When Rhetoric Keeps us Where we Are

Slicing crime from a gender perspective is the output of an immature society. The entire act of violence against women in this country is being wrongly blamed on men. Most men we know are warm, loving creatures, struggling as hard as us women to find happiness in career, home and hobby. Most are toiling and the best of them are often being bullied by the women in their family. So, when we say we need men to change so that rape is no longer a social burden, we are wrong. Most men do need to change. They need to evolve, just as women, society, nature evolves and adapts. It is cyclical, it’s systemic and it’s cohesive. What needs to change is the way we analyse rape; the way we distribute blame.

Are women in no way responsible for the recurring social crime we call rape? I’m not talking about the woman who has been viciously violated at the centre of it all. I am talking about the women that nurture and raise, or forget to nurture or raise a rapist. Why are these women suddenly invisible when their son or brother is brutally attacking others? Why is it only that the police, the government, and strangers—these social pillars are being blamed and motivated to solve such crime? Why not go directly to the source? Because it is a vicious cycle we cannot seem to break out of socially.

We cannot imagine that the emotional anger, sexual frustration, and idle, unemployed state of mind of a rapist could be the product of being surrounded by misogynistic women.  

We find comfort in our clichés; that women are feminists and men are chauvinistic. But examine people closely, connect with them, talk to them and you will find that it’s not gender but personality that determines who they chose to be in moment of passion—evil or heroic. It’s not gender. It’s not caste, nor age, not education or exposure—it’s a decision made in the conscience, which no civilized, social ritual can influence. But if we need to blame, then we need to distribute the blame across everyone who has created the rapist and allowed the crime to occur. And to do that, we need to break out of stereotypical gender-based thinking and attack the divisive misogynistic views that are held by men and women in our society.

Every woman does not care for the betterment of women just as every man does not see women as disposable objects of sexual gratification. Stop saying that men need to change. It is the perspective that needs to change. This is why today, we are protecting an offender just because we socially consider him juvenile, but we find zero guilt in protecting the girl child who is being viciously trampled upon by misogynistic thinking.