Abuse Of Women: Will It Ever End?

It is disgusting to see reports of females of all ages being abused in different ways, every day in the newspapers! These are but the few which get reported. There are millions of other cases happening every minute around the world. Nature has created all species under both the sexes and all of us know the margin that divides the two sexes is but very thin. Just a small mistake in creation can lead to so many other problems. We also know male and female genders are complementary and cannot survive without each other. Despite that, God in heaven knows why the male gender always acts bossy over the female. Not that men never get abused. Of course, men do get abused or even murdered by women. But such instances are rare and few and most of the time murders committed by women are out of the desperation and frustration that they undergo under the hands of those men. Alcoholic husbands, womanisers, sex maniacs or other criminals who continuously abuse their women sometimes are at the receiving end and get killed. The shameful incident that happened in Mumbai on 31st Dec. last year once again drove me to write on this topic, though some men feel I am biased and a man hater. Of course I am not a man hater. I love my father, my brother, my husband, my son, my cousins and a lot of my male friends. At the same time, I pity the women who are not as blessed as I am and suffer everyday. I reproduce my article published in the Deccan Herald recently and welcome your comments.
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The other day I was traveling by BMTC bus. A lady passenger extended a hundred-rupee note to the conductor for her ticket and that was it. The conductor started abusing her left and right. She said she did not have the required small changes on her but he went on and on and started calling her names and addressing her in singular. He said she should not have got out of her house and got into his bus without proper change.
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True, he may also not have had enough coins of smaller denominations. But the way he expressed his problem was very indecent. The lady said he could have told her right at the stop and she would have got off the bus. Even at that juncture she offered to get off the bus. But the conductor would not stop. The bus was crowded and not a single person came to the rescue of the poor woman, except the author. When I tried to support her, the conductor started abusing me too.
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This is not a stray incident. Such incidents occur everyday in many buses. The moment the conductors find a pretext, they pounce upon lady passengers. On many occasions the conductors get irked if a woman demands balance due to her, as her stop is approaching. They expect the passenger to forget and get off. Then they start abusing the women and if the women react, as it is but natural, then they had it. The conductor starts saying things like, ‘these women wait to fight. They fight with their husbands at home and not contented with that, they come out and fight with the men on the streets.’ All the men in the bus enjoy such scenes, because that is the general opinion that people have about women. Come what may, they are supposed to bend down and bear the abuse and not revolt.
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One night I got into a crowded bus at Majestic and was very upset that when we were just about six to eight women passengers, men pushed us behind and barged into the bus till it was crowded up to the footboard. We neither had the physical strength to squeeze ourselves between tens of men nor the indecency to do so. I expressed my feelings to the driver and said why cannot people form queues and why such a disorderly behaviour, where women get overpowered by physically stronger men, that too at ten in the night.
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Immediately some men in the bus started abusing me verbally. They said women were fit to stay in the kitchen and they had no business to go out at that hour of the night. They said women had to be shown their place and snubbed or otherwise they will wag their dirty tails. All this from men who had occupied the entire bus and we few women did not even have enough space to stand. Right from Majestic to Yelahanka, these men loudly kept talking cheap of women and the other men in the bus kept enjoying the talk. Not a single man felt that the talk was cheap. Not a single woman dare support me for fear of being abused.
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When I blogged about this kind of verbal sexual harassment, a spate of hate mails were shot at me, calling me ‘man-hater’. This is the state of women in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:country-region><st1lace>India</st1lace></st1:country-region>. Thousands of women have to bear physical abuses in public silently, because if they raise their voice, there is hardly anyone to support them. Instead people start advising the women to ‘behave’ properly and show patience. Not only in buses, even in offices like Banks where only educated men work, sexual abuse (verbal) is very rampant.
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I was working for a nationalized Bank and I have been verbally abused and hurt many times, though I was a very efficient and sincere employee, just because I used to support right causes. For instance, once I demanded that a waste bin be placed inside ladies’ toilets, as otherwise, women were flushing down sanitary napkins, because of which the entire sewage lines were getting choked often. Just for this rightful demand, I was teased and mocked at by men. They made all sorts of indecent comments about me and my lifestyle. They made a laughing stock of me. One so-called ‘gentleman’ Manager had the audacity to comment as to why a 45+woman was bothered about sanitary napkins. When such things can happen in a decent work-place, one can imagine what will be the fate of a hapless woman on the streets!
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No wonder the shameful incident of seventy men physically abusing two women took place on 31<SUP>st</SUP> night in Mumbai! This shows how most of the men have such dirty thoughts. Except the photographer, not one man stood to save the helpless women! Wasn’t there even one man in such a crowd, who respected women? How sadistic can men be! When every woman needs a father, a brother, a husband, a son and a good friend and every man requires a mother, a sister, a wife, a daughter and a good friend, why such an attitude? When will the society get matured enough to treat a human being as a human being, be it a man or a woman or neither? It is sickening to read about fathers sexually abusing their own minor daughters, brothers or husbands turning villains or pimps, friends taking advantage of intimate friendships and innocent infants also being raped! Where is the society heading to?
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Sudha Narasimhachar