Where The Patriarchy Leaves Us

Recently, a morbid issue has surfaced on the social media, making its round on every kind of digital platform. A chat-room of several South-Delhi teenagers has been found on Instagram, where they are seen (in different screenshots) to be dissecting women’s bodies verbally. That is, there are pictures of girls in naked or semi-naked positions posted in the group and these boys are taking turn commenting coarsely on them.

There is also a screenshot of a Snapchat group chat circulating where the participants are witnessed to be suggesting gang-raping the girls nonchalantly when threatened to be exposed. Plus, to unravel and confuse the matter more, a girl who was originally known to post the first screenshot was also discovered to be engaging in similar discussion about men and women.

And to fuel the matter, another incident of a Google Drive stocked up with pictures of dozens of women in compromising positions has also come to light. Yeah.

Now I’d like to point out there are more than one aspect of this whole thing that are disturbing and nightmarish.

One is, of course, this crude and open objectification of women by men, and sometimes women too – which has become such an ingrained part of our society, that we have acclimatized it to our very bones, accepted and internalized it in our very cores, knowingly or unknowingly. I mean, how could we live in a world reigned by the toxic constraints of patriarchy and expect to escape its toxic by-products, right?

Umm, wrong, but I’d come to that later.

For now, I just want to focus on the fact that all of us – and I mean, all of us – are, in one way or other, bogged down by the vicious societal and mental set-up that is patriarchy, have inhaled its noxious norms as part of our breaths. Even these teenagers – they are high-school kids – are a little bit of patriarchal victims here. It’s just that some of us also know how to spit out whatever leaves a sour taste in our mouth and doesn’t sit well in our stomach, and some just don’t. Or can’t.

See, let me tell you a theory that I learnt in my linguistics classes and actually managed to retain in my brain, for once. It’s called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and it basically says that language shapes and influences our thoughts, rather than the other way around, and so people from different cultures think differently because of their differences in languages.

Of course, this theory is susceptible to many controversies and debates. And honestly, I do not really support this theory.

Then again, I don’t support what its reverse theory suggests either, that our thoughts influence our language.

Or no, what I actually mean is, I support both theories equally. I believe language and thoughts influence each other and you cannot separate them. These two are entangled in such an intricate way that it is pretty difficult to uncoil them and figure out which became the influencer first – language or thought. It’s like a rotating cycle that doesn’t have a wriggle room in it.

I mean, do I think of women as sluts and whores and boobs and butts because I've been hearing people call women by these words all my life? Or do I call women by these words because my brain is wired to think like that?

It’s kind of like that age-old, never-relenting debate and dilemma, you know – “Which came first – eggs or chickens?”

Of course, objectification is not a gender-specific issue. Men are objectified too, though I do think it’s not as often as women and it’s not in such extreme and coarse displays. But that’s beside the point. If even one man out of ten is objectified, that is as wrong and downright degrading as three women.

But again, all of this comes back to our internalization of toxic languages and behaviors, our inheriting them as the "normal" and not even pausing to question them anymore but swallowing them down as “That’s just how it is” and “Men will be men” and scooping them up giddily when they are displayed as item songs in movies and TV.

In a way, the entertainment media have a greater hand in shaping our thoughts and language than we give them credit for. How many trends have been started by an actor’s fashion style or his or her certain postures or certain phrases used in the movie? And yet, this industry doesn’t have any inclination toward reining in the unbound flow of such visual and verbal manifestation of objectification.

We have to cringe every time an item song -- that is an obligatory and permanent fixture of every Indian commercial movie, that always sports women in barely a bra and a skirt dancing to the pleasure of and seducing the hell out of the drooling men frolicking around her like puppies, whose lyrics are as demeaning and offensive as uncouth and uncivilized -- comes on the screen. We have to wince every time men in the theater whistle and clap their hands at the screen as soon as these songs start, as if they were just holding their breaths for their precious arrival.

It doesn’t surprise us anymore, but that lack of surprise does usher into question what kind of culture we are breeding for ourselves, what kind of morals and values we would bring up our future generation to have, if there would be any morals and values to consider by that point.

Second is the perpetrating of the rape culture in our society. The casual and noncommittal throw of the word “rape” in our daily conversation is too common. Most of the time, we don’t recognize its impact immediately. But then again, it happens often and when it does, it doesn’t appear as a novelty. We are used to it by now.

However, the way these boys seemed to jump straight to threats of sexual violence and rape and of exposing their naked pictures when were intimidated or just opposed is more disturbing than that.

I am not even going to go to why they thought exposure of the girls' naked frames would be a successful chip to have over the girls. That’s a whole other thing.

No, what it is of most concern is the sense of convoluted masculinity these boys have, which propels them on a misguided power high, their need to reclaim the power hierarchy, to be the controller rather than the controlled. Beneath the suggestions of posting those naked pictures and of gang-raping girls lies their urge to wield dominance over them.

A lot of that need might be the direct upshot of a patriarchal society which has always liked to shove women down and strip them of their independence and take them for granted and undermine their capabilities and scoff at their choices of making it on their own. This patriarchy has provided them with a twisted and distorted notion of masculinity which has rendered them devoid of the most basic humaneness, that’s ripped their functioning mental facilities away from them in the garb of all those chants of “Real men”, “Don’t act like a pussy”, “Men don’t cry” and whatnot. The patriarchy has made them think of women as mere disposable objects, made misogyny imbibed in them as if it’s part of their DNA.

We also have to acknowledge and accredit the environment the kids are being reared in, be it school or their home, the social circles they usually traverse in.

What I have found in my experience and accounts from my friends and acquaintances is that Indian parents are hardly communicative when it comes to certain topics. Certain big and important topics like S-E-X and R-E-S-P-E-C-T and B-O-U-N-D-A-R-Y and C-O-N-S-E-N-T. They love to skirt around these subjects as if they are not the very foundations of our existence, our society, and then love some more to condemn their kids’ actions when they make a mistake regarding these subjects.

Of course, these boys in the said screenshots are neither kids, nor did they make a “mistake”. Mistake implies a one-time thing which you happen to regret because you didn’t know any better. You make a mistake cheating on your Chemistry test. You do not make a mistake thinking and talking about gang-raping and sexually assaulting women and posting their nudes on social media.

Speaking of which comes my third point, which is women and how vulnerable their repute is, how it can just be besmirched by a picture exposing too much of her skin and body -- which, in this society, is equivalent to stripping them of their dignity. How much of a gender discrepancy it shows. The amount of judgment women face on a regular basis, on the littelest thing as choosing a skirt over pants is astonishing, so the fact that these boys devised this particular way to ruin their reputation is not unpredictable.

Now, I have seen people questioning how these nudes ended up in the hands of the perpetrators in the first place. Which is so not the question of the year. A girl may decide to give her picture in whatever position to whomever she wants. But that doesn’t make it a public property, or even the property of the recipient. That doesn’t mean he can send it to several more people now. Consent is something that needs to be shaken into everyone’s brain. It’s something that needs to be asked and never assumed.

But it takes me to my last point – which is more of a request to girls and women everywhere. Our insecurities make us do a lot of things, not the least of which is doing as you are asked by someone we have feelings for, just so not to lose them. But we all know we don’t have to do them. No matter how much you hate saying 'No', if a guy asks to have our nude picture as a souvenir of our relationship or whatever the crap he quotes as his reason, that right there is a big, huge red flag, waving at you and poking at you to get away from him as far as possible.

Dating is a bigger minefield than the nervous anticipation of thinking if he is going to call first or you should, and the anxious sneak glances you throw at your phone screen to check if he’s replied yet. The self-doubts mount swiftly. Just one text or one blue tick or one phone call is awaited, so you can feel okay, so you can feel you two are still okay. One text that is a clear validation of your worthiness, one call to reveal that you are liked, that you should be.

I mean, where does it come from? A lack of self-esteem? A burgeoning need not to be alone? A crackling fear that you will be, inevitably?

Well, ultimately, what we need to realize is that the world is not getting any better and any safer. And in the end, we are completely and blissfully on our own. So it’s up to us how to protect ourselves.