I am writing this one to apologise to the womankind today.
I am not very convinced how exactly I must begin writing about this ghastly act of rape that my species, the mankind has been inflicting upon the fellow womankind. Because being a man, and especially the kind who is not so vulnerable to such an atrocity can never empathise with a rape victim. He will never know what it feels like when someone you don’t know, unceremoniously touches you, brutally beats you, outrageously raids your body…excuse me, I cannot imagine the plight any further.
I don’t really want to talk about the recent rapes in India. Much has been said, many have condemned and I still believe, it will prevail. Not because there is no strict course of action against this heinous crime, but perhaps because we have somewhere failed to recognise where and why it actually begins. Therefore, let me not get into the intricacies of precautionary measures. Because by doing so, I am simply going to embarrass my own self.
I am not writing this to denounce rape either, like how many have been seemingly doing so. Because simply condemning something as deplorable as rape doesn’t do anything more than indirectly sympathising with the sufferers. And these victims don’t need sympathy. They need an answer. An answer to why they have to fall prey for the monstrous lecherousness of man. A judicial justice is not the real action against a woman’s modesty that has been breached.
All men are not rapist. But all rapist have been men.
Just think about this sentence above. In the first sentence I comforted most men. But in the second I trivialised the first. Yes, not all men rape but if you find, you would know that men have committed all rapes. And what does that say? It says that if a rape has happened somewhere, every woman out there is now looking at you, at every man out there in suspicion. And don’t get offended, she has nothing against you. But she has just lost faith in mankind, in your kind. It is as natural as frighteningly going near a dog, even if it wouldn’t bite.
I am speaking to all the men today. If you have a sister at home, do you let her go out late in the night? What is the reason you give her? Are you scared about the darkness? Or about the ghosts that appear in this darkness in the form of men. Ever realised that you are scared of your own species? On the contrary you also might feel good, that you are not one amongst the few who commit these crimes. But think again, when someone else’s sister is not let by her brother to go out in the night, this brother in the same way is scared of the same men. And it could even mean being scared of you.
Super heroes have been there, saving the women from calamities in movies. But remember, the idea evolved when man gave up on man himself. Although a hypothetical graphic idea of real men but I guess even that notion fails today. Because it is important to understand that we don’t have and thus we don’t need imaginary super saviours. What the world only needs today are simple and real gentlemen.
There is nothing much you can do if you are not a rapist. But the least you can, is to try a little harder to create that respect, that space, that comfort to a girl who is not your friend, not your relative, not your colleague. Because it seems it has come down to such a worse time that even she can’t do much to not get raped. At least let her know, she is protected, in your sight.
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