CSAAM–U need not worry

Tags

boys, child sexual abuse, csa awareness month, CSAAM, girl child, parenting

U need not worry is a sentence I get to hear from people a lot, U need not worry for many things ask why? Why because I have a son for a child and not a daughter. When I have a son why should I worry, now the worries could be a whole lot of things, but today I am here to talk to you about worries about Child Sexual Abuse.

Its a common misconception (along with many other gender myths) that boys are not vulnerable to Child Sexual Abuse. According to National Study on Child Sexual Abuse (its a downloadable pdf) boys and girls are vulnerable to Child Sexual Abuse. It also goes on to say that boys find it more difficult to disclose about abuse than girls and we still go ahead and hardly pay any attention to the boys when we are talking about CSA. Why? In sheer numbers it states

An estimated 150 million girls and 73 million boys under 18 have experienced forced sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual violence involving physical contact. (across the globe, its quotes a UN study for that)

73 million and we still say you don’t have to worry because you have a son. Infact among the sample that they interviewed the result is

Among respondents, 48% of boys and 39% of the girls faced sexual abuse

U wanna still say I don’t have to worry? I think its a inherit part of our culture which makes us believe that boys are above all this. We as a society don’t want to handle the CSA issue because for us the issue is not about invading the child’s privacy, is not about the hurt that the child goes through. Its about the SHAME that the incident will bring to the family and traditionally its only a girl who can bring shame to the family.

Also I think the term vulnerable and boys really don’t go hand in hand at all, boys are always portrayed and taught to be the macho ones, ones who can handle anything infact I will go far to say ones that will inflict pain rather be a victim to it, thats the role we have difficulty accepting our sons in but victims naah,I never believed in it but since I have had a son and one who is a gentle soul I know how untrue this thinking is. Girls or boys, both can be aggressive, both can be soft… Both can be victims.

Tulir shared  this link on the CSA FB wall sometime back. The site contains some excellent posters which talk of the specific challenges men can face in relation to speaking about sexual abuse

One of the them says

If I tell you I was sexually abused, will you..

…judge me?

…believe me?

…see me as less of a man?

…question my sexuality?

…think I will abuse?

…listen?

There is another one which says

If a man is meant to

…always appear strong

…control his emotions

….be self reliant

… not be a victim

How can he tell you

…he is struggling

…he is scared of losing control

…he feels alone

…he was sexually abused

There is a comment by arun in madmomma’s post which asks

Why is that this comment section so dominated by females? I always thought that it is easy to get boys then girls.. coz of typical indian mentality

I think the above is what directly answers that and that is also something I strongly believe in, this is what I had replied to him

boys (now men) are even more ashamed to accept that they have been abused. We always teach boys to be macho, to be strong… nothing can hurt them yet someone came and abused them? now how can they share this with the world.

According to me its high time we start accepting the fact that boys can we abused too, boys can be tarnished too and stop being so careless with them. I  have a 3 yr old son and I get a lot of slack from people that I am raising him to be too shielded, that I am a paranoid mother, that I guard him too much. Me I have just one thing to say better be paranoid than sorry.

Guard your daughter but please don’t forget to guard your son too, at a young age they are both clueless both need the love and the protection

PS: My post on how I deal with my paranoia and teach my son about private parts coming up soon, but read this informative post by Sue on how to protect your boys

Education – a right or a privilege?

Tags

education, girl child

Gave a talk at a women’s college in DU recently was shocked to hear girls only wanted a good marriage. why waste a seat in univ then?

What do you make out of the current situation of the country when above is a statement made by a journalist in one of the most popular news channel of India. Yeah I am talking about Ms. Sagarika Gosh from CNN-IBN.

It angered and saddened me at the same time and this is what I replied

@sagarikaghose so does that mean that we are ok to have uneducated moms bringing up kids??? is education required only to do a job?

And thus started a huge debate on twitter, Kiran, Sudatta, SachinKalbag, Kaveri all jumping in with their views… mostly towards what I was trying to say.

Now the debate surely left me and Kiran very angry and all that was needed was deep breaths to focus… But post that I sat to think about it – There are two parts to the tweet.

1. One that the girls aspire to be only homemakers – though there is nothing wrong in being a homemaker and its a great responsibility but yes why are most of the girls these days aspire to be homemakers is worth a thought but that’s the topic of another post, here I want to focus on what ticked me off and the second part of her statement

why waste a seat in univ then?

2. Is education (ok she did mention a university seat, but what is a university seat these days? a graduation is no big deal?) a privilege or a right?

Is education required only to do a job or make a career? and here I thought that education is the basic building block of any nation? Was I wrong?

If go flashback about 100years ago the girls were not educated than, neither did they used to work.. or may be I am wrong. They did infact used to work, our literature is full of references to women working in the fields etc, but yes girls were not educated. It was thought that girls don’t need education, why waste the money as well time educating girls when all they have to do is run the house.

And slowly things began to change, India began to progress as we choose to say and slowly people to send their daughters to school and slowly they started working. Started getting more confident and was born today’s modern confident Indian woman… And when she wants to make a choice today to take a career break or may be some of them want to just give up the job and focus on family, we say they are wasting education and they don’t have a right to that seat in the university?

So we really are ready to go back to that era? Or we always were in that era only mentally and were only pretending to progress?

I have personally taken a career break and I know what it is like everyday, I yearn to go back to work but I also yearn to take care of my child….I think every mom whether working or SAHM struggles with this everyday… may be i will go back to work after 1 year when I think ojas is a little more big, may be after 2 years, may be I will go back to work next week or may be I wont go back to work at all.. but shouldn’t that be my choice? The choice I make or rather me and my husband make as a family? Why should I be made guilty for making that choice (and here I must add I would be made guilty for not taking care of my child well too if I had continued to do my job)… Why is being a SAHM made to feel like a tradegy which has happened to a woman.

Shouldn’t it be a woman’s own choice on what she wants to? Till when will we continue loading our woman with the choices that the society thinks is right for them?

We are still getting commanded only the command has changed… From be inside the house, that is your place to go out to work, why are u wasting yourself and education… its only the command that has changed? 😦

And in all this I am still struggling to understand what has education got to do with it… according to me education is a right every citizen has and the choice on how she or for that matter he wants to use it is absolutely upto him/her and I know education is never wasted and specially on a mom for she is the first teacher every child has and do we really want uneducated teachers for our next generation?

A mother of three daughters : God save her

Tags

boy child, childhood, children, daughters, Feminism, girl child, memories, mother, son

We are three sisters and its a fact that I am proud of… a thing I would probably change for nothing… I remember my childhood as a total fun time, all three of us getting together and doing all kind of girly things… pretending to cook, taking care of our barbies, combing the neighbor didi’s hair endlessly (that was the youngest one though)… whenever I think of my childhood the bond with my sisters and also the lovely mother daughter is the strongest memory I have and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in this world… And over time I have come to realize that the bond between mother and daughters just keeps growing with time whereas the bond with mother and son keeps going down… I then wonder why is that we keep wishing for boys all the time? What is that special thing they give us?

This yet another brilliant post by IHM took me down the memory lane at the time when we three sisters were enjoying the childhood in full masti and mom was bearing the brunt of it all… I am eldest and the difference between me and the youngest sis is about 9 yrs or so and so at the time when she was growing up I was big enough to feel the undercurrents flowing around when people used to visit the house… When she was born people almost sad that yet another girl is born and dad became so furious against this argument that he poured out all the love he could possibly have on her and we still tease him that u spoilt her… 😉

Mom had to listen to all kind of things that what will she do when we get married? How will she get us married? Poor them will have to probably go in a ashram in old age… who will take care of them? My uncle with a son came forward behaving that he is a god for them as his son will act as a son for my mom-dad too and help them in their time of need…

My mom and dad stood through it all all the time and kept telling us and instilling in us an amazing strength and power for independence which I personally thing is the greatest gift any parent can give their kid… a power of self confidence and independence… I am proud of my parents because they gave my greatest strength my confidence and the ability to take the world head on… which I think is one of the reasons atleast two of us have turned out to be such strong feminits

Though mom took all the taunts and pity that she was given throughout with grace and ignoring them and proudly announcing to the world that her daughters are better educated and very well settled than most of the sons of the people who troubled her…Once we started settling in our career after taking best of the education she starting getting certain amount of respect by the same people who were taunting here and the memories (I think) of those days started to fade away slowly

And then there was one incident that kinda broke her down… I still remember that evening very very clearly…

I had finished my education and was working in a good company earning a very good salary ‘for a girl’… and people around mom started to sych her up how will u ever find a boy for her… anyways so the rishtas started coming in (and lets not go into the kind of rishats that were send, it was as if they wanted to show my mom and us that daughters are indeed a pain) and we would quietly ignore most of them as I wanted more time to work etc… but then after about 2-3 years of working when I was ready for marriage and unfortunately still single, my parents started looking out for guys and giving a serious look at the rishtas that came in… they liked a boy and thought it would be a good idea to let us meet and discuss figure out if we like each other… and a mesage was sent to the parents of the boy and guess what the response came

we dont want to take this talk forward, when we sent the rishta to you we were only aware of the daughter’s education etc and we didn’t know that you have three daughters, if you haven’t got any sons than its most likely that you daughter will also produce only daughters and hence we are sorry

can u beat that???? and that came out of a very well educated family. The mother of the boy was a principal in some school. gosh if we have principals with this attitude what will the children of that school grow up to be??? That day my mom cried a lot and I just stood by her wanting to kick the world in the face not knowing how to react… I was angry with the world very angry.

And just when my anger was going away being married to the most awesome guy I could find who has never ever made a thing that he is the man and I am the wife in the relation… out relation is truly equal with some things he taking the lead and in some me… whichever way balances our skills… but not even once we have felt that one is better than the other….  yeah going back to the point just when my anger was going away I became pregnant and people started again aah I hope u have boy atleast your mom could see a grandson if not a son, me and mom would quietly reply we would be happy with a healthy baby thats it… (though I know secretly wished for a boy 😉 but was that because she wanted to see how are boys when they grow up and not because of the standard reasons)

And then when he was born and I took him to Delhi the first time… of my  aunts commented saying that

chalo acha hai beta ho gaya agli baar ab tension nahin hogi, beti bhi ho gayee tou koi baat nahin… ab sab chalta hai

Imagine that statement in this time…. I got wild and replied to her that I would have been happier if it was a girl and would have been happier to make that girl a only child of mine… and what drama was created I tell u 😉 and I secretly enjoyed that

I have never really understood the obsession people have with a boy… why? I won’t say any one is better than the other… a boy or a girl… they are just children… a little human being waiting to be transformed into a big person by the parents… both need equal amount of love and affection and both present to you equal amount of charm in their own sense..

I wonder when will we as a society stop give them rules to live their childhood in a certain manner… when we will allow a boy to play with cooking toys and when we will allow a girl to go play cricket in the park… when?

PS: yesterday was Girl Child Day I wish I could do this post yesterday but nonetheless, this post is my tribute to every girl child that is about to come… this post is my tribute to every Chutki…

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Tags

girl child, society

I am numb right now, was watching this news on TV right now… a 11yr old girl has been beaten by the teacher and is in coma right now… her chances of survival are very less and her fault she was not able to recite English alphabets… For this she was beaten, then made to stand in the sun for over 2 hours with bricks on her shoulders… i am trembling while writing this….

And the teacher says she has been beating kids forever, the TV even showed a clip where she was banging the head of a student on the desk…

what exactly is this??? these are the teachers we have, the ones who are going to mould the future of our little ones, the future of India?

And gosh forget abt that, can any human do this?

What punishment should be given to the teacher who didnt even sound apologetic after all this ? is there any justice that the girl can get? is there any justice that the parents can get?

Bitiya Na Keejo…

Tags

feelings, girl child

Yesterday I bought a Farida Khanum Cd and with that came a free CD of some movie called “Chuasar” though I have never heard its name before the music was pretty decent… The following song stuck a chord and got me thinking (though it is not half as good as the original folk one). When will the girl child be librerated. I will not write much but let u ponder over the lyrics…

Mayee Re…. Maaye Re…. Maaye Re….
Agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo
Bitiya jo keejo tou phir aisa keejo
Bitiya ke jaisa bhagya na deejo

Bachpan main babel ke aangna main dooli
Yuvan main biran ki booli main booli
Laaya jo doli usiki main holi
Marzi ka apna na tanva na manva

Sita bhi bankar satayi gayee main
Ansuyia ban kar jalaye gayee main
Chuasar main pasaa banyee gayee main
Chinti banayeo ya chidiya banayeo
Naari banane ka kasht na kijo

PS: a little modified version of the folk is also present in the Umrao Jaan (2006) and it goes like this:

Ab jo kiye ho daata aisa na keejo
agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo.

Jo ab kiye ho daata, aisa na keejo
agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo…

Hamre sajanwa hamra dil aisa todin
Oo ghar basaain hamka rasta ma chhodin
jaise ki lalla koi, khilona jo paave
dui char din to khele, phir bhool jaave
ro bhi na paave aisi gudiya na kijo
agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo

jo ab kiye ho daata aisa na keejo
agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo

Aisi bidai bolo dekhi kahin hai
maiya na babul bhaiya, kauno nahin hai
ho…, aansu ke gehne hain, aur dukh ki hai doli
band kivadiya more ghar ki boli
is oor sapnon mein bhi aaya na keejo

agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo
jo ab kiye ho daata aisa na keejo
agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo
agle janam mohe bitiya na keejo