"If you go out on the streets at night, you know you will get molested... so be smart and stay in!"
"If you go out at night without a husband or father, you know what'll happen."
"Well if you wear short dresses, what do you expect?"
"If you slip and fall on a wet road, do you blame the road?"
“If there is spilt sugar, ants will automatically come to it.”
So said a number of commentators and public figures, including esteemed SP leader from Maharashtra, Abu Azmi, after the Bengaluru mass molestation on New Year’s. But it’s the same thing we hear every time a woman is sexually assaulted, from a variety of social miscreants across the spectrum.
Calling all MRAs, because this is what actual sexism against men looks like.
Now, if you thought all of that sounded reasonable, then congratulations! You think that men are inherently rapey and violent, and there's nothing society can do to change that.
The way ants are uncontrollably drawn to sugar, with their tiny ant-brains incapable of either reason or logic – in the same way, men are uncontrollably and aggressively drawn to your sweet, sweet bodies, ladies!
My dear men, are you not offended? Are you not insulted that our society has reduced you to testosterone-fuelled apes that are whipped into a violent, rapetastic frenzy at the mere sight of a woman?
One would think so, but men seem strangely okay with all this:
“Girls, been groped on the metro? Well, what did you expect when you chose to be in a crowded place with those piggish men? Molested on a bus? Well, don't take the bus, you know there are men there! Raped in your own home, by your husband? Well, why did you marry him, you know he can't help himself!”
“And absolutely don't go outside at night, otherwise #NotAllMen will be tempted by your bodacious bod and have their tiny man-brains flooded with sex-feelings and nothing, nothing can stop them from humping you. Who told you to like, be female in the company of these man-monsters at night anyway? Don't you know these creatures become more vicious in the dark?”
Every time we expect women to restrict their lives in fear of men, what are we really saying? That men are uncivilised brutes by nature, and we can't expect anything else. We must simply manage them, the way we manage other natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes. Men are not human beings, endowed with reason, compassion, or decency; they are animals.
Men of India, do you really think so little of yourselves? Where is your outrage?
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