New submission from Mukund Palat Rao

It is always the woman’s fault isn’t it? The way she dressed, did you look at her? She was inviting trouble. With all this venturing out late at night and returning back home alone. Wasn’t something like this bound to happen? These are oft repeated phrases after any untoward incident on the street. Unfortunately this is how we have been brought up.
I might be from the opposite gender but it is tough not to notice the deep inequalities that lie between the genders in our society. Women are eve-teased and heckled at every day. Yet for some inexplicable reason almost everyone pins the fault upon the victim.
Our sisters and daughters are advised not to venture out late at night or wear clothes that show even a little bit of skin but, we never teach the men that passing snide remarks, or harassing and calling women names is both deeply offensive and morally incorrect.
We might now have our first woman President and have passed a Women’s Bill in the parliament but on the ground things have hardly changed. An idea of an event like the ‘Slut Walk’ is a chance for us to help bring women’s issues to the forefront. However such an event will not be successful until it includes an educative session for the general public on why such common perceptions are wrong. Otherwise it will end up as an event where the people taking part shout slogans no one understands and the men who have come there to ogle at the women also end up returning satisfied. Recent social science surveys in India have concluded that it is not just the men who share such perceptions but, in lots of cases women too agree with them. It has been found that many a time women actually support female infanticide because they feel that a male progeny helps propagate the family line and is a less of a burden on the family. An explanation of why a woman would support such practices in spite of having suffered personally because of them is something incomprehensible. It is indeed unfortunate that having been brought up in a male chauvinistic society some women too have come to share the same biased ideals with regards gender roles etc. that some of the men-folk in our society hold.
No article on street harassment could be complete without a mention of the millions of children who live on the street along footpaths and next to traffic signals begging for alms. The number of street children has been estimated at more than eleven million. Traditionally street harassment has always been associated with eve-teasing of women, I feel that the plight of the many children who have been forced (read harassed) into this profession is no better. At least in some cases a woman who has been eve-teased might still have a home to return to. (God forbid! Praying that it was restricted to eve-teasing alone and nothing worse) However such is not the case with these children. The child is used as an acceptable front for the tout who has ‘harassed’ them into begging because people are generally more comfortable at handing out money to children as compared to adults. Often on being unsuccessful in collecting money they are physically abused and beaten up. The children in desperation often resort to taking up drugs and gambling. Once the child grows up the girls are then conveniently sold off to pimps who use them as prostitutes and then men generally take to becoming alcoholics and drug addicts and sit beside roads and engage in eve-teasing. This is the vicious cycle that must be broken. However I must add that not all cases follow this trajectory and there have been many cases when people have managed to break out of this cycle. It would be incorrect on my part to generalise all cases to a history such as this but I do add that this story is true or partially true for many individuals who have been sucked into this life.
I must also mention that I do not squarely pin all the blame of eve-teasing to men who have grown up on the streets. Many educated men too feel that it is their birth right to treat women as lesser mortals. Until gender equality becomes an issue that can be discussed openly and those who partake in such shameful acts such as street harassment be made to see the light, it will be tough to find a solution for this shameful practice that is practised in our society.

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