To all the ‘woke’ a$%es I know…

The rape shook me like all the others had in the past and the brutality horrified me. But I was amazed at every one who spent time writing #Rip using her name as a hashtag. It generated more likes and retweets but little else. Nothing changes with silent marches and candle light vigils. New days share more horrors and past brutalities seem like minor infractions compared to the new senseless depravity that we are being subject to.

There was no statement from our ‘voted’ authorities, no definitive action plan. All we did was share sordid details of some poor girls’ last moments and pretended that by writing #rip that we had made a difference.

The next day- we had a new cause to tweet.

It’s much like #metoo. Massively supported when it was a trend but quickly forgotten when it became inconvenient.

And that’s the thing. You don’t really care unless it affects you and that is scary. How can it not affect you? A director this week, said we should legalise rape… because it was the woman’s fault for not giving in and being a b@#$. And we printed this crap. And we’ve forgotten it as well.

We need to make the change and not just on social media- an actual change.

• We should encourage reasonable working hours and not encourage all nighters.
• Companies need to ensure safe passage to the homes of women employees who work late.
• Cab companies etc need to step up and get police verification of their drivers and have more women drivers deployed as well.
• More cc cameras so that incidents can be caught and prevented
• Chemical castration for rapists.

Men need to call other men out on their depravity. Rape is not a boys club. It shouldn’t be. Men know when other men are talking badly about women, and even what their intentions are sometimes. They just don’t want to rock the boat. That must stop.

In the same way #MeToo must be treated with shaming and isolating the perpetrator.

Rape , #MeToo are power crimes. They are wrong in every way and whereas one may have pushed the line further, it’s still the same line.

Power should not be achieved by brute force or manipulation. But unless we start calling out the perpetrators , we’re just words on the internet- written in a void that will soon be forgotten.

I once had a person bang my head against a dashboard because he was angry with me. There were 2 other people in the car. No one said anything.

I got out and left. Shattered and in pain- but I left. I was lucky nothing else happened but let me tell you , it was unlikely I’d have had much support beyond myself.

This is the world we live in.

So f#$k candle light vigils. Let’s get real.

P.s. (Palat says)-: Let’s stop tweeting and start speaking up for women, speaking to our men- telling them what we actually face and making them realise that they need to call out toxic masculine behaviour because ‘she’ is each and every one of us.