Straight From The Locker Room: A Banter Too Crummy

Okay, so let’s ride to a few years back. It’s 2012; thousands of us are walking in a march against a barbaric act played by some of the outlaws of the country. Raging with fire, overwhelmed by hatred, all focused on the accused rapists. Eight years later (also when the justice is served!) coming back to the bright present, we have some evolved outlaws. These ones are a tad bit different, just a tad—it’s a digitized world, so obviously we should update how we harass and saboteur other human’s life.

A safe haven one might call it, virtual reality. How is the safe haven playing out for us? So what if we managed to find the silver lining amidst lockdown—an almost zero crime rate, no rape cases whatsoever, no harassment, no cat-calling.

An Instagram private chat group created by a group of boys in their teens from Delhi would share explicit photos of their girl mates and random profiles, and express what they could do to that body if given a chance. ‘Virtual Rape’, shall we say it? Yet another one we seem to be adding to the big dump of ‘men will be men’ and ‘boys will be boys’ or shall I say ‘bois will be bois’. This dump is nothing but filled with egoistical second nature of typical big-headed men who shouldn’t be put under a tag that is otherwise considered cool.

Not just that—while we were condemning the whole of men’s existence, there comes a twist in the tale—a Girls’ locker room—everything but different than what the now-famous boys’ locker room did (what they could do to a guy and who deserves to be done with). What’s worse is the boys who don’t deserve them would face the wrath of this self-acclaimed goddesses. It’s too biased to put a tag on a specific gender for atrocious comments on someone’s body, physique and color, on someone’s existence.

No no, don’t curse these cults too much, it’s unfair! They are brave; they had their weapons and did not back down from arming themselves with it, a very destructible weapon. The boys wanted to have their way by sharing nudes with the public, and the girls had theirs by calling boys “gay”, because obviously, that is supposed to be an insult. All of it with a language so rotten you might throw up.

As much as you might think otherwise, these boys are aware of feminism; it’s just that it is too passé for them, and the girls are aware of the LGBTQIA but just not enough to respect them. Objectifying is the new ‘cool’ apparently. We were underestimating them—they have other powers too; they could assess someone’s body, its worth. They know how to appreciate the beauty and condemn the ugly. They are way too chivalrous to be compared to rapists; they carry their tasks in secrecy, perhaps they respect humanity too much to do it in public.

Oh no, they aren’t done, they will have their way and will rebel but in secrecy. “Who cares this chat is out now? We can create another one.” What is too crummy to even think about is the fact that the ones who exposed others were not entirely in the clear, for they were rooted in the same vile sea of morally-twisted thought processes.

What pods did we sow, which resulted in a mentality this flawed? Well, the cause of the leak is debatable—too many characteristics at play. We preceded to normalize gang-rapes, child abuse, acid attacks, etc., and while we ‘hate’ men for doing it, it is important not to touch the grey area of men or women. Because no one seems to be benefiting out of it, the whole idea is, how we are as people, as humans? Do we respect each other? How humane are we?

Don’t curse some specific gender that it becomes their second nature to do the contemptible, that you block them from doing better, and don’t victimize some specific gender so much that they can get away with whatever they do.

We are in the 21^st century, aren’t we? Still, I think, and I quote the very famous and well-summarized dialogue, “Lajja, Bhartiya pehnava, namrata, pyaar, etc. etc. hi toh aurat ka gehna hota hai“, and women are supposed to play by these rules because otherwise, we have a lot of mansplainers in the house to put them in their place. And obviously, men can’t be assaulted because, well, here is another one, “mard ko dard nahi hota.”

How is this for a platinum lining? We fix our modern society with a jawline so sharp, and it can cut through beauty standards; a profile so pretty, others’ seem trash; a hypocritical brain and a tummy so muscular, it can gulp down everything a man does due to certain preconceived notions, and at the same time, ignoring what a woman does because it is too vile for a lady to do! But perhaps the abs are not strong enough to support the weight of accepting each other as humans, and not objects or pieces meant to fulfill only certain desires.