Reacting....

Have been reading about the Gauhati sexual assault incident (note the language – ‘sexual assault’, not ‘molestation’) in the paper lately and my heart goes out to the poor kid. I hope (against hope, I may add) that the police catch all the offenders soon and the courts speedily sentence them. I’m writing this post to express my irritation at one of the asinine, regressive, callous (ugh, I can’t find a strong enough word to express how I feel) comments that some men have made about it.

The incident is appalling, the alleged involvement of the News Live journalist is horrifying to think about, but a comment by Atanu Bhuyan, the Editor-in-Chief of News Live just takes the cake. Rather than apologizing, or expressing regret, the gentlemen chose to (attempt to) justify the incident in this unrepentant tweet, “Prostitutes form a major chunk of girls who visit bars and night clubs”.

Firstly, of course it’s not only prostitutes that go to bars and night-clubs, women from all sorts of professions do. But aside from that niggle with his data and hypothesis, I have another bone to pick.

Clearly he feels that if the girl were a prostitute, then a group of men molesting her would be fine.  Why should it be considered acceptable for a decent man to molest a prostitute when she's objecting ? A transaction that an adult woman consents to is one thing, but forcing your attention on her when she’s objecting is quite another. Raping a prostitute is as big a crime as raping anyone else. If a woman says “No”, it means “No” and it should be respected, irrespective of her profession or her status; i.e. whether she’s a prostitute, or a colleague at the organization you work at, or your friend, or your legally wedded wife, raping or molesting her is a heinous crime.  

This attitude of ‘she’s a prostitute so it’s okay’ is just another manifestation of the sickening ‘she wore revealing clothes, so she was asking for it’, or the ‘who tho badchalan aurat hai, aisi aurat ke saath yeh tho hona hi tha’ attitude. I think it’s about time we started giving prostitutes some dignity and respect, and that we banish this excuse of a woman's character / profession / attire being the reason for an attack.

By,
Zenobia