Rape Threats for Apoorva Mukhija Reveal India's Double Standards on Women's Safety

“We were worried about vaginas. We were worried what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don’t think about them”.Much like Eve Ensler’s anonymous women from The Vagina Monologues, the anonymous trolls sending rape and death threats to internet personality Apoorva Mukhija on social media today ironically seem to be living the same conundrum. They worry.They worry about vaginas, about women, mothers, ‘prostitutes’ and feminists, about sex and morality. And they particularly worry about jokes. Mukhija, 25, is the latest target of these concerned trolls. In a recent post marking her ‘return’ on Instagram, the influencer shared a macabre triptych of all the threats she has received since her beleaguered appearance on the now cancelled online comedy show India’s Got Latent (IGL).Mukhija was on the panel of ‘judges’ – including podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia, comedian Samay Raina, Ashish Chanchlani and others – recently under massive fire after Allahbadia happened to make a rhetorical incest joke featuring (you guessed it) women and vaginas, and Mukhija added on.Multiple FIRs were filed in Maharashtra against the ‘perps’, including against Mukhija who was called in for questioning by the police. Violent threats were issued against all on social media. Even the apex court weighed in, allowing Allahbadia to continue his podcast (which has incidentally featured the top brass of the ruling party since its inception).Having gulped down the Supreme Court’s rap on ‘decency and morality’ (in written) along with the interim protection it provided, Allahbadia dropped his first podcast since the controversy last week, featuring Buddhist monk and motivational speaker Palga Rinpoche. He used the episode to talk about ‘transcending’ his recent difficulties and sagely threw around words like ‘compassion’ and ‘wisdom’.Raina, who is lower down the pecking order, has been in the US for his "Unfiltered: North America Tour 2025" and his set to perform the stand-up show in Melbourne coming July. He has tendered apologies and deleted all episodes of IGL from his channel but keeps sharing his images from the tour. He recently posted a photo with Kapil Mishra. The Joke’s on Us: When Comedy Becomes CrimeThe comics must have breathed deep sighs of relief after the attention of online mobs shifted to Kunal Kamra, who has been giving back as good as he gets. But the concerned (read harrowing) virtual attacks by trolls on Mukhija have continued. While the larger audience seems to have forgiven the others, Mukhija continues to face rape and death threats. The phenomenon is neither new, nor surprising but is disturbing all the same.Reading through the slew of threats reminds one of the threats faced by other prominent women who worry men and trolls. Like Rana Ayyub who often shares the gender-based (and communal) abuse she regularly faces online on her Instagram. It is not a matter of one or two hate campaigns but a regular barrage of misinformation, threats of brutality, and abuse.More recently, a Chennai-based lawyer, Thilagavathi Thilo, took to social media to call out a patrolman for moral policing her at a beach when she was out with her male friend. In the video, posted on Instagram, the cop can be seen asking the woman, “Is he your husband?” When she informed him that she was a Madras High Court lawyer, he berated her for not telling him her profession first and then for “sitting in the dark”. Since the post, the lawyer has been facing unending online abuse.Before that, queer stand-up comedian Swati Sachdeva who often faces toxicity for her ‘lesbian’ jokes, was attacked by trolls for a joke about her mother and vibrators. It is to be noted that the National Commission for Women (NCW), proactive in summoning the comedians for jokes, has failed to address online abuse of women in this case, or cases in the past.What stands out most in these campaigns is the obsession of Indian men (assuming at the risk of generalisation that most of these wannabe rapists and murderers euphemised as ‘trolls’ are men or pretend to be) with the vagina. They want to defend it, protect it, worship it, and can go to any lengths to do so including assault it. They are threatening Mukhija with vaginal assault for her alleged figurative assault on (their?) mother’s vagina.Such confusion and dichotomies about the perception of women's 'character' show up across iterations of gender and conversations about women’s rights and autonomy in contemporary India.When the policeman asks the woman on the beach about her profession, he at once separates the respectable woman from the lewd. Her profession does not just make her a more qualified individual in his eyes but a woman who can exert more power than him, and thus has to be treated wisely. Had it been a college student, or an uneducated girl from a marginalised community, would he have exerted his power over her body differently? Data reveals that marginalisation greatly increases the chance of harassment of women (even more so for gender minorities) and no data is needed to explain why.Gender-based assault and violence often overlap or intersect with other socio-political marginalisations. Even in the broader sense, this is visible. Ayyub is a Muslim woman, Tilo is a Periyarist.Muslim Women Seen with Hindu Men Harassed, Doxed In Name of 'Bhagwa Love Trap'And Mukhija? Her trolling represents yet another facet of what makes women vulnerable to abuse—just having any independent voice or presence at all, especially in 'masculine' domains that include the entirety of the public sphere. The fact that Mukhjia, aka 'The Rebel Kid', feels free (and is privileged enough) to dress as she likes, speak as she likes and laugh at the jokes she likes, makes her ‘entitled’, a ‘pseudo-feminist’, and ‘deserving of rape’. The fact that she cusses like men yet dresses like the girlies causes dissonance in repressed minds, whose possessors want to simultaneously punish and sleep with her. They moralise against her for acting like a ‘slut’ but also know that a ‘girl like her’ would never choose them, thus in a way, justifying the violence.Think of the mass media trial of Rhea Chakraborty, who was finally absolved of any involvement in the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput recently. Many of the critics of her ‘drug use’, and in extension, her so-called loose lifestyle, would easily promote bhang on Holi or Shivratri as their right to religious freedom.This is because women’s bodies remain the site of assertion and conflict that transcends surface level debates on gender.Physical violence against women or exerting other forms of control over their bodies (by restricting what they wear, where they go, how they sit or what they laugh at or get aroused by) is a socio-political manifestation of power, not merely lust or desire.It may feel like a load of mental gymnastics but the understanding and perception of gender-based violence, gender roles, patriarchy and feminism in the digital and theoretical space have a real-time impact on women’s bodies and in extension their safety, autonomy, dignity and livelihood.Violence Doesn’t See Privilege: ‘Women Like Me’ Can Be Abused TooIn 2024, while writing about the rape and violence against Kuki women in Manipur during the recent ethnic clashes, I had interviewed Lourembam Nganbi, a senior leader of the Meitei women's rights group, the Meira Paibis, and one of the 12 mothers who had participated in the powerful ‘naked protests’ against the Indian Army for the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama. I had asked her about the contrast in their attitude toward the two incidents of violence against women – the rape-murder of Manorama 25 years ago, and the case of the naked parading and alleged rape of two tribal women on tape in 2023 (in which even members of Meira Paibi were accused of aiding the violence). She had said,“Even then, women’s bodies were not their own, even now they aren’t. And it is the political system of the country that does not allow us to take control of our bodies".It is perhaps true. In India (as in other countries), politicians continue to use gendered, misogynist insults against women leaders, get away with rape and murders of women and refuse to give tickets to women for elections while enforcing stereotypical gender roles. It isn’t thus surprising that a generation of 'trolls' thinks it is okay to chastise women who threaten their masculinity or their idea of vaginal sainthood.Misogyny is nurtured not just by the internet and the likes of Andrew Tate but the friendly neighbourhood dada or didi, victim blaming a rape survivor they read about in the news while doing chai pe charcha.It is shielded by courts refusing to accept brutal vaginal assault as rape (even if it kills the woman) if the perpetrator of the act is married to the victim. And politicians who blatantly use misogyny as a popular rhetoric and sometimes just for laughs.In 2021, Karnataka Congress lawmaker KR Ramesh Kumar apologised for making rape jokes in the state Assembly after he said something to the effect of, ‘if you can’t fight it, lay down and enjoy’. BJP leader Brij Bhushan Singh, accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, remains unscathed despite months-long protests by national sportspersons. The alleged Hindu rapists of a Muslim girl child in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua are garlanded, rape-convicted religious leaders like Ram Rahim Singh get multiple paroles while men convicted for gang-raping Bilkis Bano and killing her husband in front of her eyes during the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat are ceremonially forgiven.So what does an anonymous troll have to lose?(This is an opinion piece. Views expressed in this article are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

BECOME A MEMBER

Apoorva Mukhija's Trolls Playing Out Rape Fantasies Online Have Nothing to Lose

While Allahbadia, Samay Raina and others seem to have been forgiven, 'The Rebel Kid' continues to be abused online.

Read Latest News and Breaking News at The Quint, browse for more from opinion

Topics: Comedy Rape Gender