E-Paper
Rant: What will it take for India to understand what consent means?
We’re not taught to set boundaries, let alone heed someone else’s. No wonder we struggle with consent in bed
Consider that video of the Japanese woman getting groped and harassed by men celebrating Holi. Consider how much of the response to the incident suggested that the festival overrides a person’s right to protest: “Bura na maano, Holi hai”. Consider how easily people blamed the victim for being harassed: “If women don’t want to play Holi, they shouldn’t step out”. Consider also that she later apologised on social media for “harming people’s sentiments”, minimising her own victimhood.
It’s no wonder that couples grapple with consent in the bedroom; there’s barely any out of it. Because what we think is a sex-life issue is really an all-life one. No one’s taught to set boundaries, let alone respect someone else’s.
Grown-up acquaintances come right out and ask a person how much they earn, why they’re still single, why they haven’t had a kid after marriage, or the second kid after the first. It’s all cloaked in concern. Your business is often everyone’s business.
Families do it too. Photos are circulated, unasked, among well-meaning matchmakers. Phone numbers of relatives are added to WhatsApp groups they didn’t ask to join. Husbands demand to know wives’ ATM pin and phone-unlock codes (but keep their own private). In-laws call employers to find out if the new bride received a bonus this year, because “she never tells us at home”. Employers pass along private information as well.
Friends think nothing of violating your privacy, sending your details along to a stranger with a business interest, without checking with you first. Some will take pictures of you or your children without asking, and post them online.Others will expect personal details: medical diagnoses, sexual habits, spending budgets and why a pregnancy is being terminated.
India was never been big on consent. How could we be, when Bollywood movies have presented men as hunters, women as prey and love as a persistent pursuit. When exasperated heroines give in just before Intermission. Films have shown us that no doesn’t mean no. It means try harder, add pressure, get creepier. That adult women of sound mind don’t know what they want, anyway.
So women who protest unwanted sex or even attention are rarely listened to.Much of India didn’t even discuss consent in public until 2017, when #MeToo stories came tumbling out in every professional field, indicating how widespread and deep the wilful ignorance about personal boundaries spread. Sexual assault victims who do not fight back out of fear are seen as complicit in the crime. Marital rape is not a crime in only 32 countries of the world. India remains one of them.
So expect more incidents before the next Holi rolls around. Because we haven’t even started to ask permission, to respect a refusal, to honour someone’s boundaries, to allow someone their privacy. Many of us are yet to understand that consent isn’t that cool thing we should be asking or offering in the bedroom. It’s that cool thing we should learn to exercise in all aspects of life, with everyone we interact with.
