Thursday, January 03, 2008

Women's Hostels and Police Attitudes


I have seen lots of postings in online forums about how women are so free now and how they get preferential treatment everywhere and how men are suffering. The assumption is that social problems with respect to treatment of women in society, in public and private spaces is solved.

One of my friends stays in a women's hostel. I narrate here a list of problems they go through.

1. Near that hostel the women have been hit 3 or 4 times by guys in bikes. In a couple of cases the victim had to be treated for injuries.

2. When the hostelites complained to the Police, they were "advised" by the Police to behave. The policeman in charge told them the victims were to blame because he had seen some of the women talking over the mobile phone while walking. So he told them if they stopped talking over mobiles, the guys will stop hitting them.
(Remember that the policeman had no idea if the people who were actually hit were talking or not. He was "improvising" - he had seen too many Vijay movies with "advising").

3. The police apparently want to be sure that the women are not prostitutes. So they have asked for 3 photographs of each tenant to be given to the police station and their parents' phone numbers.

4. One of the women was dropped off by a male colleague because it was late at night. The hostel owner saw this and has asked to talk to the woman's parents to "warn" them.

Everytime someone is a victim our brave police steps in and blames the victim. They have no ability to stop wrong doing.

Secondly, can we even imagine ANY of this happening to a guy in a men's dorm or mansion (equivalent to a hostel)? When women stay alone our society gets all kinds of ideas and loves to harass the hell out of them for daring, simply daring to work. They always will be threatened by "reporting" to their parents.

I was talking to an inspector in a police station some time back. He said he found a couple of girls in the beach at 10 PM and decided they were not dressed appropriately. He called their dad and explained to him that the girls were "out of line".
The dad said he did not think they were out of line and police should not regulate how women should behave (as long as there was no violation of the law). The inspector told me that he yelled at the dad. He told the dad not to come to the police if "anything" happened to his daughters.

The inspector sounded very self-righteous. Apparently he thought he was within rights to warn women; he will not dare any such warning to the screaming, threatening bunch of thugs roaming the beach side.

Our society has pretty much accepted that women HAVE to be "controlled" or else all hell will break lose. That whatever is wrong with us today is mostly because of the way women dress. That women do not have the same rights as men.
In the above hostel incidents, the women are not even "bold" or "forward" or anything. They are just living their normal lives - while trying to escape being hit by bikes, while trying to stay in the good books of their hostel owner and while trying to stay in the good books of the police.

In the recent movie "Vel", in a completely disconnected scene, Surya sermonizes to Asin about the way women dress, and says "a woman should not expose the body meant for her husband" or some such bull. Leave alone the fact that his own former girl friend and current wife went dancing half naked in her movies. That this guy who dances for money actually "educates" our females about how to behave is the height of hypocrisy. It is not "acting" - that scene had nothing to do with the movie really.

I hope everyone who laments about how good the women have now shut the hell up after reading this.

3 comments:

r srini said...

Dai, I dont know if you have to be so worked up against Surya in your article. You see advicing is a pastime for most people including Surya, myself etc but in reality he he he he he he

Anonymous said...

I agree to most points. Why should women be restricted on clothing? It is their right to walk half or fully naked or however situation warrants. Think about how colourful the world around us would look if that happens. Men are spoiling this chance to make lives brighter. Idiots.

Destination Infinity said...

I dont have any problem with any woman/girl wearing the dress they like. Except Meera Jasmine.

:-)

Destination Infinity.