A 23-year-old woman in Kochi released a video to talk about an incident of sexual harassment she allegedly faced from a boy of 13 or 14 years old. The woman spoke of the incident that happened at 5 in the evening when she was riding a scooter and gave a ride to two schoolboys.
“Normally, you wouldn’t give a ride to strangers, especially if you are a woman in a country like India. But these were two kids and it was going to rain,” she says in the video.
The boys got on from near the Vytila Mobility Hub and told the woman that they were from a nearby school. After one of them was dropped off, the other boy was talking to her about school when suddenly he asked her if he could touch her inappropriately. Shocked out of her mind, she says she nearly lost control of the scooter and somehow managed to park it aside before questioning him about what he just said.
“He began to falter and I said I heard what you said but I could not believe it. I asked him to leave but for the rest of the journey I was too disturbed. My question is how do such words come out of a 13 or 14-year-old child? How do they form such ideas? Even if he forms these ideas how could he ask someone this?” she says in the video.
She goes on to say that the blame is to fall on schools, families and everyone around us who teach women how to behave to not “provoke” men but let boys grow up thinking they can do whatever they want. “There is no proper sex education in school. When such an incident occurs in school, normally the girls who are victims get the blame. The boys grow up with the idea that ‘boys will be boys’ and nothing will happen to them. Society reinforces such behaviour, promotes victim blaming and a rape culture. The films we watch also glorify sexism and say that it is macho to mistreat women.”
She also questions all those who claim that there is no such thing as male privilege and women are already “equal”.
“If a 13 or 14 year old child can make a 23 year old woman who has an exposure like me so traumatised, how can you say there is no male privilege and there is no point in feminism? Are you that blind? If you are a man you are privileged in a certain way. What is the end to this? How do you change this attitude? Because this has to change!” she says.
Only talking to each other, education, and starting conversations can help, the woman says in the video. “Talk to each other, to people around you, go to institutions, fight so that the next generation of kids at least would understand the importance of consent. We have to open this dialogue, talk to our families, parents. We have to try. If we don’t, kids who grow up after us will suffer, go through worse things than we have. Can you imagine a girl growing up being afraid of her own body, of everything, afraid to say or do anything? I beg you all to kindly communicate. If you see social injustice, gendered behaviour somewhere, correct it. Let kids grow up in a safe environment.”
After the video came out, there were many comments supportive of the woman, some expressing solidarity and others pointing out that children need proper education. One woman said that it was the 'dark reality' that an average Indian woman had to go through every day while another said that the government should take initiative to start sex education in schools and parents too should provide awareness to their children. One user commented that a teenager in Kerala, who will not have an atmosphere to talk about sex and healthy relationships, may have issues and needs support. There were also comments of victim blaming, one user going as far as saying that the woman had invited trouble for herself or else had made the whole thing up for publicity.