CHENNAI: Most women have faced some kind of harassment in their life; some when they were still children, some when they were old and thought they’d no longer be considered sexual objects; and some when they were merely trying to discover their gender identity. In the wake of the Bengaluru molestation case, several friends and acquaintances of mine opened up to about the times they have been molested. Some even expected me to write about it. I start with an experience of my own.
That’s disgusting right? But these things happen
It was about 11 on a warm Sunday morning. I was wearing a loose T-shirt and tracks and walking back home on the side of a main road, with my hair tied in an untidy bun and my face still sweaty from the gym. Two men on a motorcycle slowed down as they approached me. The driver suddenly stuck his left hand out, groped my left breast and sped past without stopping. I turned around to quickly note the vehicle registration number only to be distracted by the pillion rider, who turned and looked at me, smiled proudly and joined his hands over his head like how he would when he prayed.
I rushed back home but I didn’t tell my parents, as I thought they would stop me from going to the gym, but called a handful of friends hoping I’d be rid of the shock. All had but one thing to say, “That’s disgusting right? But these things happen.” Then I confided in my mom because I thought my parents would be able to say something better. “I asked you to wear a loose salwar to the gym,” was my mom’s reaction. She somehow seemed to forget that just three weeks before that, when she was clad in a saree, a customer at the boutique she owned began caressing her arms from her fingers to the elbow before she could ask him to get out.
Tired of the number times I’ve been rubbed up by men on buses en route to school, pinched in crowded market places, groped in tourist spots, I started becoming resigned to the fact that this was what every woman would go through and there was nothing to do but face it and move on. I began reacting like my friends once did to me when I told them I had been sexually assaulted: “That’s disgusting right? But these things happen.”
This changed, however, when my friend said something that shook me up, despite the banality in her tone. “Everybody’s been harassed at some point right? I’m just thankful to god that nothing big happened to me at that time,” she exclaimed. Nothing “big” had happened to her. What did she mean by big?
I simply cried because when adults question you, it means you did something wrong
I was in fourth standard. I’d visited my relatives who lived inside a government housing quarters. It was a very safe compound; they screened everybody who entered the premises. I was taking my cousin’s dog for a walk, when a man called me. I was taught not to be disrespectful to adults so I hesitantly walked towards him. He knelt down and wrapped his arms around my skirt and started sliding his hands under it. Something felt very wrong. I froze. There was some sudden noise in the background and he quickly withdrew his hand before he could touch my underwear. I screamed and ran back. They never found the stranger. It took me years before I could talk to older uncles after that. My whole family asked me what happened and I simply cried because when adults question you, it means you did something wrong.
Age doesn’t equip you to understand being violated.
I gave my daughters away in marriage and my husband died long ago. I needed money and I borrowed some from the person at whose home I worked as a maid. He had this habit of taking off his clothes while I was sweeping his room. He would tie a towel around his waist and take off his underwear and give it to me to wash. He never touched me, but he smiled every time he gave me his underwear. It was a disgusting smile. But he’s loaned me a lot of money, so I didn’t make it an issue. I paid the loan back and quit without ever asking him about it. I did feel very uncomfortable but I’m thankful he didn’t do anything more.
I thought my teacher treated me like that because I was doing something wrong by being girly
Some people think only women get abused? But someone seeming feminine, like me, too did get abused. I was studying in class seven and I identified as a boy at the time. When I walked like a woman, my teachers and friends tried to get me to correct it. I said I’d try and I sincerely did but failed. They started pinching my hip when I walked in a womanly manner. I knew I didn’t have ‘manly’ feelings but I never understood my gender identity fully. One night after maths tuition, my teacher asked me to stay back. And he made me perform oral sex.
In the movies, all the heroes are people who can single-handedly beat up 10 men in one go. That’s what my friends in my school in Kasimedu thought, too. Anything feminine was weak for them. This went on for a while, and then they made fun of my body language. My friends threatened me that if I acted like a woman, they would treat me like one. So I thought that my teacher treated me like that because I was doing something wrong by being girly. I never complained to anyone. I was scared that people would tell me that he asked me to perform oral sex because I acted like a girl. I cried a lot when I was alone. This big upsetting thing had happened to me
According to 2015 data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), about 95 per cent of rape victims knew their offenders. The numbers are not very different in child rape cases, as only a ‘small’ section of rapists were strangers to the victim.
The transwoman’s teacher found an opportunity to hold her back alone. But what if the noise hadn’t distracted the man who put his hand under my friend’s skirt? What if the domestic worker had worked longer without protesting and was one day found alone by her boss? What if I was locked alone in a room with the man who groped me on the main road? Would something “big” have happened? Could it be that these molesters and violators who roam society unquestioned, find someone weak in their circles and target them at the first chance?
NCRB data that states that 95 per cent of rape perpetrators are known to their victims. Is that what tells apart a rapist from a molester? Does that mean you must fear those whom you know more than strangers?