shagun pandey
We live in a world where ‘males’ are always supposed to be strong, bold and masculine enough to defeat a hundred goons. That’s what our movies portray, I guess. Patriarchy, male chauvinism, male ego is what we have worshipped till now. But, just like a coin everything that exists has two sides. Talking about the second and the ugliest side, the side which has made an accomplishment of being gender neutral- Sexual Harassment. The term which we is often linked to women is actually something that we need to address, but the other way round.
Statistics related to Male Sexual Harassment
In a study conducted by Prayas it was found that India has 40% of its population as children but is the 6th most unsafe country for children. Total 53.22% of children have been molested at least once from which 52.94% were boys and 47.94% were girls. From the 52.94% of them 88.6% were the ones who got assaulted by their own parents.
But how can a woman rape?
It’s so hard to believe that most people don’t even know what exactly harassment means. People think that a man cannot be raped, but it’s exactly the other way round. A woman who’s in power at an office, if asks for sexual favours from a subordinate man, it counts as a sexual abuse too. If a boy is forced to roam around in public without clothes then it is also an abuse. But most of the rape laws in India are biased as they clearly state the word penetration. In males sodomy can be counted as same. Many parliamentarians and some activists argue that only members of one sex can rape and only the other can be raped, for rape is only ever patriarchal. Child sexual abuse is gender-neutral, Maneka Gandhi said. “Males who are sexually abused as children spend a lifetime in silence because of the stigma and shame attached to male survivors speaking out. It is a serious problem and need to be addressed.”
Why no one talks about it?
The answer is quite obvious, if you think about it. Boys are always told that they are strong and are born to save the world. Boys often get stuck in a guilt trap of being wrong or at fault, the fear of society kills their urge to seek justice. The laws which are meant to empower women is sometimes misused by them only. In 2015, 1,33,623 suicides in India were reported, of which 91,528 (68 per cent) were by men, 42,088 were by women, according to data from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Of the 86,808 married people who committed suicide in 2015, 64,534 (74 per cent) were men, the NCRB data shows.
In the end I would like to draw your attention to absolute biasness between both the sexes which can be seen in the fact that there’s we have a National Commission For women but no such commission for men. The gender biasness is actually a gender neutral thing, it happens to both of them. It is high time, we need to show concern about the fact of vulnerability of men and stop spreading the delusion that men cannot be victimized.
