Dreading Documentaries

Laks, I used to travel on the London underground at all hours, walk home alone at late hours etc. Yes, there was the risk of being mugged, but sexual harassment was not such a big issue. Racist attacks were not unheard of. There was a subway from the hospital to the nearby station. I had been warned by colleagues about using that underpass and the possibility of men flashing there. Not that I saw any. The only time I was 'eve teased' was when I was visiting Amsterdam and was with my colleagues and a bunch of Indian men going past in a car passed comments in Hindi!

I will not deny that objectification of women certainly felt to be more in the West than here in India - meaning scantily clad women in magazines, ads ..... the kind of dirty words used for women. What was totally off putting was women using those very words against other women - that too in what was considered reasonably "decent" society. In comparison, I don't think that is as bad here. We dont hear those awful words used in daily life from morning to night, nor do we hear equivalent bad swear words - Hindi or any regional language that is (female specific) used in decent society.

The kind of fear that I experienced was different. If I saw a bunch of teenage kids walking down a road, I would definitely cross the road.

 

The article says " The volunteers were translating some of what was being said,” a woman said."
Atleast this is a start. Even though the documentary is still banned, its interesting that some people took the extra effort and risk (of getting arrested by the police) in screening the film especially in the slum area where the convicts grew up. This is a positive sign. I am sure many more will follow them. I plan to show the video myself to a group of women and children in my apartment tomorrow.

 

In short my answer is yes.

I am speaking from this angle:
The risk involved and the probability of a woman getting harassed/abused by a man of her own nation is high (say Indian men on Indian women, and so on).
The risk may be 'comparatively' lower (with the exception of racism related crimes) when its cross country based.

 

I would probably be a bit reluctant to let kids see this documentary. I would probably prefer the parents or school teaching them about the birds and the bees in a sensible manner and sensitizing them to gender issues before they see this all of a sudden. Of course, it also depends on the age of the kids in question.

I still can't forget what a negative impact the so called "sex education" they imparted in school (Std. X) had. The Geeta Chopra rape and murder cases which took place in Delhi was all over the papers. The lady in question came and the opening question was "Girls, do you know what happened to Geeta Chopra?" Followed of course about how careful one should be of boys!!!!!

 

Yes, it was annoying (to say the least) that the ***** got a chance to speak and come in civvies on television. No one intervened once to ask him if he thought he and his cronies had done a glorious thing or whether he never ever regretted their deeds; no one pointed out to him that what he did was wrong. No one pointed out to him how he had hurt his family by his deeds. BUT, the very fact that he put his lack of regret on display could make a case against him in the SC when his appeal comes up for hearing.

The other good thing that came out is that the lawyers of the accused displayed their mentality and hopefully will be debarred. We could do with less of such people in such positions. OK, that is not going to serve a great purpose in the larger perspective, but two of these less is a good start enough!

 

Daer Cheeniya- I would request IL admin not to simply close thread. I just want to understand if there is any benefit in closing a thread from an admistrative point of view?

Yes the discussion took a slight detour but like in a family there will be differences of opinion or even strong disagreements. Most of us even make peace without any ill will and move on. Sometimes things are said in heat of moment. Those are normal part of human interaction.

Given that enviornment, I think the admin team should reconsider the rush to closing threads. A thread can lie dormant for a day or two, it can revive itself. Unless things have get out of control or there are personal attacks, let us self moderate........at least to an extent. I dont believe, this thread has got anywhere to that point. I am only saying this because it is not just the admin but some members too who scream about closing a thread when they dont like the direction ofthe discussion. Never understood it because if one dont want to participate, just refrain from posting.

 

Did not understand it but ...

 

@satchitananda: What I completely agree with what this Belgian professor said:
"If we want to bring our two peoples and cultures closer together in this new age, reason and empathy are our only hope.
"

Backlash or not, Harvinder Singh definitely did a good job. Its quite possible that similar videos from other countries might emerge soon. This could turn out to be even a 'trend' (not the right word to use in this situation) and LU may indirectly be in the spotlight for quite sometime for starting this 'trend'.

HS did a good job in covering the victim's story and statistics completely in about 28 minutes. :clap LU's documentary took a huge blow since she completely missed out the 'Free speech' part (and her documentary ran for about 58 minutes).

From these two documentaries its quite obvious that women everywhere are demanding what is supposed to be their birth right (to be free, safe, dress as they wish to, be assault free, not to be objectified, gender equality and many more we discussed here). Issues with law and order plus issues about sex education in schools/colleges are same too (of course, the level of corruption differs from country to country). Emotions and feelings of victims are the same. Everywhere women are scared of one thing - 'getting judged'. Even emotions of criminals (no remorse, laughing/smiling at raping/killing a girl) are same. (Sad part! :-()

Its also a relief to see some men believe and voice out women's rights and support us. I have seen myself and I am sure all of us are getting such responses from Indian men all over social media.

At the end of the video, one of the panellist's says: "In Britain, we are scared of female sexuality,we really are". He also says: "We need a culture shift". (Now if this is scenario in a developed country like UK, we need to work more seriously towards ours-which is a totally different debate)

But what he said "We are scared of female sexuality" looks like the universal under-lying cause for rape/sexual harassment/assaults around the world.

Here is the YT link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twUmDDMX9tU

 

The incident as such and recently after the release of the documentary, an excerpt from the documentary is all over the news (the part were MS said the girl should have been quite and let us do it). Everyone knows that such an incident happened and such a documentary is out. It may not be an all-of-a-sudden thing here.
Yes, of course the age of kids matter. If I can educate/create awareness in at least one woman, she will be educating her son/daughter down the lane - if not now. These are not completely ignorant illiterate women. There is a huge chunk of women living under the assumption that such an incident will happen only to those in rural areas.
I will absolutely not trust/hope for awareness from the current Indian education system(schools/colleges) though. Its just going to be another day of mugging up the text books and vomiting.