On this Valentine’s Day, people around the world will be on the streets protesting sexual violence against women as part the One Billion Rising campaign. The aim: To break the silence. We too have been speaking up against sexual violence in all its forms since our very inception.
This post pulls together some of the significant points which are worth emphasizing on this occasion. Silence is the greatest enemy of justice — and it often wins when the crime is sexual violence. And it’s weapons are many. Fear can seal the lips of a child, shame can gag a young man or woman, and family honour becomes an accomplice in the crime. We are all rightfully angry at the many gang-rapes that have made headlines recently. But stranger rape is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the crime that is splashed across the newspapers, debated on late night television, and now — after the Delhi gang-rape — at the dinner table. We prefer not see or speak of the vastness that lurks beneath — where the stranglehold of silence reigns supreme.
If we speak up on this V-day, let us than not forget to also raise our voices against the other kinds of rape that are still unspeakable.
Say the I-word
Anoushka Shankar’s confession of her own experience of being sexually abused as a child by “a man my parents trusted” is brave and laudable. We couldn’t, however, help wondering if the vague language used to describe the perpetrator is intended to protect a family member.
“Incest is the most under-reported child rights and human rights violation in India,” writes human and child rights activist Shoma Chatterji, “The tight-knit family structure, the domineering role of the fathers and uncles, the submissiveness of women who are mute witnesses to gross injustice and the ingrained tendency not to allow ‘family shame’ to be exposed whatever the cost, are factors that help the abusers get away with it all.”
That desire to maintain decorum extends far beyond the immediate family, to the society at large which too colludes in maintaining this silence. Aamir Khan made waves when he dedicated an episode of Satyamev Jayate to child sex abuse, but he remained stubbornly silent on the monstrous elephant in the room – incest.
How can you have a show on Child Sex Abuse and talk about the shaming, the silence and the stigma without explicitly facing the greatest betrayal of all – when the abuse is happening not just inside the home but being perpetrated by the very people who are meant to protect the child, the ones Aamir called “the bodyguards”? It is the ultimate abuse of power. And the one most easily silenced. While we flood the streets to protest the rape of nameless women we don’t know, let’s not forget to speak up where it matters the most: for the child closer to home.
One reason for this silence is our construction of masculinity on a notion of sexual invulnerability. It’s the singlemost important reason why boys are far less likely to report abuse than girls. Where girls lose their ‘virtue’ in rape, boys stand to lose their very identity as males. The only way to assert masculinity then is to endure the assault and just “get over it,” as “real men” do. Journalist Nihal Singh’s memoir, Ink in My Veins, recounts being “buggered” by a fruit vendor – but with a stoicism that denies the trauma.
We guard our daughters’ bodies with zealous attention, caution them over and again from a very young age to beware. But we leave our boys to fend themselves, unfettered and unaware. And in our wilful silence, we ensure that if indeed our son were to get unlucky – at the hands of a stranger, acquaintance or a fellow student – he will have no words to even speak of what he has endured.
On this Valentine’s day, may the one billion rise for our sexually abused sons, brothers, fathers, friends, and husbands, as well.
Let us speak up and against sexual abuse in all its myriad forms, and of all its victims. Not just today, but every day after.
