YOU TOO?

She was eleven years old. Freshly bathed and changed into her new school uniform, she was walking towards the bus stop humming a happy tune when suddenly someone slapped her on her pubic bone and zipped by on his bike. She instantly felt the slow burning in her cheeks. The pain, embarrassment, shame and shock welled up along with the tears as she quietly walked on – keeping her soul-shredding secret – never to be shared with anyone for the rest of her life. Five years later she was dodging commuters at the railway station making a beeline for her breasts as she rushed to make it to her 9:00 a.m. lecture on time.  She also has a vague but vivid memory – vague in terms of time but startlingly clear as an image – of a dark man masturbating in his car outside her bedroom window.

Most girls have experienced some form of sexual abuse at some point in their lives and at some level – either at the hands of random strangers, close relatives, friends of their parents or even their own drunken fathers. Many cannot even tell their mothers – or if they do it is often stoically swept under the carpet of denial, quite likely leaving those mothers to spend their lives resigned to the fact that their own husbands have violated their daughters. And this is way before the girls have discovered their own sexuality or even understood the concept of masturbation; leave alone experienced the arched ecstasy of an orgasm, the tenderness of a considerate cunnilingus, or the virtual reality/fantasy of a wet dream. A book I am reading quotes a lady telling her daughter: “The only thing a woman has to ever do in life is ENDURE. That is all she is capable of, what she is made for and has to prepare herself for.”

To ever dream of, let alone expect any form of pleasure of any sort is considered insolence and insubordination in many parts of the world (female circumcision being a case in point). But let us not kid ourselves. It is happening all around us – even in so-called educated and liberal societies. Behind closed doors and under soiled sheets – men expect to be serviced, waited on, cooked for – while they go about living their lives free to indulge in whatever they desire and to be excused for the most heinous behavior simply because they are providing for their families, which somehow gives them the right to be selfish, abusive, self-indulgent and for the most part – absent. Absent from familial obligations and any other responsibilities that might take them away from their own perverse pursuits. Of course – not all men are like that. Of course women are also providing for their families. But then they are harassed at the workplace. There is no escaping the ugly face of sexual abuse.

Yes we have all heard of sodomy and other horrors perpetrated on little boys and hapless men in prisons or during ragging in colleges. But have you ever heard of a woman swinging by on a bike and yanking a man’s penis and speeding off? Or a woman charging down a railway platform just to collide with some passenger’s smelly crotch?? Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? Women are just not capable of such abysmal behavior.

The point is we are living in times of “coming out”. People are speaking and writing more about sexual abuse than ever before. Campaigns like “Me Too!” help abused women realize that they are not alone. That there is no place for shame. That no more can the blame be put on their shoulders. That they can speak about it, process it and can grow up to be fine, accomplished adults, instead of living in constant fear of it being ‘found out’. As the articulate jazz and blues singer Joni Mitchell sang so beautifully: “He was out of line girl, you were not to blame.”

Written by Suneeta Rao- Singer, Performing Artiste and Writer