My Confessions as an Enabler.

TW: RAPE.

I feel safe in this country, but for all the wrong reasons.

Mind you, I say this holding absolutely no pride. Born as a male with fully functional male genitalia, being conventionally masculine, and not being perceived as an aesthetic oddity in society, I hold certain privileges. Unfair privileges, but they’re still what seem to be birth-rights that society has enshrouded me with. I feel safe walking down the street at whatever time (unless it’s in Tangra) and I feel safe wearing whatever I want. I feel safe being myself, living a regular life, solely because I fit the ‘norms’.

What have I done with this privilege?

Up until now, I’ve squandered it. I’ve been splurging in my inherently protective privilege for as long as I can remember, and I’ve done nothing constructive about it.

I confess: I’ve witnessed misogyny with my bare eyes, and I never took active action against it. I’ve indulged in my own share of derogatory ‘dark’ jokes and memes for the purpose of accumulating a few chuckles, ignorant of the effects it could have on another individual.

I thought it was okay. Over the course of the 18 years of my existence, I had been conditioned to believe this is okay by those around me. However, now that this #BoisLockerRoom stuff has erupted all across social media, I’m starting to retrospect and reconsider my definition of what’s ‘okay’.

"But…but…I definitely never was an active part of objectification."

"I never made a group chat or ever even shared pictures of women around me. I’ve never publicly commented on their body parts and I’ve certainly never even thought about ‘rape’ or anything that’s remotely as grotesque."

"That makes me a good guy, right?"

"I’ve played my role in having those comforting conversations with all those who have faced any deal of sexual adversities. I have given constant comfort and support, encouraging them to take action and speak out."

"That means I’m doing all that I can. Women aren’t unsafe because of my direct actions, so I’m a good guy. I’m a good guy…right? I’m a good guy…"

Newsflash for me and everyone else who used to think this way: that doesn’t mean shit! It’s merely a temporary fix!

I’ve never made a conscious effort to physically or mentally make women or men around me feel unsafe, yes. However, I’ve certainly never actively tackled the issue myself and helped make them feel safe either. I’ve borne witness to conversations, memes, and even comments that would make you all sick to the stomach. The absolute extremes I’ve ever taken this to is ranting during my private, individual conversations or sharing on my Instagram story about how ‘furious’ I am that anyone would think that way. But what good has that done? What difference have I made? At the time, I felt better – feeling like I’d done all that was possible and magically created a safer space for women all over. I vented out however I felt and resumed my normal life until another such instance. It was an inexorably vicious cycle – seemingly never-ending.

Normalisation of Rape Culture:

I’ve never been part of a group dedicated to it, but I’ve definitely been in the locker room before, and there’s a high chance you have too. It’s everywhere! The male/female gaze, objectifying the opposite gender and reducing them to mere representations of their sex appeal – it’s present everywhere because that’s what we’ve been indoctrinated with. School corridors, basketball matches, even fucking marketplaces – we think of such things wherever we see one of the opposite genders to bubble our hormones. The locker room is all around us.

Scratch that – the locker room is within us.

The locker room is in our heads.

The inherent problem here lies in the fact that we’ve all been conditioned to believe that all of this is okay. In 6th Grade, the girls in our class were called to a classroom during lunch and taught the meaning of puberty. The girls were told that their bodies were inevitably going to undergo physical changes – that they would have to bleed for a few days every month, and, most importantly, that they had to change the way they dressed. Teachers enforced the idea of fear for an entire gender upon the mere thirteen-year-old girls, and the girls believed it.

This is what they were taught.

The boys of our school, till date, have never had a ‘talk’, when we’re the ones who need it the most. We’ve never been told how horrible our gender’s history is and how we could potentially bring it to an end. We’ve never been taught the concept of rape or even the concept of sexual, mental or emotional harassment of any kind. We haven’t been taught whether or not this is acceptable; we learn from our equally uneducated, newly pubescent peers who have just discovered the concept of erections.

Why have we not been told how to act? Perhaps because it’s become a fact. Perhaps because all men are destined to either be a predator or not – something that we’re due to find out in our own time. Perhaps because women are just meant to remain scared, and men are just meant to live on, carefree.

THIS is rape culture.

This normalisation of rape – this lack of sexual, ethical and mental education is what PRODUCES rapists in the first place.

What can we even do to abolish this when it’s so deeply entrenched in our society? Even the music we listen to on a daily basis promotes this culture! On the daily, we listen to rappers like Kanye and Lil Wayne glorify the obtainment of a “booty” and the act of “fucking a bitch”. Fuck the international perception of this; let’s talk about our own country. Bollywood thrives on blockbusters like ‘Grand Masti’ and T-Series thrives on item songs like ‘Munni Badnaam Hui’ – both movies and songs which we accept as mere elements of the media – claiming they’re ‘okay’. Bollywood thrives on these sexual tropes and, in the process, normalises the objectification of women. I don’t know about y’all, but this was probably how I was introduced to the concept of sex in the first place. I had thoughts like, “They do it; does that mean it’s cool?”, “They can obtain any woman they want; does that mean that I should be able to as well?”

This persistent objectification just goes to show how truly backward we all are – how badly we all have failed as a society. We join hands with activists and preach against those who try hurting said communities when any rape or even ‘locker room’ case reaches the mainstream news, but we simultaneously jam along to these beats and joke about the same in our private conversations.

See the irony here?

I cannot count the number of times I have played along with the blatant lewdness and misogyny all around me. All along, I’ve felt “I’ve never partaken in such conversation, so it’s fine. That still makes me a good guy”. What I failed to accept back then was that being a mere bystander is perhaps just as bad as being a perpetrator. It means I’m an enabler.

What good will it do to share long rants on your stories?

What good will it do to help women by talking to them and making them feel temporarily comfortable?

What good will the exposition of the #BoisLockerRoom felons do?

I have asked multiple people what they feel the effect of all this situation would be; I’ve got responses such as “This will change everybody’s mind-set” and “Now everyone knows what not to do”

Tell me something:

Was Nirbhaya not enough?

Was Aarushi Talwar not enough?

Was the Unnao case not enough?

Was the Suryanelli case not enough?

Are the 50,000+ rape cases in India per year not goddamn enough?

The truth is: we refuse to accept the fact that we are all guilty too.

By not speaking out – by staying silent while men and women alike all over the globe are being marauded on the streets. By sitting in silence, we’re being a little part of a bigger problem by enabling such predators and making them feel valued; rather, making them feel like their behaviour can be categorised as ‘normalcy’. It’s possible that some keep it in their pants, but normalisation of any kind enables those who can’t.

It endangers an entire gender.

Scratch that – it endangers the entire population.

Transgressions like these reveal the scope of how truly and deeply entrenched misogyny is in our culture. Even if you don’t directly partake in such behaviour, your silence shapes the culture you live in.

Normalising rape culture is just as fucking bad as promoting it.

But they didn’t even do anything wrong. They just shared their opinions. Why is this considered such a big deal?

There is such a grave logical fallacy in this argument that I feel my brain cells dwindling by even explaining it. This wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but it sure as hell could have erupted into something abhorrent. This isn’t rape, but this is where rape begins. Sexual harassment of any kind, even if it is indirect, is WRONG. Non-consensually sharing pictures of women, regardless of the degree of clothing intact, is WRONG. This instils the harrowing idea that it’s okay to see a woman in such a way – reducing her to solely her body parts.

This is how we can effectively tackle the problem – by stopping it at its very roots.

#NotAllMen?

If you’re really trying to protect the diminutive fragment of all men that act on their morals and call out such misogyny – the minority of men who actively endorse women safety by trying to effectively terminate this shit – you’re not doing much; you’re just enabling the rest. You’re supporting the real predators by making them feel like they also fall under the #NotAllMen category. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this doesn’t seem to exist anymore. All men play their role if they don’t actively support the victims. That accentuates this inherent problem to begin with.

This leads me to the #MenToo argument, which, in all honesty, is just as irrational as the seemingly innocuous #BoysWillBeBoys trump card. Of course, sexual assault in any form, regardless of gender, should be punishable by whatever consequences. Alright, screw sexual assault; let’s talk about the inherent mockery of ‘small dicks’ – the constant body-shaming of men. All of this is definitely up for further conversation and definitely should be addressed. Body-shaming of ANY kind, regardless of gender, is UNACCEPTABLE. Making ANYONE feel uncomfortable about their physical appearance is just wrong and preaching against it won’t do anything unless you STOP CONSTANTLY DOING IT. However, under any circumstance, it still makes absolutely no sense to undermine and trivialise a woman’s plea for help by saying “even men face these issues”. This is traditional ignorance: unashamedly turning a blind eye to another human’s trauma and humiliation – and for what? Preaching as such officially means you possess absolutely no morals and are incapable of having a modicum of empathy for another human being. This ceaseless protection of male privilege needs to be abolished. All it does is avoids another uncomfortable conversation, protecting your ever so precious masculinity and opens the door for potential impunity.

More about #BoysWillBeBoys – of course it propagates gender stereotypes which are apparently “okay” now because, well, they’re boys. But what kind of a stereotype is this? One where boys are expected to be aggressive and abusive? One where boys are expected to be devoid of morals and respect for anyone of the opposite gender? Is this really coded in our DNA, or is this just fortification to hide behind when we’re actually held accountable for our actions? So tell me, boys, is this the name we want for ourselves, or do we want to actually bring about a change? Why don’t we change the entire connotation of #BoysWillBeBoys to actually make it something to say with pride?

What exactly must a man do?

It is our responsibility to help both women and other men in our immediate environment feel safe. We must take collaborative action to actually take action. This is inherently problematic behaviour and should not be condoned under any circumstance.

Let’s talk about toxic friend groups.

You may not be a part of one, but you surely know of one.

“They're bitchy as a group, but damn nice individually"

“They’re great people once you get to know them”

“They just talk about girls like that; they’d never actually do anything to them”

Readers, all of these are signs of a highly toxic and potentially dangerous friend circle.

This is with respect to the ‘innocent’ and ‘inactive’ members of the locker room. The primary argument against the women who exposed the group chat is about the fact that they revealed the names of all the members of that group, saying that not everybody actively participated in the abhorrent discussion, so not everybody deserves to be punished.

Why shouldn’t they?

Yes, we all get added to random group chats. Yes, we all have a few groups which we just ignore and perhaps forget about. However, this isn’t some random group chat. This was a very intentionally oriented group chat with members who ALL KNEW EACH OTHER. They all composed of a single friend group and they all were from schools in the same demographic.

The dilemma here is: some were mere witnesses and played no active role in the shit-housery that went down on the chat. So where do we draw the line between being a mere bystander and being complicit to a felony?

In my opinion, all of them are, if not equally, majorly responsible for the existence of this group chat. Any one of them could have said: “Hey guys, I think what’s happening here is wrong and y’all should stop”. The only reason they’re preaching about how innocent they are is that they got caught.

I’ve borne witness to similar conversations, and done nothing. I’ve eavesdropped on thirst groups: swimming meets where men comment on women in bathing suits; sleepovers where guys discuss who has the best assets in class and even rank them accordingly; I’ve even experienced people proudly asking me if I wanted to be a part of such WhatsApp groups. The worst is, I’ve been labelled as ‘chomu’ and ‘chutiya’ for declining their very coveted offer.

I can preach all I want about how proud I am to have declined their offer, but now I realise that I was just too naïve and perhaps spineless to do anything about it. I didn’t speak up against it; I didn’t ask them to delete the group; I didn’t inform anyone of the content shared on said group. Doesn’t that hold me accountable as well? Yes, it does. It doesn’t make me as bad as them for sure, but that doesn’t undermine the fact that I also played my role in promoting, or enabling such behaviour.

You wanna know how to draw the line? You don’t. There is no fucking line. Bearing witness to a crime and taking no action makes you, if not just as bad, pretty close to it.

Don’t let this be you.

Do not condone such behaviour, even if it is much less extreme.

The least you could do is: if you’re friends with a potential predator or anyone who carelessly degrades another human being at any given instant, explain to them how wrong it is to do so. Tackle them with reason, not aggression. The most effective way to go about this is to tackle the grassroots and abolish such mind-sets with are ever-so-prevalent in our society. Education is key, but sometimes even the best of education among the poshest of environments isn’t enough, as we’ve seen with this case. Sometimes, all it takes is a simple conversation between a child and an adult, or even a peer and another peer. It’s just one uncomfortable conversation – one intervention – that could go a long, long way.

Change starts from within – both yourself and your immediate environment.

This is my confession. I hope to see more soon.