Women aren’t safe here, and that’s in so many ways

 

Read part one: The Girl who wrote to Uganda's parliament, part two: The Most Outspoken Sex Workers on the Continent, part three:  I’ve Been Fighting Since I Was Twenty, part five: The Single Act of Daring To Be and part six: People Should Have The Right To Love.

  

 

I bonded with Smita over a couple of things, of course, as two people working in the same field, but two of them really had us agreeing so passionately and laughing heartily. I’ll spread them out over this story, and I say story because ‘article’ will sound so formal, and so many of those have been written about people in the human rights defense space that this thing that we do seems so formal, capitalist and alien, when in reality, we fight to preserve our dignities and stories.

The first one, and I really hope you don’t cringe in avoidance as we have done over the years, is the very clear white-washing that Western media has done to black and brown countries. We went into detail, showing all the scenarios in which our countries have been painted as the worst places to live in, yet stand and watch in awe as these same Western countries continue to flock ours for the resources and culture. But I won’t go into detail here, because that’s going to further cement this image in your mind that you have been fed for years. No, I refuse to participate in that subtle but powerful form of violence.

However, what we’ll also not do is pretend that things are perfect where we live. Things can’t be perfect when these countries lived under colonial powers for so long. So we will talk about them. And you can listen, but not retell our story. You can ask how to help, but not assume that you are our lifeline, or assume that you know how to fix our issues. I’ll throw in the story about looking at someone’s speck with a whole log in your eye.

So, listen. This is Smita’s story.

India is a country that prides itself on its culture. But sometimes with culture, a lot of things get mixed up and it all ends up being horrid, and more so for those who are considered ‘weaker’ in society. You guessed it, in this case, it’s women and children. It’s queer, trans and gender non-conforming people. 

Women aren’t safe here, and that’s in so many ways. 

It means that you can’t recharge your mobile phone in peace, because the shopkeeper will sell your phone number to men and boys in the area, and even take it a step further to place your price according to a rating of how beautiful he thinks you are.

It means that your own brother could give out your contacts to his male friends, and you can expect a constant stream of harassment in the form of texts professing their love for you, phone calls at any hour, and even physical stalking.

It means that when you report these incidents to your parents, they will either take your phone away or have you married off to someone. Yeah, you pay for the misogyny that affects you.

It doesn’t stop there. When you are married off to someone you don’t know or love, you are expected to only belong to him and your children. Meaning that even the photos you post online should only have them in frame, and you still need to be dressed ‘decently’, otherwise you are an embarrassment to your husband, and society definitely doesn’t want that.

And you’d think that with an issue that’s clearly this widespread, a society that very clearly hates women, the state would step in and do something, right? Well, the most that they do is increase surveillance, as if these women aren’t already being watched every waking moment of their lives. As if women won’t feel even more unsafe when there are cameras overhead monitoring them, and not really taking any action when a case of violence against them is actually recorded.

Yes, men take harassment to what we’d call a new level. 

For the trans and queer community, it’s the same forms of harm meted out by the same patriarchal systems, but shown differently. 

When the pandemic set in, India went into full lockdown around mid-March. A lot of countries around the world went through the same thing, and we saw that staying indoors turns people into different things. Some reach the heights of their creativity, as we saw on apps like TikTok, and some tap into trends and perfect them, like making banana bread. 

But for some, it unleashed a wickedness in them. And we saw this when all these new Instagram handles would crop up, posting homophobic and transphobic reels, and making sure they used a language that Instagram wouldn’t be able to understand, making reporting them a futile mission.

Comments would come up on trans people’s posts, and deep fake photos of nudes with their faces edited onto them. 

Queer people would be beaten up because family found out that they are queer by going through their phones.

It was a lot of harm. It still is a lot of harm.

But, in 2018, Chief Justice Dipak Misra said, "The LGBTQ community has the same fundamental rights as citizens. The identity of a person is very important and we have to vanquish prejudice, embrace inclusion and ensure equal rights.”

In cities like Mumbai and Bombay, women can walk in the cutest, tiniest of shorts even way past three am, and the best part is, no one even turns to stare. Queer folk can be out and proud openly without worrying about being blackmailed or beaten up.

The other thing Smita and I talked about, which would be a beautiful way to end this story, is how wonderful it is to see younger women and queer people being confident in themselves and sure of what they want. Of course, it stings just a pinch to know that you didn’t have the same kind of access to information, to know that times weren’t as easy for you. You had to search much harder for information and take more time owning who you are and accepting yourself. 

But the kids now? Oh! It’s beautiful to watch. To watch them twirl and laugh and hold hands and celebrate, without a care who’s watching.

I think this is why we do it. To see those smiles and see that freedom, and to hope that for future generations, there won’t have to be a fight just for someone to smile.