Controlling eve-teasing

EVE-TEASING IS a rampant social evil. It is all pervasive — beaches, roads, cinema halls, buses and sadly even in educational institutions. When eve-teasing persists even inside educational institutions, one can obviously infer that even the educated youth don’t necessarily desist from indulging in this uncouth behavior. The issue always surfaces when something prominent happens, like for instance when a Chennai college girl was killed some years ago. Knee-jerk reactions such as police patrols, `white’ brigade actions, etc., continue for a short time. Public memory happens to be short and soon things return to the usual anarchy and we accept the fact that `nothing much can be done.’

Glorification in movies:

Where does eve-teasing have its roots? Is this seen in every country? An interesting fact needs to be mentioned here. If one types `eve-teasing’ in any internet search engine, you would be surprised that page after page of results are almost entirely Indian web pages. Maybe, other countries refer to this more subtly under `sexual harassment,’ but a cursory survey among frequent travelers to other countries confirms that `eve-teasing’ in its form of hooting-ogling-loud commenting-whistling, etc., does tend to be more prevalent in India. Not something to be proud about. Eve-teasing is a crude way of garnering female attention. It is unnecessarily glorified by movies, although movie makers may argue that it is a classical `chicken and egg’ situation. One must admit that eve-teasing can most certainly be perpetuated easily by its continued glorification in movies.
Eve-teasing is not a victimless crime as it appears on paper. It has resulted in deaths, and when it goes unchecked could lead to public humiliation of women even in broad daylight. The rape of a medical student in Delhi in the recent past shocked the whole nation. Eve-teasing also portrays a bad image of the country among tourists. The immeasurable damage to a woman’s self-esteem and the subsequent avoidance of public places by single women could hardly take us on the way to achieving gender equality.
Eve-teasing is a typical social crime, where the perpetrators and victims are ordinary people. There is no easy way of rounding up everyone concerned and settling the issue. Schools and colleges could easily discipline students for such activities on campus, but this only induces them to indulge in such acts outside campus. Police prosecution can also never be severe because of the reluctance of victims to depose in court. A behavioral change is the only lasting solution to this problem. This requires an extensive public education aimed at every section of society at large.

Another Story...

“Hey, Mom I’m leaving,” shouted a girl of no more than 19 to 20 years old.
“O dear! Are you leaving already? When will you be back? Did you recite Ayatul Kursi? Where are you going? Is it far from here…… blah blah,”shouted the girl’s mother.
Being a girl I face these questions every morning and I am sure that every young girl faces it too. Now why do we face it? Is it because we are women? Are we going to ask the same questions to our children one day? The answer is yes. As long as this world exists this principle or more specifically this formality must go on. Why?
The answer is simple. The principle reason is the presence of the ruthless people in our society.. Throwing bad comments, brushing against a woman in crowded places, are severe acts of eve teasing. Now do we report these to the police? No because these are the minor accidents of our everyday life or in most cases we are afraid of the consequences. These minor accidents could bring a disaster in a woman’s life.
The awareness has not been aroused until the death of some students caused by eve teasing. Now many people do not report these incidents to anyone due to the fear of public shame and the people who have raised their voice against such crime have encountered the same harsher consequences. As a result many reports also go unnoticed. Unfortunately to my knowledge I haven’t seen or heard of justice being served to such women in our independent country Bangladesh. I have only read such stories in one of the sections of our daily newspaper. Lots of thanks to my Mom who always encourages me to read these articles and acquaint myself of the bitter truth.

Some Cases in Eve-Teasing all Over the World:

By arnoldzwicky
On the front page of the NYT on September 16, the story “On India’s Railways, Women Find New Peace in the Commute” (by Jim Yardley), about a pilot program introducing commuter trains exclusively for female passengers — “Ladies Specials” in India’s four largest cities. These trains give women respite from public harassment by men, a practice known as eve-teasing (also spelled Eve-teasing or eve teasing or Eve teasing).
There’s a lot to dislike in the euphemism eve teasing. Teasing is a mild term indeed for aggressive insulting, catcalling, groping, and the like. And the reference to the biblical Eve deflects the offense from the perpetrators by suggesting that the objects of the offense are temptresses. So it’s “just fun”, and anyway, they bring it on themselves — attitudes that the women in question most definitely do not share.
The term originates in Indian English, and the practice is widespread in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It’s generally believed that the incidence of eve-teasing has dramatically increased as women appeared in increasing numbers in universities and in the work force and, generally, as independent actors in public life. And its appearance in movies and music videos (where it’s often framed as an overture to romance) has probably fostered its spread in real life.
The OED (draft entry of March 2006) has cites for the synthetic compounds eve-teasing and eve-teaser from 1960 (from a single issue of the Times). Many early cites have the words in quotation marks, suggesting that they had only recently come into widespread use.
So the synthetic compounds have been around for some time, and we can wonder if they’ve gone down the path to back-formation, of a verb to eve-tease. The verb is here:
Sanjay said that he passes comments at girls to please them, for Subash it was to get attention from the opposite sex whereas for Manish … it is just fun and it remains fun only when he gets to eve tease from a distance, like when he is on a bus or when he has a group of friends. (link) [from Nepal]
Me or my brother always had to accompany my sisters to the grocery shops because there was a particular stretch where the guys loitering around would try to eve tease my sisters…. (link) [from India]
Rawalpindi cops enjoy watching women being eve-teased (link) [from Bangladesh]
Girl commits suicide after being eve teased (link) [from India]

Films will only influence only those who are susceptible

. It’s like blaming television for the increasing violence in society…in this Article which I wrote for the Times of India, I had spoken to several psychiatrists about whether violent behavior and television viewing was related, and all of them said that it was the home environment which mattered the most. And of course- it also depended on how much TV you watched.
Certainly anyone who lives in the fantasy world of Bollywood will lose all sense of reality. He will fail to see that his favorite heroes on celluloid behave differently in real life. That in fact they are gentlemen. If the actors are acting in stupid movies which put a stamp of respectability on eve-teasing, well, it’s because film stars do not usually feel that they have a social responsibility. As for the directors, they are the ones who actually believe that a little bit of eve-teasing is harmless…
So common has eve-teasing become is that some men actually consider it the proper way to woo women. On my post on molestation. I got several comments from men (I posted one, but deleted the others as they used bad language while referring to women) saying that eve-teasing was a good way to get to know the woman!! He said there was no other way to get to know women in a conservative society like ours. We like to blame lower class men for eve-teasing, but I doubt whether the man who wrote such a comment was a laborer. If he was, he would have been unable to write in English or would not have access to a pc.
There are those (although they do not eve-tease and molest women themselves) who feel that women make too much of a fuss about eve-teasing. Or that it’s not common…there are actually men who insist that molestation is not common because they haven’t seen it themselves! As if an eve-teaser will grope a woman if he thinks another guy is watching!

Is Bollywood the culprit?

Our films are not helping. Those boys in the jeep for example…they followed the girls, and when the girls crossed the road in panic, they made a U-turn to get nearer, and this is when the accident happened. Haven’t we seen umpteen Bollywood movies where the protagonist follows a girl whom he has taken a fancy to, and heckles her until she responds?
There are some people who firmly believe that its Bollywood which perpetuates the myth that girls like to be teased and stared at …there was an interesting comment I read on a post on eve teasing. The commentator (who lives in Dubai) is convinced that the reason why it is mostly South Asian men who indulge in this behavior is because they watch Bollywood movies. She gives the example of how “Indian and Pakistani laborers go the beaches and sit fully dressed and stare at the women swimmers…”Certainly we have many situations in Bollywood films where the hero’s sidekick ogles and makes an ass of himself when he sees a pretty woman. He thinks nothing of passing comments and approaching her…it is supposed to be amusing…
But its said that films reflect society and not the other way round…well, something is wrong with our society then.