{"id":519,"date":"2016-03-08T13:52:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T13:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=519"},"modified":"2016-03-08T13:52:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T13:52:21","slug":"online-harassment-women-harvey-weinstein-me-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=519","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Creep\u2019s Code"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>f you grew up in India during the nineties, there\u2019s no way you could have avoided hearing <\/p>this beauty<\/a>. This marquee song from a film whose name you can\u2019t remember (Yash<\/em>, 1996, you\u2019re welcome) hits all the high notes of \u201990s\u2019 Bollywood kitsch: Aerobic exercise in place of dance, outfits borrowed from the local bandwallah, and unsolicited attention from a strange man right outside your window. I sing \u201cDil mera bole hello how are you\u201d routinely while parsing my social-media profiles.\n\nA version of this song has made its way into my life ever since I decided to make a career as an entertainer<\/a>. Every day, some red-blooded young man touches base with me on social media and asks, \u201cHow are you?\u201d\n\nWhen I post a new status update, they ask me, \u201cHow are you?\u201d\n\nWhen I upload a \u201chot\u201d picture (their words, not mine), they ask me, \u201cHow are you?\u201d\n\nI talk about my gym workout, they ask me, \u201cHow are you?\u201d\n\nI attend a movie premiere, they ask me, \u201cHow are you?\u201d\n\nNow, don\u2019t get me wrong. I love the attention. As a public figure and an entertainer, I know my career depends on the love of my fans. I appreciate how people have made me a part of their lives and care enough about my well-being to find out how I am feeling.\n\nI love the warmth and know that their concern is genuine. Except when it isn\u2019t\u2026 you know when creeps presume that since I work in the film industry, I must be \u201ceasy\u201d and \u201cavailable\u201d. It is when I know, that \u201cHow are you,\u201d will be followed by \u201cNice boobs!!!\u201d or \u201cHot ass\u201d. These are the buggers who are just interested in my tits and my arse. The precursor \u201cHow are you\u201d is sometimes followed by \u201ckhana khaya?\u201d and \u201cpaani piya?\u201d I often wonder if they ask their wives and mothers about their diet and water intake as frequently as they ask me. I also wonder how many messages it will take before the conversation devolves completely into a full-blown sexual proposition.\n\nIt almost always veers toward sex.\n\n\u201cI want to fraandship you.\u201d Or \u201cI want to loveship you.\u201d And sometimes, \u201cBaby, you want to have hot sex?\u201d\n

If only we stop hearing phrases like \u201cLadki hasee toh phase\u201d while growing up, which imply that a woman gives a man consent<\/a> for pretty much any sexual contact by merely smiling at him.<\/blockquote>\nNow, I\u2019m no prude. So let me put this out in the open. Yes, I\u2019m a sexual being. I love sex. I think it is beautiful. But I don\u2019t remember giving anyone a hall pass to send me such messages.\n\nPerhaps I should be used to this. When similar remarks from the president of the world\u2019s most powerful nation can be dismissed as \u201clocker-room talk\u201d or when sexual advancement from an influential Hollywood producer<\/a> can be dubbed as \u201ccasual massages\u201d<\/a>, maybe my problems are minuscule. This is the result of generations \u2013 nay, millennia \u2013 of men being told that they can have their way, that they are allowed to express their desires in as straightforward a fashion as this. And that the women at the receiving end ought to feel grateful that some man, any man, has deigned to cast their eyes on them and wants to have sex with them.\n\nThere are a thousand other ways to have a conversation with me. Social media is for interaction. So tell me a bit about yourself. Your life, your job, what makes you happy, what inspires you, your dreams\u2026 I have had several perfectly respectable and pleasant conversations with fans online. I know most of the perverts are also just confused young men who have grown up in a sexually segregated (and repressed) society and don\u2019t know how to approach women.\n\nSince childhood, boys and girls play separately. Girls are often sent to convent schools. I know because I studied in a girls-only school for most of my formative years. When I suddenly switched to a new co-educational school after relocating after my father\u2019s death, I had to overcome a lot of inhibitions and deal with a lot of cultural baggage. I was very uncomfortable and often just ignored boys when they tried to speak to me. This behaviour made the boys think of me as a rude snob. If only children in India had proper sex education<\/a> at school. If only we stop hearing phrases like \u201cLadki hasee toh phase\u201d while growing up, which imply that a woman gives a man consent<\/a> for pretty much any sexual contact by merely smiling at him. This belief has been a part of our culture for so long that we have a warped understanding of the concept of consent.\n\nSo for everyone who has asked me, \u201cHow are you,\u201d I\u2019m good. Thanks for asking. I\u2019m doing well and I hope you are too. Now please don\u2019t ruin it by asking follow-up questions about my diet, water intake, or desire for sexual contact. Goodbye and good luck.\n\nThis is an updated version of an earlier published essay.<\/em>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every day, some red-blooded young man asks me on social media, \u201cHow are you?\u201d I count the number of messages it will take before he asks if I want to have \u201chot sex\u201d with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[710,802,428,803],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","tag-feminism","tag-harassment-of-women","tag-online-harassment","tag-sexual-harassment"],"yoast_head":"\nBreaking the Creep\u2019s Code<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every day, some red-blooded young man asks me on social media, \u201cHow are you?\u201d I count the number of messages it will take before he asks if I want to have \u201chot sex\u201d with him.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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