A little over a couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with someone I know. I asked for her opinion about a story I had read. “Why do you want to know?” she shot back.
It was uncharacteristic of the thoughtful, intelligent, fun woman I know (or thought I knew). I asked why, she parried, and then a little later, as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer, she told me this:
She was at a dinner party shortly prior to our chat, with her husband and four other couples. The wine flowed, so did the conversation. It’s an eclectic group, ours, so the topics tend to be wide-ranging at times, she explained. And so they were heatedly discussing something, and one of the company turned to my friend and asked her what she thought.
Oh, her husband laughed, don’t bother asking her, unless it is about whether Ranbir and Katrina should get married.
“I was stunned, shamed,” my friend said. “My husband and I have endless, often heated, discussions about all sorts of things — it is not as if he thinks I only do Bollywood. But that was not it, really — he was ‘being jolly’, ‘just joking’. ‘You know I think highly of you,’ he told me later. And that is what hurt — I get ‘jokes’, but did he really not see how wounding that off-hand ‘joke’ was? How gratuitously insulting? How unspeakably demeaning?”
WE FOCUS on rape, on sexual abuse — but this friend, my wife, and others I’ve spoken to have all pointed in their own ways to the many unnoticed, casual cruelties women are routinely subjected to — at the workplace, in the home, in transit, at play. These are not “offenses” as the law would define them, but they are offensive; they wound deeply, and they leave lasting scars.
It is, Natasha Bhadwar (@natashabhadwar on Twitter) said when I chatted offline with her, about respect. Or the lack thereof.
She pointed me to some blog posts she had done on related themes. Like here, where she gets angry about the casual, neglectful manner in which arranged marriages are fixed. Why, she asks, this hurry to get the young daughter of the house stamped with the word MARRIED?
Here, Natasha shares abortion and miscarriage stories. What’s they big deal about abortion, they ask. “The right to life. Goddamn life,” Natasha says.
Here, a mother is caught unawares as she celebrates a moment with her daughter, only to be reminded that it would be better if she had a SON in her arms.
And here, a mother’s extremely composed and articulate comeback as she takes on a stranger who suggests that she must have WANTED SONS each time she bore a daughter. (This from Mint Lounge, where others share their remembered slights in comments).
Read, also, this eloquent take on domestic violence (of the more overt kind) by Nisha Susan (@chasingiamb on Twitter)
Thoughts? Stories? Links? Share — on @genderlogindia where I am curating this week.
Smoke Signals 
Prem
Whilst I appreciate your relentless focus on spotlighting the plight of women in society. Both men and women are human and as such are capable of, and execute daily, acts of cruelty meant to hurt and control.
For every instance above, how many analogues exist where a women puts men down by questioning his ability or manhood. Male ineptitude and pomposity had become a daily staple of comedies and movies. Whilst I am not making this a whinge about men being treated badly, I do think by focusing on the female experience, one may be become blind to the full human experience.
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