31st December 2016. A
crowd of unruly hooligans molested a whole lot of girls in Bengaluru.
31st December 2015. A
crowd of supposedly Middle Eastern immigrants molested and raped a crowd of
revelers in Cologne, Germany by engaging in a game of Taharrush.
Some other party, some other
place, some other country, women are molested and raped. The deplorable act is
repeated time and again.
I will not even try to lend
credence to what some idiots have mentioned, by mentioning their statements and
condemning them. I would rather condemn these people and their statements by
simply ignoring them.
However one fact has come out
very well and that is, there has to be a better way by which we raise our
children. There are no two ways about this. Guys need to be sensitized about
what is correct and what is not correct right from a very early age. And that
early age begins at say 2 years or even earlier.
I know of a 5 year boy, who is
taught to discriminate between boys and girls. He will not dance to a certain
song, saying that this is a ‘girl’ song.
He will not wear clothes of a certain colour because it is a ‘girl’
colour. And this is being taught to him by either his parents or grandparents.
He is being conditioned that it is not right to lose to girls. I am sure his
outlook towards girls when he grows up will be interesting. By the way his
parents are very well educated.
It is very easy to deplore an act
like this and say that our boys need to be taught the right values. I myself
have a son and take ownership to teach him the right values. What is the
solution and how do we go about making this change? What I am going to write
now is going to be extremely controversial.
We also need to change the way in
which be bring up our daughters. Before all you women stop reading and start
cursing me, let me tell you I am not going to write about curbing the women’s
freedom or talking about what they wear or what they drink. This is a piece of
advice to their parents. A lot of people in cities, or people who are reading
this may not be able to associate with this.
When we bring up our children,
especially girls, we tell them not to talk to boys. How many girls have guys as
friends? And I am not talking about boy-friends, but just simple friends? If a
college going girl goes out for a coffee with a boy, eyebrows get raised. Get
real guys, it is just a coffee nothing else. If a girl mentions the name of a
guy in her list of friends, the mother gets worried and does not encourage her
going out with the guy. Thus when the children are growing up, the interaction
with the other gender is limited.
You have a gang of guys hanging
out separately and a gang of girls hanging out separately. The gang of guys,
because they have very limited or negligible interaction with girls while their
hormones are growing up, is an absolute recipe for disaster. Most of these boys
will get into an arranged marriage and are extremely awkward when they are
faced with a girl. They don’t even know how to talk to one. These guys then
look at the girls only from one perspective, not as friends but as objects of
desire.
As a society we are hypocritical.
We as parents will choose the boy or girl of their choice for arranged
marriages. The arranged marriage process is one where the boy meets girl once
or twice. Before they can meet further, there is pressure to ‘at least get
engaged’. Why? Because it supposedly harms the girl’s ‘character’. Think of the
girl, parents, she is going to say yes to the guy based only on one or two
meetings when he is possibly at his best behavior? The true colours are
discovered only after marriage. Arranged marriages are a lottery (#1: I have a
happy arranged marriage. #2 : Even love marriages are a lottery, but more about
that topic in some other post).
Once you are engaged, there is
pressure to get married fast. And god forbid if the marriage is to be called
off after the engagement and before the marriage. One talks of family honour
and all that shit, without thinking of the girl.
So we are ensuring the girl
actually gets into bed with a stranger before getting comfortable with him. I
personally believe that in most arranged marriages, ‘the first night’ is
nothing but marital rape cheered on by family and friends in absentia. What
about walking out after the marriage? Unthinkable.
So basically it is fine to
continue in a marriage where the girl may be unhappy, but not to disturb the
family honour. A lot of the above is justified in the name of ‘culture’. People
also say that high divorce rates are a result of western culture. I believe
that a high divorce rate is simply because the girl wants to assert herself
(nothing wrong with that) and is not acceptable to a society washed in
‘culture’ believing that the girl should serve and be under the thumb of ‘Pati
Parmeshwar’ who is not necessarily a paragon of virtue.
There are a lot of wrong things
which are passed of under the name of culture.
While there is a responsibility
for parents of boys, there is also a huge responsibility for parents of girls.
It is time parents of girls stop treating boys as devils. If not, chances are
that boys will believe that they are devils and convert into devils.
It is time to start taming the devil.
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