We Indians love talking about issues related to women like empowerment, feminism, their safety, taking a stand against rape and things like that. But when it comes to the practicality aspect of all this, everything goes into the gutter.
We see youngsters coming out from colleges to protest against injustice done to women, be it Nirbhaya or any other incident for that matter. But after those protest marches and night vigils are over, reality steps in. They go back to their colleges and do the exact thing what they were protesting against. Maybe not in the same fashion but somewhere or the other, they do.
Demeaning a girl by calling her a slut goes on to show how much respect we really have for girls. It’s not that this is a story of one particular girl in one particular college, it happens in almost every other college of our country. If you come and say that you have never experienced anything as such in your college then I guess either you live in a utopian world or you are completely ignorant to what is happening around you.
It is not that only one or two individuals are responsible whenever a girl is being labelled as a slut in a college, somewhere down the line everyone is. If you think that you have never done anything like this and this article is not about you, then you are probably wrong. So what if you were not one who initiated it, spreading the word or even not stopping it makes you equally responsible. What I am trying to say is, be it you, me, or any other student, if such a thing exists around us then we are a part of it.
For a girl to become a slut in the college she doesn’t even have to do anything, it’s very simple. She needs to wear more fashionable clothes than others, she has to hang out with a bunch of guy friends, have a couple of unsuccessful relationships and last but most importantly, not give a damn about all this. And bam!! There is our slut.
We don’t even bother to care about what the girl must be feeling when she sees people looking down upon her in an insulting manner. The students are too busy gossiping about it and having a good laugh at it.
All this disrespect is in no way going to bring down the status of the girl. Obviously someone saying something bad about a person doesn’t actually make him/her bad. But it does give an insight to the mentality of the guys who show themselves as the saviour of female sex but instead are vultures that look at them as easy preys.
If you look at the contrary side of what I have been saying till now, it gets even more surprising. If a guy wears trendy clothes, hangs out with girls all the time, has three or four girl friends, then he is a stud. Other guys look up to him for advice and tips on how to become like him, pretty ironical indeed.
You know what the sad part really is?
All this is happening in institutions where educated people are supposed to study. If someone from a small village with an old school mentality says such kinds of things about girls then for one second I might even consider why he is saying all this. But when we, the educated class who boast about having an open mentality come up with this kind of crap, how can I expect others to understand all this.
I don’t know why is it so hard to understand that girls never ask for much, little respect is all that they crave for from the society.
Image Credits: The Times of India
