The Shared Responsibility to Protect The Vulnerable

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Perpetrators very often go scot-free due to many reasons. Their position in society and the overall silence of the bystanders around such matters being primary. The largely deaf ear and blind eye towards quiet sufferers, scared voices, especially of children, can be excruciatingly painful. The resultant slut-shaming and self-damning guilt of survivors with questions and comments like, “They must have asked for it!” “What was she wearing?” ,”Why was I there in the first place? It’s my fault being there at that time..!!“, etc, are enough to avoid reporting the incident altogether. The victim – no, the survivor has already been judged… and continues to live chained in relentless agony.

As a community, we are taught to shy away from difficult conversations and in the process end up shielding criminals while putting more vulnerable people at risk.

We have a moral obligation and shared responsibility to care for the most vulnerable in our community and to ensure our communities are safe for everyone to live wholesome lives. We need to go above & beyond our discomfort with hard questions and actively create safe spaces instead of engaging in whataboutery with respect to a handful of mistrials and misuse of resources. We have history speaking of centuries of oppression against women and the marginalized, yet to challenge the creation of change, we want to hang on to the flimsy excuses of a handful of instances where a man was framed.

Then there is the matter of privilege of one’s gender that is simply not acknowledged and the Not-All-Men trope is announced with much gusto.

I have known some brilliant men in my life – kind, compassionate, caring, respectful, gentle – really lovely men who embody genuine masculine energy – not toxic patriarchal assholery. They also have their flaws, who doesn’t? They are not perfect – I do not claim them to be… but they acknowledge the privilege they have in the real world. And then there are those who flinch so hard at the thought of equitable spaces and the conversation of the right to safe spaces for all genders. One would think that giving someone their right would mean taking someone else’s. The classic quote of equal rights not being pie always comes to mind.

While #NotAllMen is a legit idea, what we tend to disregard is that while not all men as culpable, ALL MEN do enjoy the benefits of male privilege and patriarchal investiture. On that note it is a moral duty of ALL MEN to stand up to the creeps in society who give them a bad name instead of getting offended when we share our stories and engage in whataboutery and misplaced defensiveness with #NotAllMen. Stand up for what is right!

At the same time, it also makes me wonder if the vehement resistance is due to their culpability in similar crimes themselves! Are they scared of being outed? Are they so aware of their misdemeanors and past sins that they just worry about being caught? Or are they just scared that with more education of the society and heightened vigilance, their pool of easy prey would now start to dwindle!?

The thought is scary – but it is also a dangerous possibility.

Part 1: The Need to Talk About Women & Child Safety

Part 3: And So I Speak

The Need to Talk About Women & Child Safety

I’ve been having many conversations on Women and Children’s Safety in India of late. Interestingly, I wasn’t prepared for the level of resistance to many processes and initiatives to keep women and children safe or even to initiate the conversation. The excuses were usually the cases of the misuse of law and legal resources by women that are highlighted to undermine the genuine trauma, PTSD, abuse and violence faced by the majority of victims and survivors.

As a community, however, we do not speak openly and compassionately of such matters – leaving those who suffer to languish in misplaced shame and devoid of the support of family or friends.

This is a long discussion, but some key thoughts I’d to share:

1. Sexual harassment is not just groping, physical assault or rape. Unnecessary and uncalled for lewd comments, leering and ogling, making suggestive actions etc. are all forms of harassment that make the target of such behaviors feel uncomfortable and violated. Also remember, there can be no tangible proof for such behaviors.
2. A victim of such harassment will very often not complain because of the shame they will experience and that they (and their body) will be treated like an object for public discussion – without empathy or sympathy.
3. The perpetrator will often cockily walk away with the ready and self-exonerating statements like, ‘If I made them feel uncomfortable, they should have said something to me and I would have stopped. They didn’t – actually, THEY were flirting with ME – They wanted to sleep with me.“… No, it doesn’t work that way. The space created was not a safe space… and the responsibility is not on the victim to educate a creep of misbehavior when their primary objective is to get away from a threatening space and a dangerous person.
4. Victims are usually hesitant to report incidents because they feel the onus of showing proof is on them. How do you prove that a lecher’s behavior, especially when no one else was around, made you uncomfortable? How do you prove that you were molested if there aren’t any cameras to capture the deed? And then, who walks away with their head held high?
5. Present day teenagers and children are most vulnerable as they appear to be more aware with facts. Sadly, having to deal with pedophiles while they are still learning their way through adolescence is a terrifying ordeal to endure.

Part 2: The shared responsibility to protect the vulnerable.

To Teacher, With Love

I’d love you to meet my high school English teacher, Reeny Georgie – a woman of exemplary grace, calm, poise & elegance. Today, 30 years later, our relationship has evolved from that of a teacher & her student, to a cherished friendship as two adult women navigating life on our own terms. Here’s a story you would want to hear… more so, because it is a story that I want to share with you all.

I met Miss Reeny – the erstwhile convent way of addressing our teachers – in September 1993 as I entered Grade 11 just after the Gulf War in Kuwait. She taught me English in Grade 11 & 12 and was also our class teacher in the final school year. We took the same school bus – me with my siblings, she with her three young children. While her oldest was my sister’s classmate, the youngest was a kindergartener with whom I used to have the most amazing chats possible! Almost a decade between us, that little fella was the first one to excitedly call me, ‘Dude!’

It must come as little surprise that Miss Reeny was one of my favorite teachers – English being one of my favorite subjects! But I really did enjoy English. I would love it when it was my turn to read out loud and still remember being choked with emotion as I was passionately emoting the part of ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ in our English reader as we studied a text on ‘The Titanic’. We spoke about it on our way back home that afternoon. I didn’t think much about it back then, but today I recognize it as a very meaningful exchange – I was all of 16 and discussing ‘life’ and ’emotions’ with my English teacher who somehow seemed to get me and didn’t infantilize my thoughts.

Anyway, Miss Reeny had this look about her that captivated me from the first time I saw her. Her calm and gentle mannerism alongside her very intense, intuitive and contemplative gaze was simply fascinating! I had been in that school since kindergarten but she was different and unlike many of the other teachers. She came across has someone who did her own thing and didn’t have much time for riff-raff. I have no idea what happened in the Staff Room, but she appeared to be ‘different’. In my view, I liked her and I got along well with her. I didn’t really know what she saw in me. To be honest, I didn’t think teachers did that with their students at all – ‘see’ them beyond school work, that is!

Over the years, however, Miss Reeny & I, we stayed in touch. I would visit school every time I visited Kuwait and enjoy sharing my stories with her. Later, social media made it easier to stay connected and we would interact more frequently over each other’s photographs, milestones and life events.

In recent years, however, especially over the past 7-8 years, Miss Reeny and I got very close. Our relationship has shifted markedly to one of maturity and womanhood – empathy and spiritual exchange. Words truly fall short when I try to explain the kind of relationship I have with her today.

Our conversations revolved around books, feminism, life, parenting and caregiving. We talk about our spiritual outlook to life and philosophical sustenance is something we seem to bring to the table together. We share snippets of our experiences as mothers and daughters. And, most importantly, we have somehow created a sacred space of openness and vulnerability for both of us that I have with very few others in my adult life. She is always one of the first to applaud my achievements and right there in my chatbox if she senses that my posts are taking a turn towards dark humor insinuating an underlying crisis.

Would it suffice to say that she has seen me at my lowest and has still cheered me on endlessly? She has popped into my messenger numerous times to remind me that she is waiting for me at the finish line, cheering me on to keep going. No, it wouldn’t suffice to just say that… Because while she cheers me on and we talk about all sorts of things under the sun, I also know that she is one of the rare folks with the emotional intelligence and capacity to hear me out, hold space for me and still soothe me when I try to make sense of this crazy thing called life.

She is one of the first people who come to my mind when I have to share important news – be it on matters of love, loss or heartbreak. And I know when I share, I will be met with confidence and absolutely no judgement. Sometimes, I just rant because, well, an English teacher can read through – and she doesn’t make a fuss with typos & grammar either. 🙂

Miss Reeny is one of the very few people who has known me for the past 30 years and seen me grow from a teenager to the adult woman I am today. When I read her messages to me, especially on days that I wish for some tender gooey loving comfort, I feel seen and heard and known and understood. She is also the only teacher, who calls me Luvi after I left school. Who wouldn’t want to be cared for?

This is something she sent me a few days back in response to a very challenging experience that I had shared with her:

Imagine that! Someone, who isn’t my parent, who saw me when I was 15 or 16 and recognized me in a way that even I didn’t see myself. I didn’t even know I was half those things – but she did.

Where does childhood end and adulthood commence? When do we pause to see ourselves as who we are becoming? And when do we even pause to see someone else become the best version of themselves possible? And do we even take the time out to tell them?

My conversation with Miss Reeny a few days back was wholesome. I needed a loving voice to remind me that I was walking an insanely painful path as best as I could. She showed up for me with all her kindness and warmth and just reminded me of the goodness that existed – both in & around me – through my children, partner and even my friends – some of whom she knows from school.

I write today, with utmost candor, that relationships are complex. And people judge. Yet, there are those amongst us who recognize the complexities of life and challenges and step in to be a little pinkie finger that you can hold on to and navigate the next foothold.

We finish school and get on to building careers and raising families – sometimes we remember our teachers for different reasons. Sometimes, our teachers remain with us – not to teach us anything more academic, but to remind us that we walk in life together. That our joys, and our pain, are shared. That a bond between a teacher and her student, need not be just that – but one of genuine care, concern, and love.

It isn’t maternal, or sisterly; nor is it just womanhood or simply human. It is something else altogether. And I will stop analyzing it.

Thank you for allowing me to share Miss Reeny with you all… because for everything that she does and for all the ways she reaches out to me, she is super special…

Me: Independent, Sovereign, Free, Complete…

‘Freedom is a state of mind’ – as a yoga practitioner, I think I’ve heard this often enough and taught this in various shades of essential philosophy.

For many, if not most of us, we need to feel the true liberation in our bodies – physical liberation – from power structures and systems. Freedom is unfathomable to the many who live through the daily grind & cycle of hurt, pain, injustices, prejudices, bloodshed, terror, violence, abuse, grief, sorrow…. etc

For some blessed folks, the threshold of physical limitation has been overcome and, despite their physical pain, they go on to live in the bliss of mental liberation. Not many of us are there yet.

So, we only breathe in the air of true freedom when we’ve broken the invisible chains of visible barriers, toxic relationships and past mistakes. Sometimes, those are also visible shackles, and we may remain blind to them too, or just too numb and tired to even move them, let alone break away from.

Over the past many years, I’ve slowly inched myself away from visible chains to invisible restraints. My restraints were largely ‘for the sake of my children’. But realising that they were the ones being played as pawns was the last push needed.

The last contraction, the most painful, the birth, and the scream that accompanies the first breath, the first exhale…. and then the cord is cut.

Rebirth.

These past 2 months were my moment of rebirth. Having cut the cords that attempted to manipulate and call the shots in my life, they were rendered powerless.

One weak man who used every despicable trick to harm a woman and children and get away with it – was left powerless. No more avenues to play with innocent, trusting lives.

Last night, as I held my oldest in my arms as he battled with the tightly held emotions of years of betrayal, I knew he was making his own journey to freedom. I think I birthed him again. What else could I do but that?

So, Independence.

We breathe that breath of freshness today, my children and I, from this place of raw Independence (in body and mind).
And I, as a woman, reclaim my freedom of body, mind, spirit and resources, my agency, my sovereignty, my everything.

Happy Independence Day!

Selfie depicting what freedom in an Indian woman looks like.

How Women Entrepreneurs Planned My Wedding Today

The Women of Kanara Entrepreneurs (KE) – Bangalore Chapter

It all began this morning when my wedding planner friend Zeeta D’Souza of Why Knot, shared an album of her work in the Women’s vertical of my Community business network group, Kanara Entrepreneurs. If anything, I am one self-proclaimed sappy romantic, so Zeeta’s portfolio showcasing her dreamy floral wedding arrangements and designs brought out my wistful longing. In every bit of breathy honesty possible on a WhatsApp group, my appreciation for her business included, “Makes me want to have a wedding myself!”

That’s it! That’s all I said! What followed, however, was not just an avalanche of comments from the members that, one by one, built on my wedding plan, but also a joyously, impromptu exposition of individual businesses and skills that were available in the group.

It started with Sharmila Martis, Founder Director of Gift of Time Foundation, India, offered to have my wedding organized and all I need to do was say when! Over the next few minutes, these women left no stone unturned by presenting their skills and businesses to help plan my wedding:

• Wedding Cake: Charmaine Saldanha of Charm’s Homemade Goodness
• Pork, Wine & Liability Honeymooner Insurance: Leena Lobo of Angelina Consultancy Services
• Make up by Juliet Miranda of Juliet Makeovers
• The venue at Yarash Farms from Irene James
• Wedding Hampers from Greta’s Essentials
• A yummy chocolate body polish to even prepare for some good honeymooning from bluOilz
• Wedding gown from Lovina Monteiro of Gene…Brides
• Vrinda Lewis offered an end-to-end image consultancy for me, the spellbound bride, right from Wardrobe evaluation to Wedding Day!

Oh, and while we have this entire team that have about 90% of my most special day all planned out with all the love and joy that a sisterhood can bring in, we know that the guest list will definitely include the larger KE members outside of the Women’s group and so will catering, social media and music because I know the community has gone some great folks doing that work too! Wait to see them in the comments once this article gets published!

I mean, well, what more could a girl ask for?!

Why is this story here on LinkedIn?* Not necessarily as a #FridayFunday post, but also to show, as a friend indicated when I told him about this, how these women were shamelessly generou! All this for one of their tribe who had simply expressed a nostalgic thought – who just loved weddings, a little romance here and there and had that WhatsApp chat group buzzing with business pitches. A B2C linehaul was all set and ready to move at one A-OK from, ahem, this bride-to-be! So now, here I am helping shine some light on their businesses in return!

Oh… there was, however, one important thing missing for the wedding and it was most heart-warming offer from Coreen D’souza Fareed of Goodwill Leathers who offered to do her very best to fix it. She agreed to play Matchmaker and find me an available groom! Yeah.. sorry, I failed to mention it earlier. I mean, yeah.. sorry, but it was an exercise on self promotion and a need-based community effort all at once! And it was so much fun! I actually felt like all that was left was to send out the invites… Sigh!

The other option that still seems most lucrative is to just go ahead and have my very own wedding party as is, groom-no groom notwithstanding! Right?

Either way, Zeeta is definitely hired for setting things in motion. Also, just saying, she is definitely my event planner of choice and would most likely be the first to know about any change in my status!

Go ahead folks, check their businesses out and yes, they are fab at what they do… not just putting it together on paper but to actually executing it!

Have a great Friday, folks! This potential bride-to-be is all smiles today!

*This blog was first published on LinkedIn on 27th May 2022.

The Perverse Joy in Shaming..

Yesterday I addressed a group of womxn who had registered for my session and logged in from across India & other countries to hear me speak. Some 240+ registrations I think…I absolutely LOVED the hour I had & shared about dysmorphia, self love, acceptance, sexuality, ageism, parenting with body acceptance and, of course, an attitude of unapologetic radical kicka*s self love. I chose to speak without a script because conversations reach the heart only when they’re had in spaces encouraging vulnerability, integrity, community and unflinching authenticity – values that The Curvy Yogi is built on… values, without which, my identity would tremble.

The image below is me just as the session was starting. I loved the way I looked – it wasn’t just the lighting – it was how I felt because of a number of factors and a number of things that happened earlier.

The inserted comment in the image arrived earlier yesterday – one of many others. Receiving hate mail & harassment is not acceptable but in many unfortunate scenarios it is also normalized as ‘to be expected’. To be honest, I don’t get lots and I’m very grateful for that, but sometimes some come in for a number of reasons.

Why do I share it here today?

Because in view of the conversation I led last evening, this comment asks me, “Do you accept this label (& slur)?”

My answer: “No, I do not.”

1. I’m not a cow – I have 23 pairs of chromosomes which, when I last checked, still make me human. I’m also a woman with all the right stuff in all the right places – more of me to hold, more of me to love, no?

2. I’m fat, yes… so? Do I walk with a filter so people cannot see the curves where they are? People ‘choose’ to like, love, accept me as they’ve seen me because they’ve seen me, because they’ve interacted with me… and for those very reasons. Also, I’m pretty awesome all by myself too!

3. I love cows! They’re big and graceful, have great eyelashes, give to the ungrateful milk industry and drop poop wherever they want to without even batting an eyelid. I mean, seriously!

So, folxs, I know a fresh introduction about me is overdue, but here’s a sneak preview either way: I may have lost a titanium implant but the steel and iron that reinforces the gold, platinum and diamond inside laced with oomph, power and chutzpah, hahah…. #LeavingTheRestUnsaid

Also, fyi, to clarify, the comment didn’t come during the session or from any of the super awesome hosts & participants. It was completely exclusive of this session.

This Thing Called Rape Culture

Yesterday, a girl was being harassed by a stranger on Instagram – asking her out for coffee. She said no and to please stop messaging her because she didn’t know him. He apologised and went away. For a few hours! Only to come back with “Hi…” ‘How are you?” & “I can’t stop myself”… The girl gives him a piece of her mind, threatens to shame him on FB & goes on to do just that.

What unfolded thereafter was priceless.

There were women supporting the girl or standing up for herself and outing the guy who couldn’t take no for an answer.

There were a few supportive men but one man, in particularly who consistently vocalised his support for the girl and for her standing up.

There were a few who went on with the you shouldn’t have spoken to him, you shouldn’t have snubbed the poor guy, he was only asking you out for coffee….. that crap…

And then, there were the MRAs – heard of them? Male Rights Activists who, you know, suddenly read a couple of articles here & there, appreciate the current jargon and assume themselves to be politically correct by throwing in key words that allege allyship.

And that’s where things took a turn for me.

You see, the rate of violent crimes against women – domestic violence, sexual violence, online harassment, in person harrassment, etc… has only been on a consistent rise. With the rise of the feminist movement (which is not ‘anti-men‘, by the way), a lot of groups who misunderstand the term or take it too literally, end up messing up with the movement entirely. So anyway,  in this entire business of keeping our girls safe, there is this whole new idea of policing them ‘for their own good’ and training them in kick boxing & martial arts, not for the love of it or for the health aspect, but more so as a tool to keep them safe from a potential assault / attack / rape.

In short, telling our girls and women to learn how to keep themselves safe – avoid eye contact, dress up.. no strike that… cover up!, don’t tell men to go away, learn self defense, etc.. and all of these ideas are only taught so that if and when the unthinkable happens, it gets to be OH SO EASY to tell the girl, ‘You shouldn’t have done that!‘ or ‘You should’ve done xyz‘ – the onus is put on the woman to explain herself, and take responsibility for the incident. The assault and the attacker – who, in the entire narrative, is either long forgotten or categorised as the poor guy while the woman’s character is being assassinated, past faux pas pulled out of the closet and all that drama.

So here’s how things unfolded for me in this entire drama.

Going back to the 12 odd comments before I came into the conversation, I couldn’t be bothered with the public shaming the girl engaged. That’s the least of my concerns. He was a creep and not someone she knew – one of those PM trolls. Neither shaming nor engaging with such fools is my style, so not commenting on either. However, what was bothersome was the open shaming that her so-called ‘friends’ were throwing her way.

My comment in the conversation was in shock & disgust at them and in the context of the policing that was being freely given to the girl. It went like this:

“This is like teaching the girls martial arts so that they can ward off ‘potential rapists’ – ffs why should they train in martial arts to keep themselves safe instead of for better coordination or strength or something else?! The jerk didn’t know what no means and if he ‘cant help himself’ then he deserves worse than what you gave him.”

Of all the comments on the thread, it took one chauvinist to pick on this one because of ‘potential rapists‘ and his assumption that I had likened the troll harasser to a ‘potential rapist’ and that the girl had several chances to clearly close the conversation rather than leave it open when he persisted. See where this is going? The conversation went back & forth with male fragility reeking in every response and the patriarchy practically waiting to burst in flames of fury at me when….

wait for it…

The chauvinist is joined by his wife. What better way to slam a woman speaking tough words than by sending in another woman, right? Well, bang on right!!! This woman how turns out to be the ideal desi wife – uber supportive of her husband’s stand and pointing fingers and creating pedestals for me to sit atop and later dragging her own into the picture (definitely higher than mine)… Oh, what followed was the saccharine sweet mess of husband & wife trolling the posts, Liking & Loving each others comments (yeah this was fun to watch) and applauding each other’s goodness for all to see and dragging old crap of the girl in question’s to prove that they’re better…

OMG… this was a guidebook for the patriarchal misogyny 101.

Yeah somewhere in the middle, they kinda forgot about me – poor me, not getting the attention that these kindergarteners were so desperately seeking. Out of nowhere the couple get 2 assistants, one of whom pinches a picture from my facebook featured pics and posts in in the comments and openly asks me out (I think he asked me out, silly me) for coffee, and another jumps in to make some lame, “No wonder y’all are single.” comment.

Ok…. so what’s the deal?

The deal is that this kind of behaviour right from asking for coffee to the social structure of victim shaming & gaslighting especially when women speak out against online harrassment is nothing but misogyny and a kick in the gut of every single girl & woman out there who struggles with it. It is easy to label every woman who cries foul as a misandrist and not true to the cause of feminism and equality. They fail to work on their inner patriarchal prejudice and male fragility and they fail even more to see that the misogyny rests with a lot of the women too. I’ll bet my last penny that this guy who was making all these tall claims would have been raised in a patriarchal family and most likely with no sisters. His mother probably endured violence and they have either learnt to normalize it or learnt that they should say the right things to be perceived as politically correct but end up doing all the opposite shit, thinking all the polar opposite thoughts and then getting a handful of applause from others who are obviously just as entrenched in the misogynistic parlay of everyday existence.

Yes, shit stinks.

But then, there is something called as hoping to set the ball rolling and getting education right. Right? So here were some thoughts that I posted back on to the thread. As expected, there has been not one comment on it after that…. either they’ve realised what idiots they have been sounding like.. or.. they really are the idiots and chose to finally shut their trap. [A=girl who posted, X=Guy who took offense, Y=His Wife]

Let’s get a couple of things straight – not because I need to ever explain myself, but because if you people are the kind of woke youth living with the pseudo feminism that you are flaunting then you DO need this education. What you do with it is your thing. Most likely, you’ll ignore is as ignorance speaking – but somewhere sometime when it comes to bite you in the rear end, perhaps you’ll know how to deal with it.

1. My original comment was not in response to A’s OP, it was in response to the 12 other comments with various takes on it. It was in response to those comments that were giving A advice on what she should’ve/could’ve done to keep her space safe instead of addressing & denouncing the guy’s behavior. THAT kind of a response is no different from telling women that when they are eve-teased or harassed or raped that they asked for it because of the clothes they were wearing or because they were spotted at a bar.

2. Although X keeps saying that he agrees with a no is a no is a no, he also keeps harping on the fact that A shouldn’t have led the guy on with open ended questions etc… The onus is being shifted to A in this case. As far as the guy’s behavior… X indicates that his “approach could have been better”. THIS IS MAN TALK. He (X) may not have heard the term, but he sure as hell engages in it – shrouded in pseudofeminist terms like, “I’m all for women being safe.” Sure you are! Sounds sexist to him & his wife because a woman called him out on HIS BS. So be it. Bite me! This is a man literally making an allowance for a dude to ask a girl out for coffee – all he needs is a fine tuning of his approach so that her ‘no’ would probably be coaxed into a ‘yes’.

3. Calling this out as ‘man talk’ is then labeled as a sexist remark & ‘bad behavior’ by a woman supporting ‘her husband’… who thinks that I asked him to stay out of the conversation because he’s a man. No, stay in the conversation if you add value to it – NOT because you want to come in to tell a woman who is angry at being harassed, how she should have responded instead. That is an attempt to mansplain her choice and no, he does not have the right to do that, not even if his unconsciously patriarchal wife believes it is. How she expresses herself is entirely her entitlement.

4. For the ‘how would you feel?” bit…. Silly me… these people are on the ‘equality’ trail – throwing politically correct jargon without really even seeing the woods for the trees. My question to the wife is, when your husband will tell you what you ‘should have done’ instead of expressing your anger in whatever way you feel is right (or express it in a way that doesn’t rock the patriarchal boat of male fragile egos), then perhaps you will know what it feels like to be told what to do instead of standing up for outing someone who is on the path to rape culture.

5. Rape Culture is a thing – I’ll post a pyramid below that’ll help you see where you & others who liked your pseudo righteous speeches for equality stand.

6. The word is equity not equality. Look it up.

7. X says, “Make is a strong no” – why?? Why should she make it a strong no? Is a softer first time, ‘no’ not enough? Or do people need multiple opportunities to try and try until they succeed in getting her to say, ‘yes’?

8. Gaslighting – you’re right, you won’t find ONE instance – you’ll find plenty. You’re holding the match stick! Every time you are asking A to second guess why she is upset and she could’ve done it differently, that the poor guy was just innocently asking her out (like a creepy troll on IG DMs) and has been so ruthlessly been outed – it is asking her to rethink her upset, it is gasligthing.

9. Oh yeah, to the guy who skimmed my picture off my profile, I hope you enjoy it! And to X & the other guys who liked his comment asking me out for coffee – enjoy the joke? – well, a person who laughs at that is doing exactly what this post is all about – a guy has taken my picture, downloaded it, reposted it without my permission and it gets likes & encouragement from other guys. Are we talking sense of humor here or something else? Sense of humor I guess… C’mon boys, let’s all have a party here at the expense of this woman who asked a man to shut up & keep the explanations to himself. You have proven to me & maybe to yourselves that participating in such behavior & possibly calling it humor IS being part of the problem & you have done exactly that.

10. Finally, you don’t have to be a woman to stand for feminism and feminism does not mean hating men and neither does standing against patriarchy mean hating men. For the dimwit incel who thinks we’re all single – haha.. shine on! Perhaps somehow you’ll get lucky, in the meanwhile, intelligent men will hopefully continue make their mark & find their way to make this place a better one.

Bottom line, this is not new or a first. This happens every day and all the time… all over the world. This is violence against women – online harassment – and guess what else? It is a constant systemic effort to shut women up… and it doesn’t just happen at the hands of men, women openly and aggressively engage in this. Funnily enough, women shush up harassment of women but freely and willingly call out other women who call out men.  Sometimes it is just because of vengeful misgivings of the past, but vocal women seem to get it double time.

And of course, #NotAllMen and #NotAllWomen

This one thing, the thing all online harassment of women stems from, is the desire to stop women from sharing their opinions and thoughts on the Internet — to chip away at our power and presence in an increasingly important space.

~ Sara Alcid – Everyday Feminism

Phew! This definitely needed telling… this needed the emotional labour.. this earned the massive headache I have since last night from this puke-worthy debate with people more than a decade younger than me – our youth! Youth who dropped ten huge rocks in my gut just thinking about the kind of adults’ hands we are leaving our tomorrows in. This is where these upholding citizens of our community end up perpetuating these sickening values of harm and self-righteous but misplaced elements of equality and political correctness.

Sigh! Will this ever end? Will these people ever grow up? Sadly, I have personal experience with people hitting their mid forties and showing no sign of maturity or any evidence of understanding their gender-based privilege and demonstrating their misogyny in full effect. These folks, yesterday, I’m willing to guess that they didn’t know the full impact of their words & behavior and were just gushing with the effect of the fire of youth (and some lingering adolescence lol) to want to have the last word, gang up on social media by calling in friends to prove a point, and bolster some inadequacies with self-promotion. I wish a voice of reason and attempt to understand was demonstrated instead of a vile attacking of each other’s characters and social reach.

Until then, we watch the gloves and we watch the hands – hand in glove in this scary beat dance called Rape Culture.

Validation – From My Daughter

A few weeks ago, he challenged me – more than challenged, he threatened me via email that in some years, my child – his child, too – would turn into an ‘alcoholic and a drug addict’.

That was a defining moment for me.

I wasn’t as shaken as I was angry – angry because this was a ‘man‘ who was using his own children as a means to harass and hurt me. I took a few days to digest this fresh awareness of another impossible low in a relationship I cannot believe I spent so many years in, then something else happened. I began to wonder what this daily battle was going to look like – what this steep uphill trek of single motherhood, single parenting would open up for me.

The past three months have been hard – very hard. You see, there are moments that are ‘hard’ and then there are moments that go like, ‘She’s-still-standing-&-smiling-&-laughing,-unshaken,-so-let-me-up-the-heat-&-start-burning-her’ hard.

I’ll be honest, I worried.

I worry. Present tense.

I worry how I’m going to make ends meet, how I’ll give my children an education, how I’ll feed, clothe, shelter them… and honestly, how I would do all this single handedly…. I worry about the unwarranted stress the children are very likely going through at the hands of an absent father who wasn’t even paying for their food & education. I worry that this turmoil, at such turning points in the children’s lives could put them on precarious cross roads & I wondered if I was instilling strong enough values in them to help them get through life.

In other words, even though I worry about how I would get all these things done and somehow I still get them done, I had bought in to his horrid threat and allowed it to grip and freeze my heart.

Then, yesterday happened.

I got home after a long Wednesday of meetings and classes to find my youngest sprawled asleep on the couch and my daughter bounding up to me excited to share some of her Halloween candy with me. I was starving and didn’t have an opportunity to have dinner so she got a mooli paratha* (spiced radish flat bread) and shoved it in my mouth while I was grumbling about the mess the dogs had created somewhere in the house… and how I’d have to clean up soon after getting home after such a long day…. at the same time, coordinating with my oldest to book him a cab home from the Halloween party he had attended with his friends.

I looked up to see her sitting in front of me with an excited expression on her face.

‘Ma, I want to tell you something, but I don’t know how you’ll react..”

Now this could go in two directions – either she got her period or it was one of those moments when she forgets that her Insta account is on my phone & I don’t believe in anything called online privacy for a 12-yr-old daughter… Either way, I kinda sensed where it was going… but… it was her moment, not mine…

So as I chewed my paratha, I said, “Well, you’ll never know how I’ll react until you tell me and see my reaction…”

With that goofy smile still plastered on her face she told me, “XYZ asked me out…”

Omg!!! I thought that was the cutest and nicest thing to ever happen – and as she continued to narrate the when and the how and how she played a bit hard-to-get (wtg!! That’s my girl!) and how she didn’t want to really bunk school tomorrow anymore (hello??), I continued to giggle with her and really re-live and re-witness those very feelings of first crushes and infatuation – a throwback to similar moments of my own….

And she laughed as she said, “You’re not reacting the way I thought you would!! I thought you’d be all…” and she made one of those crazy, rabid dog-cross-Tasmanian-devil imitation faces…. “but you’re like this!”

We immediately went on to video call my sister so Rhea could share her moment with her favourite aunt and in that half hour, we three Rangel women spoke and giggled and laughed ourselves silly… and felt like life wasn’t so hard after all!

As we spoke, I checked in with myself… to just come to terms with what really was happening on the inside .. and very, very honestly, all I could feel was lightness, happiness and innocent joy. I wasn’t over thinking, I wasn’t over reacting, there was no panic…. all there was, was this settled knowing that my daughter came to me.

She opened up to me with this very precious, very important moment of her life. She trusted me.

Over the years, as the mother of a daughter, who, for what it’s worth, was very fond of being her father’s princess, I worried if I had built enough bridges that would stand the test of stormy times. I worried if my daughter would succumb to pressure or so much of the crap that children these days are exposed to. I wondered if I was too tough as a parent and had lost their trust to open up to me about important matters.

Yesterday, Rhea redeemed me of that worry.

Two weeks ago, my oldest had a heart-to-heart chat with me about drugs and weed and I’ll confess, I kept a straight face, but my head going, “omg… wtf.. WTF!!” on manic loop… and he went on to say, “Listen, Mama, don’t worry… I’m telling you this, aren’t I? I tell you everything, you know that…” and I do…

But for that scary nail-biting thing called self-doubt…

For the most part, the six of us (me + three human children + two canine babies) are like a boisterous lot of roomies. I lose it at times (read: many times) in the face of having to lose sleep, send them off to school, work & overwork, manage school activities, get groceries, be available physically and emotionally, clean up after the dogs – poop, pee, puke (theirs, not mine!) – so yes, I lose it often. I scream, I shout, I yell – to wake them up in the mornings and to keep them off from annoying each other… and to just get them into bed on time, so I can catch some zzzs…

I paused & thought about what exactly I did right, after all?! At first all I could think of were the numerous ‘stereotyped parenting no-nos‘ that I had committed – I screamed, I shouted, I was demanding, sometimes it was because-I-said-so, other times it was ‘go make yourself a sandwich’, they’ve heard me at my eloquent best and well, they’ve also heard me punctuate every sentence with profanities at times when a clean, quiet sentence would just not do justice to the frustration and angst within. So, I bashed myself up and was ready to put myself down yet again, until another voice said, “Well, you also showed up real & true wherever you were.”

Not saying that being authentic meant cussing every time things went out of hand, but well, I guess, when I did, I showed up with all my flaws in front of my kids. I wasn’t perfect, I was flawed, but here I was. I was fiercely protective about my kids, stood up for them at every step of the way, filled in eyes & a smiley on their zeroes and boxed their ears when they deserved it. I embarrassed them by dancing in public and had straight-faced, honest conversations with them about life choices, men, women, sex, romance, body parts, responsibilities, drugs, pregnancies, growing up, growing old, fashion, relationships, everything (in varying age-appropriate levels)…. and yet, remained a mom when mom needed to step in.

I guess somewhere in those ‘being real’ moments, I had broken down barriers and walls and paved the way for open access for my children to their mother. Someone they could reach out to. I reckon they’ve figured out when they can mess around and when they can ‘summon’ the dragon-slaying, steadfast ‘mom’.

So back to that threat that their father threw at me about how my children would turn out.

I realized how strongly rooted I was in the values that my parents and family had instilled in me… through living those principles and not shoving it down our throats. As an individual, my own choices helped to serve as a navigator to other values, yet the central axis remained steady. And now, I see that in showing up, flaws and all, my children are learning lessons that are far more profound and grounding…. and there’s a gradual osmosis of values.

In that awareness, there is validation…. of a job well done… of children turning up just fine. And it isn’t that validation is always required, just that sometimes, in those dark and doubtful moments, when everything looks bleak and impossible, it helps beautifully to be reminded that despite the stumbles and falls, the path is unfolding… and it is the right path you are trekking on.

So, yes, we’ll still have our struggles until this cycle of struggling comes to an end as it would eventually.

But until then….

I can see clearly now and trust that the Universe indeed has my back.

Doing a good job there, Mama! Hang in there!

The Fantasy of a Strong Woman

Let’s see, patriarchy is a crappy system for us – ALL of us! We have many women and ‘aware’ men (or so we ALL like to believe) who stand up for a world based on equity and parity. Yet, patriarchy is a bloody truth that we all are a part of.

So where does the strong woman come in? She comes in to defy the very fabric of the stereotype. She stands up, even though she has been broken, and she stands tall and steely, through blood, bruises, tears, whatever…. and guess wtf happens?

The boys club rallies together in support of the patriarchy. Yesterday I saw first hand the coming together of ‘men’ in solidarity with one of their own – a man who openly, cockily & haughtily admitted to doing what he did They steadfastly arrived to be there by HIS side but also refused to meet the eye of the woman who was standing all by herself at the other side doing what needed to be done. Men who knew this woman, interacted with her, spoke to her, apparently ‘held her in high regard’… all that BS… but when push came to shove, and despite knowing that she could have done with at least a supportive word or an unbiased “Do you need a ride home?”, they ignored her – IGNORED her like a stranger. And, gave company to an arrogant, abusive jerk – because, well, all in the name of US v/s her.

Perhaps things would have been different if she just toed the line & fit the image of a weak woman who would be the ever compassionate & forgiving picture of Indian docility and brush everything under the carpet…. then perhaps they would be happy to help an Ideal Indian Woman who they would come forward to help – allowing their chivalry an opportunity to shine.

Strong women? Nah! Weak men cannot handle strong women…

That is the reality of the people we live with. So here’s to Strong Women, may we know them, may be raise them, may we be them!