Portrait

strange. why has it always been so difficult to see an abused woman as a victim? now you many think we live in a modern, broad minded world, full of modern, broad minded people, and since most of us are indeed surrounded by people willing to take an unconventional stand on conventional issues, we rarely see the injustice. the fact is that the majority of people, not just in sri lanka, not just in asia, not just in devloping, third world countries, but all over the world, still think some things are better left undiscussed. they still think that life is more pleasant when you conveninetly turn a blind eye to the harsh realities of life.

i’m not going to go on some feminist trip, and throw a bleeding heart argument at you. im just asking how many of you have come across situations in which the victim, the woman, goes disbelieved? or somehow, in some roundabout way, she gets blamed for whatever happened? how many of you have come across a girl who was raped and impregnated, thrown out of her house and disowned by the village community, forced to find her way in the tough city, simply because they cannot accept the fact that the girl did not invite the trouble? simply because the family could not deal with the shame she would bring upon them by giving birth to a child conceived out of wedlock? simply because they could not relate to the fact that she was the victim, and not the victimizer?

ever been felt up on a bus and made a fuss about it, only to be ridiculed by mostly the whole bus amongst whom there would be people saying things about what you are wearing being the cause for the man to rub up against you, or that maybe you should travel in your own car and not in public transport if you wanted trouble-free rides home? apparently, either you dress like a ninja, or you buy your own car. thats the drill. its too much to ask that you have the freedom to wear what you want and the freedom to use public transport without being harrassed for it. has it ever occured to anyone that men piss by the side of the main road in this country for the whole bloody world to see, and no woman ever feels the urge to be turned on by it, and if she is (god help her) never feels the need to act on this barbaric impulse? but if a girl shows some skin…oh, she was asking for the attention. why else would she dress like that, right?

have you ever come across a girl who had a horror story to tell in which she was relentlessly abused by someone her family trusts, someone who probably lives in her home, and has a lot of direct influence on her life? not only must she deal with the trauma and the shock of having been used and humiliated by someone she once thought she knew, she must also deal with the fact that no one, not even her closest family or friends believe her.

the lack of credibility in such nightmares isnt something we should be shocked by. anyone would take a moment to believe something as wild as that. i mean, how quickly would you believe me if i said i know an eleven year old girl who gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby last june because she was raped and impreganated by her own grandfather? oh, true. its hardly believable. its downright absurd. but if it came right down to it, its alarming how few of us would actually take her word to be true and defend her.

so many people are just so scared. scared of being on the wrong side, scared of being in the wrong camp. so many people are just simply uneducated, and out of sheer ignorance do not see an alternative that will help protect the victim in such situations of extremely life changing circumstances. they will do what is easiest. they will do what rama did to sita. to erradicate the problem, they send the problem away.

when we hear of a woman being beaten up, raped, abused, harrassed or discriminated against, most of us, almost out of habit, rush to justify it, so there will be no issue to begin with. life is so much easier that way. to pretend that everything is ok. lest we find no rational way of justifying it, we will strive to make the weaker party look at fault. generally, the woman. the victim. she is frightened, disheartened, traumatised. she will most probably go with anything her elders tell her. what was she wearing? what did she say? did she respond to his advances? did she like him? did she ask for it? what we fail to see, is that no matter what she was wearing, no matter how much she liked or disliked him, no matter how many times she welcomed his attention, no matter what she told him or did to him to make him force himself on her, if in that moment, that second, she changed her mind due to some rash whim and said ‘no’, she sure as hell meant ‘no’.

she will be told that it was her fault, and she will be made to feel guilty. for the rest of her life, she will be branded as the slut, the whore. she will find it difficult to get married, she will find it difficult to bring up her children in her home town. her life will be undoubtedly reassured difficulty.

i’m not talking off the top of my head here. i know cases in which a girl tried to stand up for herself, assuming that she being the victim, would get all the moral support she needed from a world of modern, broad minded people, and she didn’t. i know cases in which a wife who was getting beaten up by her drunkan husband every day could not return to the home of her own parents because they thought that if the husband had reason to beat her up, she probably deserved it. i know cases in which a raped girl has failed to get the attention of the police and other authorities regarding pressing charges on her attacker because according to the people that mattered, she was dressed inappropriately. i know cases in which a girl slapped a guy for feeling her up at a popular night club in colombo, and got punched right back by the guy, believe it or not.

this is something that has bothered me for a long time. i guess my sentiments on the whole thing were fired up by a post and a few comments following it i saw on indi’s blog. indi wrote an interesting post on bollywood, terrorists, and UFOs, and received many comments that were interesting as well as mildly pissing off.

i would like to hang around and give you some statistics on woman beating and the abuse of women around the world, but i think the reality you will find if you bother to look in the newspapers or read a few magazines will be far more startling than numbers and figures. its a strange but humane psychology, that i understand and condemn, that makes most people turn the victim into the victimizer. do we ever stop to think why any woman in her right mind would lie about something as hideous as that? although there may have been cases in which a woman has lied to gain the attention of the world and her loved ones, most often a woman who is saying she’s being abused IS being abused.

maybe if we listen a little more carefully, it will be all too apparent that there is enough real violence going around. one need not lie about it.