“This rape, the protest, the people who are pretending to care are irking me. How do you categorize molestation? Have you started treating your girlfriends with more respect or stopped hitting your wives? Are you no longer commanding your sisters to wear modest clothes or asking your “would be” not to focus on your bidding and choose her career/lifestyle over yours? Stopped ogling at the next girl with a good figure and revealing clothes? The day you do that, then come and have a nice long chat about how to stop these heinous crimes. Maybe even the Prime Minister will entertain you. I think for now the Government knows that your short-term memory will outrage over Dhoni’s team losing to Pakistan next week. And this young girl whose life has been destroyed will lay forgotten, while nightmares will drive her insane. And every person who meets her will make her relive her experience for every second of the day for the rest of her life.”
Those were the thoughts boiling in my mind on December 16, 2012, when a young girl was brutally raped and left to die, in the busy streets of New Delhi, India.
Growing up, I always struggled with the “He’s a boy, you’re a girl” attitude. I attributed a lot of it to the Indian culture, and maybe to some extent, the caveman mentality. Men are the hunters, and women are the nurturers. But is that it? We have come so far, and yet… A December 2013 article from popular American newspaper details, “… when toy companies think girls, they think glitter.”
So, why?
Why are the products aimed toward young girls covered in sparkles and pink? Why are girls encouraged to play with Barbie’s and not Lego’s? Why does technology remain a male-dominated field where only a few women are able to break the glass ceiling and make a difference?
Could it be because girls are raised to suppress their curiosities about the world and be what everyone thinks they should be?
So Inspire …
Inspire them to think creatively.
Inspire them to explore.
Inspire them to be curious.
Because once we do that, there’s nothing they can’t do. There’s nothing we can’t do.
And that’s when “ Rape is not her fault”.