Advertisment

Stop Whining About Rape, India

You know how all this ends. You know it ends when another woman gets raped. You know that none of this will stop you from getting raped.

author-image
Meghna Pant
New Update
Stop Whining About Rape, India

Features Editor, Meghna Pant

Advertisment

When I open my newspaper every morning, there are always a few reported cases of rape, and I think that soon another horrific headline-grabbing rape will take place in India and the nation’s reaction will be as utterly predictable as Groundhog Day.

 

Our nation’s so-called thinkers will write prettily worded pieces in newspapers and magazines run by their friends that are meant to evoke thought but end up saying what’s already been said before. A ‘thinking’ actress or anorexic VJ will post an online video about woman empowerment that will go viral and help boost their career. A right-wing politician will make a bizarre statement placing the blame squarely on ‘painted and dented’ women, grab headlines and evoke feminists to protests that will die down in three days. A guru will blame women who eat chicken, which will stir up a controversy driving up sales of his new Ayurveda products. The mother or sister or wife of the accused will first defend him and, in the face of mounting evidence, disown him.

 

You know how all this ends.

 

Advertisment

You know it ends when another woman gets raped.

 

You know that none of this will stop you from getting raped.

 

There is nothing more than can be said. There is nothing more than can be done. Not by our shiny new government led by a shiny new man that instead of invoking laws that discourage the idea of rape seek only to react than prevent. Not by our men whose intention is to protect us from the very monster their own gender has unleashed upon us. Not by the heaving breasts of our outraged society for whom the latest rape incident will sift to the bottom of many a horrific incidents memory.

 

Advertisment

Mattresses upon mattresses will be heaped upon that pea problem of rape but the princess will still feel the poke.

 

So, ladies you’re by yourself. You may get raped, you may (hopefully) not. If you think it can’t happen to you because Salman Khan is your boyfriend, or Rahul Gandhi, or because you don’t ride in buses, don’t live in Delhi, don’t take taxis, don’t drink, don’t go out at night, don’t dent and paint yourself, don’t wear short skirts, don’t go for movies with your boyfriend, don’t enter abandoned spaces for your job, you are deluding yourself.

 

By virtue of being born in India – and whether you like it or not – you are asking for it.

 

Will you or will you not get raped is not a question of these many precautions but a roll of the dice. Learn to protect yourself here: PROTECT YOURSELF FROM RAPE

meghna pant Rape in India protect yourself from rape
Advertisment