How society and the big media systematically denegrate women

Victimized women are always on fire for doing the wrong things!? Whenever there's a rape or molestation, the media and society jump in almost immediately to the conclusion that the victim was wearing short skirts, went out all by herself in the dark night, was dead drunk or whatever they could imagine of - to such an extent that the audience would even sympathize with, or justify the attacker. Worse still is the case of domestic violence. Women are supposed to take in all their husbands' egoism and chauvinistic sadism with meekness and quietness - for the sake of the so-called family honour. Its so obnoxious that makes one wonder how honourable can 'family honour' be when its blind to the honour of a woman - the mother of the family. Damn!

Recent days have shown to how far the media can go and denegrate women. Two women have been favorites for several news media - Sania Mirza and Sunanda Pushkar. Case 1, Sania might have done the worst possible thing in marrying whoever she is now married to, but isn't that her right. There is no real reason as to why she shouldn't marry a foreign national. Honestly, she was in the news for no fault of hers. And she in fact deserves appreciation now, that she's announced that she wouldn't be dropping her maiden name. I've no idea if she's a feminist, but certainly its a good start.

Case 2, Sunanda might be innocent or not. I have honestly no means of finding out if she used her relationship with Tharoor to win the bid - in fact, no one knows! She might have and I'm in no mood to defend her. However, the way the media has treated her is horrible. It seems the media just cannot accept that women can be successful in business. They went to the extent of projecting her as a slut. Its so unfortunate that media in a country like India, which has seen women like Kiran Shah, Indra Nooyi and Kiran Bedi still struggles to accept women as independent and capable of succeeding in business all by themselves.

Obviously things get worse when these attitudes are reflected by law. The recent judgement of a Bombay court that forbids abused women from filing cases in police stations other than the place of abuse has raised eye-brows. People end up wondering if there is any point in asking a woman who had just escaped a place of torture to go back to the same vicinity to seek justice. Families also contribute to this jeopardy. Young women are taught to obey their husbands and in-laws too.

Here's a typical scenario. When a couple get married, say the wife prepares tea for her husband. He thanks and appreciates and even makes a godess of her. Next day when she prepares tea again, he might thank and appreciate. Day three, he merely thanks her. Day four, he asks her to leave the tea on the table. Day five, he doesn't even care. Day six, she is now supposed to prepare tea. Day seven, she's got headache and needs someone to prepare tea for her. This guy calls her mom and rants 'your selfish daughter didn't even give me a cup of tea!' If your planning to marry, I think I should advice you to let your husband prepare tea for himself from day one.

With dipping sex-ratios and a male-dominated social setup, feminism in India has a long way to go. Yet, this is what I believe in the core of my heart - if you are female, if you are feminist you are FREE!