CRIME AGAINST MEN:THEY TOO FEEL PAIN

[box type=”shadow” ]“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” ~Desmond Tutu[/box]

Sipping my usual cup of coffee that rainy day when all was at peace and my reverie was smothered by the fanciful tidbits of laughter and fear did I glance through the headlines of the everyday journal which is stacked in piles of hundreds on the shelves of my room and are of no use at present. I still remember, it was page number 6 that caught my attention, though I don’t remember the date but that doesn’t matter, for what got me all hooked up was the headline in bold red talking about the ‘martyrs of marriage’. Ironically, if we do think about it, how immune are we to the everyday news pieces which talk about rapes and domestic violence as if it has become a malignant part of the system that we live in.

Although what I wish to put forth usually is politically incorrect in an atmosphere where we talk about crime against men all the time, yet justice is the right of every individual regardless of their gender. Surprisingly, the laws which are coming into action for protecting women, rather acting as “tools of protection” are actually violating the security and identity of men. Nevertheless, what surfaces is that “she” is right and “he” is always wrong. The irony is such that even when I tried finding incidents on men being molested, all I could find was “how brutally was she molested by him”. Yes, men are becoming the lost gender.

Yes, we talk about the Damini rape case and how people joined hands in order to fight for the injustice caused, but going back to the episode on child sexual abuse as put forth by “Satyamev Jayate” on Star Plus, let’s throw some light on Harish Iyer, originally from Mumbai who was brutally raped but his own relatives back in his childhood. Why wasn’t his rape case hyped and talked about?
Thousands of families are arrested on false charges on grounds of domestic violence and dowry, and are proved innocent upon their parole and a series of investigation afterwards. Media on the other hand causes so much damage and moral policing that even after being proven innocent, the falsely accused just cannot live their life the same way because the media burns down their reputation in the holocaust of the society that we tend to live in. Deepika Bharadwaj (anchor, filmmaker, journalist) addressed a suicide case of Syed Ahmed Makhdoom in one of her seminars on crime against men and as reported by her, Syed Ahmed Makhdoom committed suicide, tired of fighting a false dowry case and separation from his beloved son in April 2009. This is one, with thousand others waiting to be heard in piles of shacks which are rusting in broken shelves for generations now.

We all have seen Deepika Padukone’s video on women’s empowerment, no offence but I personally feel that had it been presented by men, it would have easily been branded as “male chauvinism” and so doesn’t bear the least significance. More than a means of protection, article number 498A has proved out to be an assassin’s weapon to harm innocent lives. A man shouting at a woman is domestic violence, but if the tables turn why does it become an act of self-defense? At the workplace, if a man asks out a woman for a drink, he’s accused of sexual harassment. The plight of the society is such that for men, what prevails is ‘guilty until proven innocent’.
It is an everyday scenario that we commute by buses and the Delhi Metro, now let’s draw a pattern, seats reserved for handicapped, senior citizens and women, all on one platter and we talk about uplifting social standards of women? Seriously? Is it about respect? No. Had it been about respect, it should be granted to both sexes but one.

Talking about the glamour and glitter of the hollywoood, the billion dollar blockbuster, ‘Fifty shades of Grey’ also manifests how the male protagonist becomes a sexual sadist only after he too was sexually abused by his mother’s best friend.At a concluding note, yes I do agree that patriarchy is a dominant aspect of our societal structure, yet it’s time to work upon the equality instead of settling down to male-bashing mindsets that have kept us crippled for generations. They too are humans and they too feel the pain.

[author image=”http://www.aapkatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Naina-Grover.jpg” ]Naina Grover is doing her major in English literature. She has been an avid writer, surreal fiction being her forte. She has also qualified a certificate course in creative writing from the British Council and has an inclination towards psychoanalytical studies. She is both, a seeker and an explorer with a tinge of inquisitiveness to experiment with both, life and writing at large. As a part of her personal interest, she also writes lyrics for her self-created symphonies and wishes to excel further in her endeavor to take up writing as her career prospect. [/author]

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