Bois locker room: Who is to blame?
Unless you live under a rock, I'm pretty sure you have come across the Bois locker room text chain. In the last week or so, there have been various debates, social media trials, and lawsuits even. For those of you who aren't aware of the issue- last week, a boy in 11th grade from one of the elite schools of Delhi shared screenshots of a text chain that he was added to called the "Bois locker room" on his Instagram story. It didn't take long for the horrifying screenshots to reach the screens of almost every school kid in NCR. The screenshots showed the harsh reality of the upcoming generations- the text chain consisted of about 40-50, 16-20-year-old guys from the most elite institutions of Delhi, sharing morphed and private pictures of girls and passing derogatory and unwanted critical remarks.
What saddened me the most was how shamelessly comfortable these young men were while objectifying women. With this one issue coming to light- there were so many others that arose with it- mental health, lack of sex education in the Indian education system, education of mental health, cyber crimes, the morphing of images, and the list goes on. So really, what is leading to this normalization of the rape culture? Everyone has a different explanation to give, some defend it with baseless arguments such as "the girls shouldn't have sent the pictures" or even worse "boys will be boys." Normalization of the rape culture and toxic masculinity happens because of the archaic ideas of male dominance that surprisingly enough, so many families still preach in India. From extremely sexist WhatsApp jokes to casually passing comments like "don't cry like a girl", slowly these "casual" jokes turn into joking about rape, passing unwanted sick comments and encouragement of deplorable mindsets. Yes, men get raped too and it is as big of an issue, but only talking about men getting raped when women getting raped is spoken about is only going two steps backward. Defending these young adults is only encouraging them to continue with this horrifying behavior. We tend to blame lack of education for the hike in rapes, but this is a clear example of the fact that education is just one of the reasons this happens, upbringing and casually throwing around sexist and offensive jokes on different social media platforms only results in encouragement.
These guys then got slapped with some well-deserved defamation since allegations were backed up with evidence, yet they had to audacity to do and defend. I personally feel that this behavior is unacceptable from and towards any gender. Gender equality cannot be achieved unless people stop defending this gross reality. There is no gender that is more superior to another. No friendship, apology, or airheaded humor takes precedence over morality. There is no euphemism that can abate how wrong this is. In the end, it's on us to decide- who is to blame.
Please share your point of view and write to me if you liked this blog!
Contact:
Email: saranyagandhi07@gmail.com
Instagram: @saranyagandhi_
I'm glad to see that you have chosen this topic as it is extremely essential for all of us to know about it. Almost all of us have heard about it and its really upsetting to see the screenshots of how they were objectifying women so casually. Your blog is quite informative as it has given us the idea about how far they went with their words and what consequences did they face for their actions. Furthermore, I feel like the organisation of your blog could have been a bit better so that the viewers would have been more engrossed while reading it. Overall, its a great topic with a great content.
ReplyDeleteI find this blog to be quite informative and the topic of this blog is well chosen. The author has used knowledge and opinions and put it out front in a well appreciated manner. I also completely agree with what the author has to say about wrong full doings of the education systems and upbringings of kids as such who dare to participate in such horrifying and degrading acts. I couldn't agree more to the fact of how our society refuses to properly educate and normalise talking about topics as such to improve the upbringing of the generation.
ReplyDelete