CHENNAI : Awareness Days may come and go, and as always, problems persist and refuse to go, while many will be unperturbed and let life go (by). The one that passed this week was Human Rights Day (December 10) and with it, the Sixteen Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence which begins yearly on November 25 came to an end. Awareness campaigns and activities are planned during this period and needless to say, the last couple of weeks proved a stark reminder of the need for annual awareness days to turn the focus on issues (gender-based violence in this case), and work that many individuals and organisations doggedly pursue through the year. For my part, I drew up this set of commandments:
Gender-based violence (GBV) may refer to, but is not restricted to, rape and its many brutal forms during times of war and peace. It shall include violence that occurs within and outside home, in a marriage or a casual sexual encounter, in non-sexual settings when a person is made uncomfortable, is treated differently or dismissed on account of their gender, when touched, stalked, groped, hit, stared at, commented on, laughed at, girlfriend-zoned. Violence, we believe, exists as much in silence or being silenced as it does in misconduct, harassment, assault, or rape.
Women (umbrella word used hereon to describe those that would identify as ‘not a cis-het man’ whether bleeding or not, with vulva or not, young or old, fat or thin, irrespective of class, caste, ability, location and other markers of privilege and without proof of gender expression, sexual orientation, genitalia) must be taken seriously while alive because as social media posts rightly put it, no one wants to be India’s Daughter.
It shall be acknowledged immediately that ‘all women are equal but some women are more equal than others’ even if they are all grouped into one large category. The work to rewrite unjust histories, learn from difference, fight each other’s fights and make this statement untrue will be done.
Anyone who sees the worth of the above and contributes to work without co-opting the movement and by passing the mic is a friend.
Anyone who is not a woman is not immediately an enemy. Contrarily, the fight shall continue to be waged against attitudes, behaviours, power and privilege that deny women equal status and those that declare that such status has already been achieved.
Even the most marginalised woman shall be unafraid to report a crime and her clothes, character and upbringing shall not be scrutinised to victim-shame her. We shall believe the victim, cancelling out the accused perpetrator, not quoting or citing or providing space to alleged violators and powerful men till the victims’ story is thoroughly investigated instead of the other way round.
Ideally, no human shall kill another, but certainly not a murder sanctioned by the state, and never in our name. No human or state should kill a man even with cause, even when the entire country is baying for blood, because death does not stop heinous crime, and revenge cannot replace justice.
We shall talk about toxic masculinity, megalomaniac statesmen, oppressive regimes, war, power, fundamentalism, fascism openly as issues that are at the root of GBV. We shall discuss sex, sexuality, pleasure, disease, contraception, abortion and lay claim to our bodies without shame. Consent, we shall aim to give enthusiastically, while thinking and talking about it more. We shall refuse to feed or forge a culture of fear, and dissent when our bodies and minds are being controlled.
We shall not let laws that do not affect us be passed without a protest, wake up to a new normal without an alarm, watch silently as promises are broken, or forget nice people who voted dangerously. Instead, we will take stock of how we are implicit in the violence, continue fighting, killing joy where we must, and keep hoping.
We shall remember always that we live in an Orwellian world run by power-hungry pigs with a vision to make a diverse Animal Farm into a nation of pigs, to whom changing the commandments using a loophole in them will be a piece of cake after they are through with the laws of the land. For this sake, we will learn them by-heart and pass them from mouth to ear, and let them change with the times, just not touched by the pigs.