A young woman’s everyday experience of harassment

 

When I was a kid, I hated being escorted to places. My parents asked my younger brother, one who was both physically and emotionally incapable of handling the situation even if we run into trouble, to escort me to places because having a male companion would somehow make me safer. I always wanted to be old enough to do everything on my own. But now that I’ve matured, growing up as a girl in this society has been nothing short of unending paranoia. The things that I wanted to do when I was a kid, like taking a public vehi­cle, walking on the streets or even taking a lift on my own, takes a huge chunk of courage nowadays.

 

The constant eve-teasing and sex­ual harassment have further wors­ened the paranoia. Eve-teasing is the most common act of public vio­lence—an unimaginative euphemism for the glares, whistles, hoots, “acci­dental” brushing-past, intentional grabbing, groping and pinching. We’ve now reached a point when we no longer feel safe on the streets but are rather habituated to the vul­gar comments, indecent proposals, unwelcome gestures, and attempts at physical contact.

 

According to a small survey done by The Annapurna Express, 93 out of 100 women surveyed reported facing some form of sexual harass­ment, and 88 of them said the expe­rience affected them. A full 94 per­cent of the women surveyed had been verbally or physically abused, and felt threatened and unsafe every time they ventured out.

 

The society condones these tendencies. It’s beyond me how a country with a Hindu majority, one of the few religions that deify the female form, could turn a blind eye to women’s daily harassment. The country that celebrates the feminin­ity of women has designed its soci­ety in such a way that women wish they were born a different gender. 95 percent of surveyed women blamed the patriarchal societal norms for this state of affairs and yet it is the women who are blamed and brutalized.

 

The eve-teasing and the cat-calling that men think is funny, is not. Wom­en are being hysterical, humorless, and oversensitive, they say. This might be seen as something basic, but honestly it can also be terri­fying. I suspect when voice is not raised against this kind of harass­ment and abuse, it turns into some­thing more brutal like molestation or rape itself.