taboo. These schools conduct sex education classes. Unlike kids from poor or middle-class backgrounds for whom discussing the word sex is big No and that is the reason why many times kids fall prey to sexual predators who harass them and the kids don’t even realize that something wrong is happening with them.
So if these kids had everything, best possible education, educated parents, they could have discussed anything with their moral science, sex education or psychology teacher, why did they end up discussing all their sexual fantasies in an Instagram group? Where they talked filth about girls. Who is responsible for it? Because these kids are underage, they are exploring their sexual fantasies and they still are dependent on pocket money from their parents. So they are not in a position to make a staunch decision for themselves. An FIR has been filed against people in this group but no solid action could be made possible because of their age.
The factors responsible for their gruesome act is everything they are surrounded with. The culture of talking alpha male, talking filth about girls, proving alpha by getting with most possible girls. The locker room culture is not prevalent in India up to that mark. But see it in every other Netflix series on the highschool, where boys are supposed to be raw and masculine and sweat on school grounds and bag sports scholarship and girls are shown as mere cheerleaders for them, Holding pom-pom in their hands and dancing during college sports tournaments. One thing Indians are good at is following trends from western countries blindly be it fashion, music, or anything and our upper-class millennial generation is best at it. They wait for Drake’s album more passionately than Arijit Singh’s songs, and there is nothing wrong about it, it is about music taste. What’s wrong is making this thing a popular culture and those who are not following it are uncool. So when kids see boys talking filth about girls in their lockerroom in the Netflix series, they also want to copy, since they do not have that facility in India, they do it in these private chats on Instagram or Whatsapp.
The popular culture is bringing worse out of us, making us morally corrupt, thoughtless, with no free thinking of our own. We spend thousands of rupees to purchase the latest iPhone or latest Air Jordan sneakers. The fame in pop culture is gained by Kim Kardashian by leaking her sex tape, the Kardashian-Jenners have a reality show of their own. Teenagers today worship Kylie Jenner who became the youngest billionaire in recent years, people literally donated her money to make her billionaire. When there are children still dying of hunger in third world countries. We should be asking ourselves, what is more important, making sure nobody goes hungry or making Kylie youngest billionaire of the world. But we will not see it because popular culture has blinded us, we are blindly following trends, no matter if it harms us, harm people around us, hurt them, nothing. This may be odd comparison but it is somewhat true from a broader perspective.
The other thing I suppose responsible for it is the rise of capitalism, which has made us horses whose eyes are covered from sides and they can only see front when they have run to earn as much as they can so that we can afford the maximum goods of luxury. We will eat work day in day, day out, get diabetes then eat pills to keep it in check. But we can’t imagine working less and taking care of ourselves. The parents of these LOCKERROOMBOIS stay on business trips for days. This is breaking families also. For a kid, it is important to have parents around while growing up. The morals inculcated by our parents while growing up stays with us for the whole life. Kids’ minds are curious, they try to explore things on their own when nobody is around to guide them and this curiosity sometimes ends with worse crimes. Because of Neo-liberalism we have been handed mobile phones in our hands, but who will teach us how to use that mobile phone for good things?
The only solution to problems like this is to inculcate a sense of morality in the youth of our nation. They should be made aware of the real situation around them, where poor sleep on the very same footpath they pass from everyday. The ratrace to have maximum resources should be ended and we should teach them sympathy, compassion, harsh truth of the society, unequality. We will have to sit with them, guve them sex-education, making them aware that the changes in their body are natural, there will be time for everything. We will have to prevent our youth from getting morally corrupt or these problems will lie around for long.
