Hello everybody!
Amid the lockdown and the COVID-19 struggle our country is going through, the horrendous boys locker room incident has proven to be another struggle which will be continued longer than COVID-19. Yes, it is true, this locker room incident is more concerning than COVID-19. The incident brought out how sexually uneducated nation’s young minds are. After knowing about the incident everybody blamed those teenagers, many called them spoiled children. In fact, the social media sites became court rooms where everybody started giving their own verdicts. I know that the boys locker room was a very horrendous act. I am not trying to defend that incident. What I am trying to highlight is the cause which came to my mind or I understood from that. And that cause I think is the battle to be fought.
When such incidents occur everybody blames those teenagers, they criticise the etiquettes given to them by their parents, they call them as social blots, yes people's anger is justified but nobody tries to look after the cause. What happens is just two or three days of anger and then the matter settles down.
Yes, the parents are at fault as well. They should keep a check on their child’s activities, but in a world that is surrounded by sexually exploited content in the name of modernity it seems impossible.
There are several causes for rapes and all sexual violence:
Low status to women
Patriarchal society
Myths and misconceptions on sexual violence (For more about such myths and misconceptions please visit Sexual violence myths & misconceptions)
Pornography
The Surrounding Conditions
Teenagers are fast learners. At this age children learn from what they experience and as I said earlier wherever you go you will find sexually exploited content there. The easy access to pornography, and women objectification shown by various web-series, abusive language used in songs--whole internet if full of such material. The modernised youth visits the internet most among any other age group. When teenagers are surrounded by such content everywhere they will learn from it. Adults around them using hard and abusive language, Bollywood/Hollywood featuring adult content television advertisements, songs and the list continues. Not only this but a culture of sexist and dominative pornography has added to the normalisation of this issue.
Pornography has only added to falser expectations amongst the youth.
Such free access to adult content is killing love and instigating lust among teenagers. Not only pornography affects sexual behaviour of viewers but it also affects their mental health.
A race for modernity
The world, in its race to modernity, has changed its definition. Many people have misinterpreted the term 'modernity' with the allowance of sexual exploitation. Modernity was meant to bring equality, to criticise the unreasonable stereotypes and prejudices, to stop the violence against women, to bring about scientific development, to bring about equality everywhere. But today in the name of modernity, the entertainment industry has included adult content in it, and now people are cracking jokes on such issues.
This is a serious matter of concern, if this situation continues for long then our youth might stop respecting women, and if conditions get worse, the youth might start exploiting them. Modernity was supposed to support love, not a culture of relationships built only for lust, in the name of love. The Indian masculinity is acting as an acid for the social respect of women. All I am trying to convey is that exploitation of any gender by another one is not tolerable and this is the part where our youth is lagging. Our youth needs to respect people of its opposite gender. They shouldn’t exploit them. The reason for focusing on youth is because this is the age at which some is taught good he/she becomes good for the whole life and the other option you all are well aware of.
Sex Education
One way out is sex education. People in our country are not bothered while watching adult content, but when they are talked about giving sex education to their child they are bounded by their customs and shame. Looking at the present scenario sex education is must for our nation’s youth. Pornography has some physical and mental benefits as proven by scientists but those benefits turn into side effects if one gets addicted to porn. Addiction to porn is sure to happen if one watches is without taking proper sex education, and this is what’s happening in present scenario.
Removing sexist adult rated content from the entertainment industry is another step that needs to be taken as a whole by society. And parents need to teach their child how to behave with and respect the opposite sex. There are various other methods to improve the condition and they depend upon various situations and need to be taken by society according to conditions around it. I am just creating awareness about a very concerning but ignored issue in the society.
For more understanding about sex education please visit:
Couldn't agree more, this normalisation of sexually explicit content and curse words is really disturbing.
People are losing their sense of decency