August 02, 2020, The Liberacy:- Mental Health, as the country shriveled with the news of the death of the actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the media, as well as social media, saw uproar of all the gurus preaching mental health, and rightly so, psychological health is as important as your physical health, and it shouldn’t take someone’s death to remind us that. But not providing an environment where a person can take care of themselves mentally and tweeting #mentalhealthisimportant, #itsoktonotbeok is similar to not let a child study and expecting good grades.
Let’s talk about men and the issues they face in the very same patriarchal society we live in. And how can we try to change it?
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In a patriarchal society where men are supposedly the superior has managed throw men down the rails by implying its toxic masculine ideologies on them. Society has always pressurized men to be strong as a stone who won’t flinch no matter what. Men who barely express their emotions are tagged as sensitive and are being told things like ‘don’t cry like a girl’ and the famous one ‘Men don’t cry’. These ideologies that men should be tough, loud, should earn more than his wife, have been indoctrinated in us by our culture and social structure. It so deep that men getting abused are joked about, men who dare to speak up against the harassment they faced are shunned with tape around their mouth.
Harassment against women makes headlines every day in our country. It is during these times when people come up saying things like men get harassed as well, aren’t men as important as women, the man’s life will get destroyed if the verdict is against him, women divorce their husbands for their wealth what about that. A similar uproar was seen during the “Bois Locker Room” Instagram group chat fiasco. As soon as the details of the group members were made public, people didn’t hesitate to send death threats to the kids (15-16-year-old boys and girls) who were involved. While there were people who said that we are making it a big deal and how the lives of the boys will be affected adversely forgetting that the girls who were the victims already had their lives adversely affected by the incident. Days later a case emerged where a kid named Manav Singh, of 12th grade, committed suicide after he was accused of sexual abuse on the very same social media. The girl who accused him didn’t file a report, didn’t lodge a complaint, and took it straight to the social media. He got threatened, verbally abused, while the case of his suicide is still getting investigated, he had to pay the price without having got a chance to prove his innocence. Because unlike other scenarios where we are “innocent until proven guilty”, he was guilty from the start itself for the people.
The infamous MeToo movement gave voice to people who had kept their experiences of harassment with themselves for years due to the fear of the power of the perpetrator, social stigma, the tag this society gives to those who get harassed. Needless to say, they had to go through a tough time to move on with their lives processing their traumatic experiences. The wave started with Christine Blasey Ford raising her voice against Brett Kavanaugh who was nominated for Associate Justice of Supreme Court of the United States by President Donald Trump. The movement supported everyone who needed to be heard, even many men came up with their stories of harassment as well. What we also saw was the rise of the #HimToo movement, where men were falsely accused of sexual harassment for personal gains, monetary gains, defamation of the party accused. While a fake allegation for dowry, domestic violence, and sexual harassment is a growing issue in India, this movement gave a surge to such cases. The Men Rights Activists are seeing an ever-increasing case of men experiencing domestic abuse. Some at least muster the courage to lodge a complaint against their female counterpart, who is then mocked by the police personnel, the rest suffer in silence due to the same social stigma that keeps women silent.
On introspection, we can clearly see some problems that are either dealt in a wrong way or are not dealt with at all. One of the things that personally worried me is that men come up with incidents of them getting harassed by their female counterparts more often when we have some big news where the victim is a woman. Why aren’t these issues given the same space as issues against women? Why do men have to squeal their issues out in between the numerous issues of women when they deserve their own space? Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Or are we going to wait till the stats go high enough for the attention of the people and the media?
How can we help to tackle these issues?
We need to create safe spaces in our community where people can come up for help or counseling on being sexually abused, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation. No one should be laughed upon when they are voicing the torment they went through, no man, no transgender, no woman should face this.
We all know that social stigma has played the devil’s advocate throughout the centuries. Why should we keep a social psyche that is no longer serving our progressing society? We can help reduce it by breaking the taboo around sex, harassment, assault by creating awareness about it in our own circles.
Consent. The stats clearly show that there are very few people who understand it and even fewer who follow it. No one is entitled to anybody’s body except themselves. Consent should be a part of the talk when it comes to sex education. In fact, it should start with it.
Please, do not be quite. You deserve to be heard and you deserve justice. It doesn’t matter what is your gender, where do you come from. It is no more Men vs Women, it is good against evil. Society today might not be perfect, but slowly and together we can surely change for good and help ourselves in improving every individuals Mental Health.
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