We feel bad. We shake our head. Yet another rape. Another gangrape. ‘Kya hoga is country ka?’ And we go back to sipping our tea. Little do we know that we are adding fuel to the fire. Yes, my friends, we are propagating the rape culture.

The title image indicates just what Rape Culture is about. If Rape Culture dismisses rape…it dismisses itself as well!

This mentality is deep-rooted and is the reason why we have been hearing of so many rape cases in the news of late. Rape culture does not imply promoting rape. It’s an undercurrent in our cultural practices that makes excuses for sexual violence.

Here is a video that speaks of the Rape Culture prevalent in Haryana. (I have mentioned this in a previous post but would like to highlight it here.)

“Once a girl turns 14 or 15, you can’t call it rape after that. There is always consent.”
– An elderly man in Mankawas village, Charkhi Dadri district 

“The girl has to have done something wrong, that’s why she’s been raped.”
– A Class 8 boy from Bhiwani 

Rape culture is not just prevalent in Haryana. It is everywhere. Women have historically been considered second-class citizens who were not thought to deserve the same rights as their male counterparts. Our patriarchal system is the reason why we think and behave this way. 

In a fellow blogger, Kanika’s blog post I read that it was believed that a female orgasm is essential for conception. So if an alleged rape results in a pregnancy, then it can’t be a rape at all, because the woman experienced pleasure! The truth is that an orgasm is involuntary and can occur during rape. This does not take away from the heinousness of the crime. 

And rape culture is the sad reality that in 127 countries rape within marriage is still not considered a crime, including in India!

The system of rape culture affects men too

“Toxic masculinity”. is a gender stereotype burdening the men in society, depicting them as sexually driven, violent beings. This is the reason why men do not complain when they are raped. They are ashamed of the trauma. 

A Khap Panchyat member Sube Singh had given a bizzare ‘solution’ to the ‘rapes’ and suggested that the marriageable age for girls should be reduced to 16 years. He later blamed movies and television for rapes. 

A friend asked me if rapes will stop if we legalize prostitution. Or if it will stop if we fast track cases for speedy justice. Sure these measures will help. We must do everything we can to ensure that lesser women feel unsafe. We need legal reforms, policy reforms. more structures in place that allow women to feel safe enough to raise their voice against assaults. Marital Rape must be made a criminal offense in India. 

As a society, we cannot turn our heads against what is happening around us. We must raise our voices. We must encourage women to name and shame their abusers. We must not let our fandom or our ostrich mentality get in the way of justice. 

We need to support and be part of as many organizations as we can to change the mentality that rape = sex and rape cannot occur without consent. Rape is not sex and whenever force is used for sex without the other’s consent, it is rape. 

Going back to the definition of rape: “the violation of another person’s autonomy, the use of another person’s body against their wishes.” That means the rapist is always at fault, not the victim. 

4) We should not think that marrying the rapist solves the problem 

Again, please look at the definition. The crime of being forced to do something against their will can’t suddenly stop being a crime because of marriage. 

Yesterday, Ali Zafar, the Pakistani singer was accused of sexual harassment by another singer. The news broke out in the morning. During the day, as usual there were a bunch of celebrities who came out saying they didn’t know the facts of the case, but Ali could not have done it. Of, course a lot of fans showed their support. Really? Fandom before empathy? And towards the end of the day, we had more women come forward with allegations. Why do people judge the victim or doubt her instead of giving her the benefit of doubt?! Is it because most men find it easy to be in the shoes of the man and not the woman? 

6) We should not support Rape Jokes 

This angers me more than anything. How can anything about rape by funny? Why do we dismiss it? It is imperative that we do not create, share, like or encourage any jokes that objectify women. It’s not that women can’t handle jokes. But rape jokes are a no-no. 

We all know how anyone with a conscience feels when we see such stories. These get made because we watch them. And because they get made, we watch them. Why does a smoking scene require a disclaimer and an item number doesn’t!? Maybe because in some movies… the whole time the movie is played we’ll need the disclaimer: ‘Objectifying women is wrong’ !! It’s a vicious cycle. Let’s put an end to this. 

Women and men don’t “have” to do anything or be anyone. This is the root of the problem. Men don’t need to be “macho” or “powerful” and women don’t need to be “submissive”. 

We need children to be taught how to behave with women and with other boys when they speak about women. We must teach them the importance of consent. That’s how we ensure a better future. 

We must not allow people in power do any or all of the above. We must hold our politicians accountable for the safety of our women.

What are your thoughts on the rape culture and on the recent situation in our country? Do share your views.

Ever felt low and less confident after meeting someone?

Ever felt worried that you are losing your memory and your sanity because someone you trust keeps telling you that you are?

Ever been told…

‘Calm down! You have gone totally mad! Give your imagination some rest woman!’

Or ‘Hey, come on! Don’t be so sensitive! Stop all this crazy talk! You know I care for you so much.’

Ever received a backhanded compliment? ‘You don’t look like a Malayalee at all!’

Ever received a compliment followed by a critique? ‘That dress is amazing but you should lose a little more weight to look amazing in it.’

Were you ever compared to someone you didn’t know? ‘You remind me so much of my best friend’s girl-friend!’ Did it make you want to do everything you could to become better than this person you have never met?

I didn’t know what gaslighting or negging was until recently. But when I did, I realized that owing to my own naivety I’ve been a victim of these extremely dangerous forms of emotional abuse many times over.

Physical abuse is abhorrent. However, because of it’s nature, the society to a great extent looks down upon it. The victims do find support. However,  because the scars of emotional/ psychological abuse are invisible to most, it is way more difficult to get support and heal from it.

‘Gaslighting’ means to ‘manipulate (someone) by psychological means into doubting their own memory, perceptions and sanity.’

The term ‘gaslighting’ owes its origin to a 1938 play ‘Gas Light’. The play was adapted into an American movie of the same name in 1944 where the lady who was gaslit was played by the popular yesteryear female actor – Ingrid Bergman. The central narrative focussed on a couple and showed how the husband successfully manipulated his wife by convincing her into thinking that she was slowly becoming insane through a series of seemingly unexplained incidents which were deliberately planned. It began with him dimming the ‘gaslights’ (a type of lamp in which an incandescent mantle is heated by a jet of burning gas) in the house while searching for some jewels.  When the wife noticed it and brought it up, he called it a figment of her imagination. He also isolated his wife from friends and family and convinced her that she is a kleptomaniac. Psychology authors began using of the title of the movie as a verb colloquially.  But it wasn’t until mid- 2010’s that the term Gaslighting began being used to mean ‘the subjective experience of having reality repeatedly questioned by another.’

Those who resort to gaslighting will first charm you and win your trust. All is well till the time the target falls in line with the gaslighter’s wishes. Then when they are caught lying or the target doubts his/ her intentions, they resort to gaslighting.

Here begins the journey of breaking your confidence by discrediting your memories and feelings. And when you bring it up, they will make you seem silly and immature for doing so. They will dismiss you as well as the situation and convince you to nip it in the bud. In case you persist, they will either change the topic or pretend to have been hurt by your actions making themselves appear as the victim. Now the latter is a very cunning move…because you will end up feeling miserable and will apologize for the wrong being done to you. They will never apologize to you. This is a big tell-tale sign.

Gaslighters are usually very intelligent people and craft their arguments very well. They have a strong need to be right always and hence you will feel never win arguments with them. They will alternate between being nice and mean. All this is a part of their agenda and it will upset you, confuse you and make you feel less confident.

Read more about the tactics of gaslighting in this book. Here is another great article on gaslighting.

According to Urban Dictionary this flirting technique is defined as “low-grade insults meant to undermine the self-confidence of a woman so she might be more vulnerable to your advances.” As unbelievable as it may sound, the men who resort to negging wish to make the woman fall for him! Of course he is so insecure that he feels he has a chance only if she is made to feel less confident. One needs to be confident and secure about oneself to realize that a politely worded insult is an insult at the end of the day. Do go through these negging scenarios to protect yourself.

• To undermine your confidence

• To make you always feel confused, frustrated and overwhelmed

• To brainwash you so that you forget your true identity

• To make you vulnerable and ultimately accepting of the manipulator’s wishes

It is important to not let someone else control your emotions and ultimately your actions. A victim of emotional abuse often goes through different stages in the relationship: disbelief, aggression and finally depression. Feeling under-confident and confused all the time can make you feel that you are mentally unstable. It could happen that the victim turns to the manipulator himself for help and this leads to a very vicious circle.

Manipulators usually reach out to targets that come across as under-confident.  Those who tend to self-doubt easily – again owing to the years of conditioning and the pressure of being considered perfect, become easy targets for these manipulators. They also usually give the benefit of doubt to the manipulators, elongating the period of manipulation. They also tend to target introverts who usually don’t have many friends or a great support system. This makes you defenseless and they know it!

But even confident assertive people need to keep their defenses up. The manipulators will appeal to your kindness, compassion and empathy. They may come across as vulnerable initially just to win you over and then proceed to play with your head.

Narcissists i.e. those who buried their true self-expression in response to early injuries and replaced it with a highly developed, compensatory false self usually end up manipulating others. Narcissists are unable to regulate his/ her self-esteem and are unable to make deep and intimate lasting ties with another human being.  According to Dr. Ramani, psychologist of repute and an expert on narcissim (also a narcissistic abuse survivor herself), there are four pillars to narcissism:

1. Display of lack of empathy
2. Grandiosity or a sense of superiority and the need to be imposing
3. A chronic sense of entitlement and self-importance
4. A chronic need for admiration as well as validation from other people.

a) They are charmers.

b) They love bragging and often lie.

c) They will never admit to their faults and get angry when someone points them out.

d) They love doing things that are not considered ‘normal’ .

e) They get a huge high from being in control. 

Narcissists are so insecure that emotionally abusing others is what gives them a sense of superiority.

Don’t think that you need to step away only when physical abuse is involved. Emotional abuse can also have damaging repercussions. No matter what the situation, trust your instinct. If you don’t feel good – it’s time to back off.

Also, there appears to be no positive outcome from confronting your abuser and telling him you know he emotionally abused you. He may get angry or try and charm you in order to continue his tactics.

This is especially important since manipulators will try to keep you away from your support system.

Talking to a professional will help you to sort your insecurities and build your confidence.

1) Those who truly love you will NEVER humiliate you or make you feel horrible about yourself. Sure people make mistakes. But if you realize that someone refuses to ever apologise for having hurt your feelings, please have the courage to end the septic relationship.

2) Never let the confidence in yourself waver because of what someone says. Always give yourself time to assess things objectively. But don’t ever second-guess yourself. Learn to become assertive. You are unique. Don’t try to change for anyone.

3) Never let anyone tell you how to feel or what to feel. If you are ‘too sensitive’ it is ok…embrace it. Spend time with yourself to find out more about yourself and figure out what works and doesn’t work for you.

People resort to manipulation every day- with their partners, at work or with friends. It could be serious or unfortunately even flippant. In rare cases, the manipulators are not exactly aware of what they are doing.

If you or anyone you know is experiencing any of the above forms of manipulation, please please reach out for help. I really wish I knew what gaslighting was much earlier in my life so that I could protect myself. But knowing how I can and have been manipulated, I feel empowered. I know I can prevent it from happening in the future. And I want all my fellow readers to also protect themselves.

Please do share this post with your loved ones. You could also read up more on the subject through books or via several online resources and speak about emotional abuse to your teenage children.

Patriarchy, Misogyny, Bigotry

No it is the ignorance silly that makes us angry.

‘Oh no don’t say angry, we don’t want to be known as crazy’

Ha! No more gaslighting or other means to make us doubt our own sanity!

‘Women don’t know what they want. They’re so flaky.’

Just one of those things that make us go -Why so judgy?

So here’s a list of things that we don’t want. Listen carefully.

Blame it on cultural conditioning if none of it makes sense to thee.

We don’t want rules and boundaries

We don’t always want the pressure of being a good girl or a lady

We don’t want to be superwomanly

Sometimes we just want to be lazy.

We don’t want to be pigeon-holed as pretty, hot or sexy

We don’t want to be judged for anything but our abilities

We don’t want to miss any opportunity

Just because we got married and had a baby

We don’t want to be ignored or put down needlessly

We don’t want to deal with any biases while ascending corporate hierarchy

We don’t want to work just because we need pocket money

We don’t want to quit work just to fulfill familial duties

We don’t want to do anything just to please the society

We don’t want to be told what should be our priorities

We don’t want to be groped or touched inappropriately

We don’t want our safety to be only our responsibility

We don’t want to be pressured into suffering abuse silently

We don’t want to be doubted when we report it regretfully

We don’t want big gestures, just some empathy

We don’t want reservation, just inclusivity

In this world that is talking about big things like gender fluidity

We don’t want anything more than being able to express our identity

We don’t want to piss off anyone majorly

But we also don’t want to lose our mental stability

We may raise our voice but don’t want complete anarchy

We just don’t want unfairness and hence are pursuing equality

I need to start this post with an apology to the third gender. This post shall focus on how women are under-represented in Hindi Films in India. The category of people that associate neither with the male or the female genders are also largely ignored by mainstream cinema even though they represent a decent section of the population. Unfortunately when stories have tracks for the third gender or the LGBTQ community in their stories, they are usually incorporated for comic relief.  Please go through the earlier hyperlinks to read about studies that analyse the under-representation of the third gender in our films.

Now there are every few households that don’t have any women in them. Our villages, towns and cities are filled with women. And yet our films don’t seem to reflect this too well.

Cinema in India enjoys a lot of love and has a very wide audience. This gives a lot of power to the filmmakers. But do they put their power to good use? Not really.

Last year, IBM and two New Delhi-based institutions released a public study of over 4,000 Hindi films to understand the extent of gender bias in the industry.

Here is a summary of the study findings (all graphs and images are snapshots from the report that you can read here):

1) Cast mentions in the Movie Plot: Right from 1970 to 2017, the data indicates that the male character has double the number of mentions as compared to a female character.

 2) Cast Appearance in a Movie Plot: The adjectives most associated with males are: rich and wealthy while the verbs associated with them are kills and shoots. On the other hand, women characters are often described as beautiful and attractive while the verbs associated with them are marries and loves.

3) Cast Introductions in a Movie Plot: Male characters are usually introduced by referencing their professions e.g. famous singer, an honest police officer, a successful scientist etc. while a woman character is invariably introduced in relation to a male character

 4) Occupation as a Stereotype: Women characters tend to have lower level occupations e.g. teacher or student while the male character tends to have higher level occupations such as lawyer or doctor.

5) Cast Dialogues and Gender Gap in Movie Scripts: On studying the ratio of male to female dialogues in 13 scripts, it was found that Raman Raghav was the least biased while Kaminey and Aligarh showed the most bias.

Female dialogues are presented on X-axis and Male dialogues on Y-axis

6) Movie Poster and Plot mentions: Publicizing a movie is biased towards a female on advertising material like posters, and they end up having an even smaller or inconsequential role in the movie. 50% of movie posters had female representation but 80% of the movies had more male mentions than female. Notably, 3 movies – GangaaJal 2 , Platform 3 , Raees 4 had almost 100+ male mentions in the plot but no female mentions whereas in all 3 posters females were prominently present on posters.

                 Source- Pixabay

7) Movie Trailers: The screen time for women characters in movie trailers has consistently been half that of men for over a decade!

8)  Female Centricity: The good news is that the female centric movies and female mentions in our movies are on a rise.

9) Singers and gender distribution in soundtracks: Since the female actors have a lesser role to play, so do their voices. Right from 2010 to 2017, the female singers have sung consistently less songs as compared to their male counterparts. The duration of the song sung by the female singer has not been considered here but it is more likely to be lopsided. This fact was also corroborated in a recent interview with the top female singers in the country.

Sexism not covered by the study above

 

The report concludes by suggesting that the primary steps one can take to narrow the gap of gender bias in Hindi Films is by:

This brings us to the second part of my post…

First let us understand…

It was created by American cartoonist, Alison Bechdel in her 1985 comic, “Dykes to Watch Out For”. It is also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test.

Women’s Web, a forum for women requires contributors to submit short stories that pass the Bechdel Test for its Monthly Muse contest. The measure is used widely across the globe.

Many people across the world including the creator of the test, Alison Bechdel acknowledge that the test isn’t perfect and may not always work. It definitely highlights the problem but its simplicity can be its undoing. Let us break the test down to highlight its failings:

In a recently released short film produced by Anurag Kashyap and Shlok Sharma, the viewer takes the same emotional journey as the characters in the film take after a very traumatic event. There were no dialogues and yet the film makes you empathize with a woman’s anguish.

There are various scenarios where two women could talk about a man and yet have a feminist flavour.  One important scenario could be conversations about abuse. A woman pushing her friend/ colleague/ daughter to stand up for her rights cannot take place without mentioning the man! Such empowering conversations will fail the Bechdel test!         

The film Gravity does not pass the Bechdel Test even though it revolves around a woman astronaut who survives in space owing to her intelligence and grit.  Read here on how even though most of the highest grossing films in Hollywood passed the Bechdel Test, the issue of gender bias remains largely unsolved.

The Bechdel Test may still be the most popular measure but there are other tests that could be used to supplement it to get a clearer picture of gender biasedness in films.

Script-reader Ross Putman highlighted the sexism that prevails in Hollywood by sharing the character descriptions for the female lead from actual scripts in a feed on Twitter using the handle @femscriptintros. It was found that most of the descriptions only focussed on how the character looked. He replaced all the names with ‘Jane’ which is why it is called the Jane Test. According to Ross 3 questions must be asked by writers before crafting the female lead:

                a.            Does the introduction focus on the external attributes of the character?

                b.            Is he a twenty- or thirty something?

                c.            Is she dating someone decades older than her?

If your answer is ‘Yes’ to all the questions above, then the script fails the Jane Test.

2)  Samantha Ellis, a feminist playwright in Hollywood, devised the ‘Sphinx Test’ that also involved asking a series of questions for playwrights to consider while creating a female character:

                a            Is there a woman centre stage?

                b.           Is she active rather than reactive?

                c.           Is she compelling and complex?

3)  Read here to know 12 tests that checks gender bias across 4 main aspects of movie-making:

               a.            Behind the Camera

               b.            Intersectional

               c.            Protagonists

               d.            Supporting Cast

These tests emerged when FiveThirtyEight (a website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging) asked 13 people in the entertainment industry to come up with personal standards for representation in cinema.

Gender Inequality behind the scenes

The study on Hindi Films doesn’t touch upon the lack of women film makers (directors, producers, editors, camerawomen etc.) in the industry. According to this article in 2016, there were only around 60 women working behind the scenes in big ticket movies. Here is a quote from a cinematographer who happens to be a woman explaining the reason–

This was in response to a comment by a reviewer who was surprised that the cinematographer was a woman. Also do read Shit People Say To Women Directors and other Women in Film.

When a movie like ‘Masaan’ is made, portraying a strong and independent girl from the small-town of Benares, I am sure it inspires women everywhere. Of course we know the love that ‘Queen’ or even the ‘Tanu weds Manu’ films have received from the audience. But I don’t think the makers set out to make ‘feminist’ films. They wrote stories that they themselves believed in. Richa Chaddha praises the makers of Masaan in a recent interview: ‘Neeraj Ghaywan and Varun Grover are possibly the most progressive (and) intelligent men I know who are so non-judgemental, understanding and humane…’ Neeraj Ghaywan followed Masaan with an amazing short film ‘Juice’ starring Shefali Shah that focussed on the sexism and patriarchy that still pervades our Indian homes. There are several other short films that aim to highlight the sexism that exists in India.

You may argue that the above films and short films are all made on relatively low budgets. Without the financial risks that a big-budget movie faces, these inspirational stories can afford to lend themselves to feminist ideals. True. But there is a glimmer of hope. I think that the reason why you saw the improving trends in female centric movies recently in the study earlier is because data suggests that half of the movie-goers are women today! This was not the case in the 80’s or 90’s where the movies catered primarily to men. As the women audience members watch more women centric films they will drive the demand upwards for such films. The consistent success of these films will make film-makers less wary of creating such films.

At the end of the day, no matter how many tests, questions and studies we subject our movies to, the fact is that writers want to share stories about the world around them. And unfortunately as long as sexism prevails in India, you can’t blame cinema or stories for mirroring the reality. Let’s try and make our women feel more as equals. Then our stories will also reflect it.