Why is it always easy to target a woman? Why all abusive words belong to the feminine gender irrespective of the language used? Why the most beautiful creation of nature that carries life within her for nine months has become a tool for amusement. She has become a pawn to attack cultural and religious differences and spread social hatred (the most common one these days)?.
With exceptional progress in technology we are now in the digital age, abuse on women has also transformed with the advancement in technology. Nowadays women are abused, teased, and humiliated virtually across the world with an unprecedented speed and on a much larger gamut. The competition of making vulgar videos and posting obscene pictures on social media platforms has become a time pass activity for the tech-savvy younger generation. Ironically many times girls/women themselves can be seen as a part of such videos dispersing vulgar content, promoting inter-religion love affairs, rape, child abuse, or even acid attacks. The more obscene and smutty content the lesser time it takes to get spread on the plethora of media platforms available.
The situation is getting out of control, it’s not just confined to making jokes on wives and being sarcastic on women but lines of civility and humility are being crossed by far. Today even girls seem to have become insensitive towards their self-respect. I remember, recently a video influencer posted a video of a demonstration of an acid attack on his girlfriend after being rejected, astonishingly he has more than 12 million followers on different platforms, after great hue and cry on the social media, the matter reached to National Commission of Women, and his account got suspended. In another case two teenage boys trying to showcase their masculinity posted a role play videos on rape where a teenage girl was playing the role of a victim. There are huge numbers of likewise influencers on social media platforms and we have witnessed several mishappenings in the last few months due to the virtual misadventure of youngsters as “bois locker room” on a social media platform that took the life of a boy is another recent example.
Again the question comes to the mind, where are we heading towards as a society? The mindset of those people who enjoy creating and circulating content full of hatred, abuse, vulgarity, and what not for their personal gain or pleasure is a matter which points out towards a sick social mindset. What should worry us more is that women are becoming soft targets for such abuse and we find ourselves very indefensible to resist or counter. We are aware of the fact that only after receiving several complaints against the miscreants on social media their accounts get suspended and rarely the culprits get sacked or adequately punished, resultantly, the numbers incidents of misusing social media are mushrooming day by day.
However we have Cyber Laws in India that prevent crime done using technology, supervise the digital circulation of information, software information security, etc under the Information Technology Act, 2000 but the damage control of the dignity after spreading such toxic digital contents in the public domain is irreparable.
Blocking or suspending the source of such circulation is not the solution. The situation is graver than we perceive. Yes, it is crucial to catch hold of and punish individuals creating and circulating such nuisance, but on the same hand big brands and organizations providing such social platforms should be made accountable for and penalized when guilty. There have to be stricter regulations and controls for these social platforms to function. These should be firm regulations for these platforms to verify the legitimacy of the individual opening an account on their platform so that no one dares to conceal his/her identity and create a dummy account to keep on flushing all the dump. Why not there be a regulatory body for each of these platforms which verifies each and every post and restricts the circulation of offensive material and can be held responsible if anything bizarre is posted and shared.
What is more surprising is that we are known in the world for our dominance in information technology, yet we are dependent on foreign media platforms. These platforms have many times run their hidden agenda to demean India and its values and culture.
We have a glorious history where women were empowered, well educated, valiant and judicious ruler. The glory seems to have lost because the generations coming in are not being nurtured to imbibe in themselves the values, ethics, and ethos of this great nation. The education system requires an overhaul and review, it seems to be lacking in providing the right mix of intellect and morals.
It is very rightly said that “The truth of your character is expressed through the choice of your action”. Let us all be more responsible to build a society that the generations to come would feel proud of and more importantly feel safe in.
