Swara Bhasker claims that feminists also fight for men.
The
internet has not been kind to women in the last few weeks. A defamation case
brought by actor Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard was heard in a US
court. It was oddly live-streamed and ingested by the public as reality
television, prompting a flood of online support for Depp from his supporters,
while memes, videos, and hashtags criticising and vilifying Heard as a crazy
liar and a gold digger quickly followed.
Death
threats were also common on social media, as was enthusiastic celebration and
parody of Heard's treatment in what felt like a mediaeval witch-hunt.
Regrettably, the jurors had internet access during the trial. They found that
both Depp and Heard had been defamed, but that Depp should receive
significantly more compensation than Heard in a peculiar decision.
Back
in India, the Delhi High Court handed down a divided decision in the marital
rape case, and Justice Hari Shankar issued an order that seemed to imply that
husbands might, sort of, have the right to force sex on their wives! Feminists
discussed and criticised this, while others explained it away.
However,
the treatment of Indian women in public discourse reached a new low when a firm
launched advertising for their deodorant, Layer'r Shot, that included gangrape
jokes! "Should we take a shot?" and "Did you take a shot?"
are two adverts that depict a bunch of boys approaching a single girl in a
frightening manner and asking one another with swag, "Should we take a
shot?" and "Did you take a shot?" "Now it's my time."
The girl appears to be terrified, but the humour is that the lads are referring
to the deodorant in the shot. The ministry of information and broadcasting
ordered YouTube and Twitter to remove the commercial after widespread outrage,
but unanswered questions remain.
How
could anyone in the creative industry, indeed, any sane person, believe that
this was a script or idea that should be approved? Advertising isn't created by
a single person. Many different companies' teams are involved. A gangrape joke
was conceived and written, then greenlit, cast, produced, shot, and broadcast
for public consumption. And not one of the at least 50 adults who worked on
this ad thought it was improper, tone-deaf, and downright criminal?
I'm starting to feel like I'm banging the same drum in these pieces every two weeks, asking the same question about our society: what have we become? How did we end up here? Who are we, exactly?
I
feel like a scratched record playing the same old song over and over. It's just
helpless rage, really. Every incident I've given isn't just an example of how
women are abused, raped, or denied their humanity on a regular basis; it also
demonstrates how dehumanised we are as a society to be completely blind to
sexual assault, abuse, and gender violence. Rape culture is defined as one in
which normalised and dominant social attitudes and collective consensus
trivialises or worse, "un-sees" sexual abuse and gender violence.
It
is impossible to be unaffected by a society and a globe rooted in centuries of
patriarchy. Men, too, are victims of rampant rape cultures, as evidenced by the
reported savage custodial rape and torture of a Muslim man wrongly accused of
cow slaughter in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun.
Throughout
history, rape has been employed as a weapon of war, and 'bad' women have been
raped to teach them a lesson. Men, too, have fallen prey to this mentality.
Male prisoners have been raped and sexually assaulted in prisons all around the
world. Our unwillingness to ratify 'The Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the "Torture
Convention"),' as enacted by the United Nations General Assembly on December
10, 1984, reflects a frightening reality.
So
the next time a man says, "Oh, these feminists are always moaning!"
remember this. Please inform them that we are also filing a complaint on your
behalf!