The Politics of being a Woman

Now none of this is to allow you to infer my personal feelings on the current Sushant Singh Rajput case or my feelings on Kangana Ranaut, but this week was an embarrassment!

Whatever the final outcome of the SSR case may be; the hounding of a woman as she entered a CBI space for questioning was deplorable. Not only did we not maintain ‘social distance’, we invaded her space as if she had no right to even move or even have space. We poked, prodded and pushed her and captured every humiliation of hers and devoured it in glee.

And then we disallowed a comment made by Kangana and decided to abuse her in public and then proceeded to tear her office down which she spent years to own and build.

In one case we took away the freedom of woman to be able to be- to have even basic personal space and in the other we took away the right of free speech. Why should a woman be allowed an opinion at all?

And the criticism I have is not whether these women are right or wrong but how we went about making our displeasure/ opinions known. We asked for the CBI, but then when they come in, we still don’t think justice will be served by them? We still think we are better judges of character and that a public humiliation is what a woman deserves? We want freedom of speech; but only if what she says is what we completely agree with. A woman can’t or mustn’t have a contradictory opinion to a man and god forbid he’s a powerful man; then the only recourse must be to break down her home and shun her away from a place she’s paid for , built and lived in cos after all she doesn’t deserve a home if she has an opinion contradictory to yours!

I have always been of the opinion that there is often no right or wrong; but a grey area where often the truth resides. But humiliating women in public is not a grey area- it’s a black, black area which cannot and must not be tolerated. Whatever yours or my personal opinions may be on this – there is a right way of handling the situation and a wrong way of handling the situation and we went very, very wrong.

P.s.(Palat says)-: Take away all your personal opinions and just close your eyes and imagine for a moment she wasn’t another woman; imagine she was you. How would you feel then?