What would you do if a person molested you in public? A fiery activist in Kerala decided she had had enough, and turned around to confront a man who groped her in the street. And when the shameless molester made a disgusting excuse for why he pawed her, Diya slapped him to put him in his place.
Diya is a gender rights activist in Kerala, and recently, she was out running errands when she was groped from behind and abused by a stranger.
Shocked, Diya turned around to push away her molester, and several people gathered around at this point. The molester was scared and “justified” his action: He claimed he molested her because he thought Diya was a transgender woman.
If he thought the disgusting excuse would get him off the hook, the man was badly mistaken. While Diya is a cis woman (assigned female at birth), she has been working with the transgender community as an activist for several years.
So what did she do next? Read her Facebook post:
I let it go so far, but not anymore. If you grope me again, I promise I will break your head. Do you even know how unsafe transgender people are? Today, when I was getting inside the car after running errands, a person groped me from behind, while verbally abusing me. I turned around to push him away and people gathered. And then the man apologised to me, saying that he mistook me for a transgender person and that’s why he groped me. I gave him one tight slap, asking whether he will grope a person if they belong to the transgender community.
While many people commented on her post saying Diya should have filed a police complaint against her molester, Diya said that she had let him off because his sister and her children rushed to the scene and pleaded with her to let him go.
The comments section also saw a discussion on how sexual abuse of transgender persons was being normalised.
While Kerala is the first state in the country to have brought in the Transgender Policy way back in 2015, and is also working towards providing jobs and housing to transgender people, this hasn’t changed the fact that the community faces violence constantly.
(This story was first published on The News Minute and has been republished with permission.)
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