Crimes of "Love": Possession, Retaliation, and Violence in the Face of Romantic Rejection

My mother once told me that not being therefore lovely was the largest blessing I had, growing up. The explanation was that in this fashion, I didn't receive unwanted attention. Her opinion was based on the worry of acid attacks against girls that were changing rampant, back in the day. Rejecting romantic advances meant sign language a warrant or one thing equally destabilizing, for women.

The cis-het romantic equation nowadays is characterized by men’s inability to just accept rejection and by extension, backbreaking girls for merely expressing ‘no ‘. From fatal acid attacks that leave scars physically and mentally, to revenge erotica and similar crimes, to murders in broad daylight, harming a girl UN agency rejects a man’s romantic advances has become the norm nowadays.

Despite being one of the foremost mentioned emotions worldwide, I feel that we tend as a society, haven't understood what love is. Or, we've got consciously determined to gender love still.

On the one hand, there's an associate degree of over-romanticized read of affection as tolerant of everything, bordering on subservience, and on the opposite hand, we tend to paint love as intermeshed with violence with the all is truthful loving and war narrative. With the increasing variety of crimes that square measure supported love turning bitter, there must be a definition of affection itself as associate degree exchange that's supported respect and consent.

The validation of such ‘crimes of passion is commonly supported by the understanding that it's quite traditional for men to be aggressive in their pursuit of girls, particularly considering that we tend to sleep in a paternal society that views aggression as a fascinating quality in men. Once violence and aggression get normalized as a part of our sexual activity rituals, they become simply cemented as acceptable behavior whereas addressing romantic rejection still.

This gendered plan of affection is power-assisted by the regressive understanding of a woman’s agency. Additionally, to undermine a woman’s agency, the character of those crimes features a heap to try to do with what attributes square measure seen as valuable during a lady – physical look and ‘virtue’. this can be specifically why acid attacks are a favorite of such perpetrators – it destroys no matter physical attributes that attract men and exclude the foremost valued social options of a woman’s temperament.

In doing, therefore, not solely is the man establishing the intense possessive mentality that underlies the concept of ‘If I cannot have her, no one else can, however, is additionally inserting the woman’s price only on however she appearance. Another concept to ruin the price of girls is shown through cyber-crimes – by emotional photos of personal nature. Here, the girl is paraded to the planet as ‘tainted’ or destitute of ‘virtue’ so no man would wish her. Perhaps, it's this sinister intent that ultimately shows what such men felt for these girls in the 1st place – obsession, not love.

The image of a girl as one thing to be possessed and to be destroyed if she doesn't become one’s possession shows the extremity of the management, degradation, and objectification that girls square measure subjected to. This tendency is exemplified by widespread media and therefore the ‘item dance culture’, that markets girls and their bodies like commodities.

Adding on thereto is the glorification of the unimaginative, crazy lover in movies, who threatens to chop his vein if the woman doesn't say she likes him (purpose case, Raanjhanaa) – this image isn't far from the ‘jilted lover ‘who uses brute force on a girl for rejecting his advances.

Many psychologists situate the reason for this in indulgent parenting designs that don't equip kids with the power to handle rejection with sound judgment. By specializing in the success and gratification of requirements disproportionately, rejection isn't usually mentioned in households as a natural incidence, particularly in terms of non-public relationships.

With a culture that views divorces as ‘failed marriages’ and not showing emotion higher places to be, rejection, or maybe the slash of romantic relationships square measure seen as adore personal failures. Combined with the hypermasculine narrative that pushes men to hunt revenge for such failures, rejecting romantic advances is fatal for girls.

The use of violence to determine management over girls and their right to alternative is made into our institutionalized nature of domestic relationships still. we tend to adhere to gender power structures and provide play to actions that tend to bolster gender power and possession in relationships. India’s stand on marital status rape is an associate degree example of this. once a girl is in a relationship with a person, her right to consent is scrutinized to a degree wherever it's demanded of her that she remains subservient to the man’s interests.

As is traditional with umpteen alternative things during a paternal society, the worry of defending themselves against these attacks falls on the ladies. paying attention inclined towards teaching girls to appear less appealing and not sharing their photos online, society posits women’s behavior because the cause for the violent reactions they face.

In newsroom discussions following such incidents, attention is paid to the woman’s relationship with the wrongdoer, and whether or not she had done something that ‘led him on. This hyperfocus on girls disregards the importance of teaching men to be respectful toward girls despite disagreements, which rejection, particularly in romantic equations, is natural. associate degree assent to a relationship doesn't translate to the possession of a girl. most significantly, we tend to should ingeminate the fact that ‘No‘, in itself, may be a full sentence.

With organizations like the Meer Foundation and Sheroes doing the vital groundwork to support the survivors of acid attacks, social assistance is being ensured to a restricted extent to girls who bear such violence. However, they cannot entirely live their lives while not significant scarring and trauma.

The lives that were taken leave behind incomplete dreams and broken families. it's time that we tend to shift the narrative to the perpetrators and investigate gender power structures at intervals in relationships. this type of unrestrained sense of possession solely accelerates crime against girls and alternative marginalized genders, and we should intervene socially, politically, and lawfully to deal with it.