Silencing the Savagery

By Shahbaz Ahmed
shahbaz.zipfile555@gmail.com

Graphics by: Aquib Rezwan
aquibrezwan0@gmail.com

Upoma, a college-going student always takes a local bus for a ride on her way home. She lives quite far away from her college. But she loves the journey, and so, doesn’t think too much of the distance. Today, she hitched on the bus she always gets on. Generally, she tends to go straight to the reserved seats for women, but today, they are all filled up. An old guy who is her father’s age is sitting on a reserved seat with his wife, that too beside the window- the place she was craving to seat on, as she had a rough day and wanted to feel the cold breeze as the bus moved with tremendous speed. “Nah, he is sitting with her wife. I shouldn’t tell him to move over. The seats are not mine, and I can’t just tell a guy to move for me, although he shouldn’t have sat there, right?”, she thought. She got her answer soon enough, as the bus came to a halt and the passenger right by her side got off. There were a few empty seats now, and she sat right beside a window as she wanted. She was listening to a song with her earbuds on and was enjoying the trees rushing past her, as the bus was moving. After a few minutes, she suddenly felt something under her seat. She looked behind but couldn’t apprehend what it was, and so she shifted her attention towards the scenery outside. But now she definitely understood that someone was trying to grope her from behind the seat, as she could feel the fingers. She got up and quickly grab hold of the fingers of the man who was doing this, and shouted why he was doing that. Upoma and that man, who was playing the ‘I was just fixing your seat, as it kept hitting my legs’ card got into an argument, and suddenly, another man from way behind shouted back,” Why are you being so loud? Keep your tone down, little kid. Don’t your parents tell you that women should be gentle and soft?”

 

This is not an uncommon scenario in Bangladesh, or any other places in the world. Even Japan being a developed country faces this type of harassment almost on a regular basis. In Dhaka, a woman on the street or taking public transportation faces a near-constant threat of sexual harassment. This concern is particularly more intense for the most marginalized women, and it determines their day to day activities along with their movements: how they choose to go, at what time of day, and with whom. The ability of a woman to move freely and safely in her city has far-reaching ramifications for gender parity in general.

Women in cities have more complicated travel behavior than men. "trip-chaining," the act of linking many short excursions between two principal destinations, is a distinguishing aspect of women's travel patterns. Women "chain" together multiple multi-purpose journeys in one 'journey" to manage different tasks connected to personal work and childcare, whereas men tend to have linear and direct trips between home and work. But it's not just because of their responsibilities that they don't take the linear path; occasionally they alter the transportation with a singular purpose in mind: to ensure that no one follows them and harasses them.

Now if we look back at the story, the girl Upoma isn’t real- but the story is. This kind of harassment is seen almost everyday on the busy streets of Dhaka. There are a lot of factors that played their part in the story.

·         What if that old guy didn’t sit on the reserved seat for women?

·         What if Upoma sat somewhere else other than that particular seat where she was harassed?

·         What if Upoma didn’t raise her voice even after she got harassed?

You can be thinking that these could be the “What ifs” of the entire story, right? If the old man sat in any other seat, then Upoma might not have been harassed. If Upoma sat somewhere other than the seat she was harassed on, she might have not experienced such trauma. If Upoma didn’t raise her voice, she shouldn’t have been insulted. Yes, these probabilities could have happened. But then again, there are several other probabilities like she could have been raped inside the bus, no? In the entire globe, women have been facing verbal, non-verbal and physical harassment by men. All of these are serious offenses as all of them are sexual harassment. Cat calling and sexual comments on looks and clothing are not justified as well.

So, what is the remedy for such heinous acts of gender specific harassments?

Truth be told, there isn’t one. Governments and NGOs have taken a lot of safety measures. They even have raised the punishment for sexual offenders. Technological based solutions have been established to keep women safe and away from any jeopardy. Even gender specific accommodations have been created to ensure safety of women. What do you think? Can a few buses prevent such violence against women, where even the entirety of the female population can’t accommodate into this specialized service? What if we create such transportation that the entire female population can travel with? Will that reduce the existing sexual harassment in the society?

The balance might shift in such a way that the sexual violence in other sectors will increase. If by such preventing measures, public transport violence reduces, then there is a possibility that domestic violence or work-place violence might increase. You’ll often hear doctors saying that “Prevention is better than cure.” If we think of such sexual harassment as a disease, don’t you think that the society has already been infected with this plague? Preventive measures are necessary to keep this disease in check, yes. But what should be done with the huge population that is already been infected with this plague?

The answer is- Cure is not an option, rather it’s an absolute necessary. We won’t be able to cure the society of this plague named as ‘Sexual harassment’ by quarantining women by making gender specific substances so that the plague doesn’t touch them. We have to take drastic actions like behavioral interventions, remove social stigma so that the society understands that men and women aren’t that different, we have to change the perspective of the nation so that the womenfolk can move around freely without the batting of any eye.

The society needs refurbishing so that the only what if that will come from Upoma’s story is:

“What if the guy behind Upoma’s seat didn’t harass her?”