Feminism in the 21st century

 

         

 

It happens every month, another gruesome story of violence against women, media provides extensive coverage to it, civil bodies raise an outcry and then it dies down, almost a natural death, screaming and writhing in oblivion.

 

It began in the year 2012, the fourth wave of feminism which mainly highlighted the issues of sexual harassment cases, the various rape cases, acid victim-survivors, body shaming and many more.

How can we forget the 2012 rape incident which took place in India, one of the most horrifying cases that shook  the soul of  entire India?

Rape culture has become so common in India that every day at least we can hear two-three girls have come across such a hideous act.

Many students union, protesters came to demand justice for the girl and finally in the year 2020 the four rapists were hanged to death.

At the international level, the women rights movement take place, like the Aurat March in Pakistan and the more significant one was the Me Too movement which was launched in the year 2006 in the United States to assist the survival of sexual violence and females of colour. This gained huge momentum during that period. Victims around the world started sharing their stories about how they have survived abuse, harassment in the workplace as well as in the household.

The fourth wave of feminism is mainly concerned with intersectionality and the use of the internet. Jude Kelly who is the founder of the women of the world(WOW) said in a speech, “WOW is intersectional and intergenerational and must remain so.”

 

In Libya, HERA is an organisation to create sports spaces for girls to encourage reconciliation, healing and conflict resolution.

 

But in the end, I would like to raise a question that even if we come across so many hurdles and crossed so many paths, are the sexual violence cases, the system of patriarchy, the rape cases which we can hear on daily basis decreasing by any chance?

Yes, indeed, women can now come out and talk about their issues openly which is a positive side but are there really any decline in the nature or frequency of violence? The answer is certainly a ‘no’.

By

Nabamalika Bordoloi

1st Semester

Myntra logo controversy! Forge or assertive?

 

Myntra logo controversy! Forge or assertive?

Naaz Patel, a Mumbai based activist who made a complaint last December in association with Avesta Foundation NGO about the e-commerce brand Myntra's logo that she closely observed and found obscenity, regarding it as an offensive nature for women.

According to Naaz, the logo is offensive because it shows a position of a woman lying with her legs wide apart implying as it is secretly showing the sexual privacy of a woman. After the complaint the Myntra logo with capital letter ‘M’ is officially termed as offensive towards women by the Cyber Crime Department. Rashmi Karandikar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime) told PTI that a complaint had approached the BKC Cyber Crime Police Station in that matter. As a consequence to the controversy, Myntra revised their logo on all their digital assets as well as on all packaging material by bearing lakhs and crores of rupees and laying their time and effort.

The issue shocked people as no one ever saw the logo with that view. It is shameful that there are myriad of things that can be fought for but this is what was chosen over setting the priorities discarding real issues and we as a nation are showing signs of intolerance by perceiving the logo with a negative connotation and getting offended out of it. It is such a disgrace that in the last couple of days it has been seen that groping a minor without skin to skin contact isn't a sexual assault, as defined by the Bombay High Court under the POSCO act, but a mere logo can be too sexual and obscene. I personally believe that, activists can set their priorities right, on real problems that genuinely matter to women like dowry, domestic violence, gender inequality, rapes, woman trafficking, child marriage, malnutrition, female infanticide among other things rather than on a company's logo that is unharming to anyone in this world.

If we were to put every logo under scanner, then any logo will be offensive to someone. How many logos are we going to change? When there are lakhs of cyber crime happening everyday in this country. According to National Crime Records Bureau data in 2018, 6,030 cyber crimes were registered by women. "In India 71 crore people are using the Internet, out of which, 25 crore are women. She said 80% of people are falling prey to cyber crimes and 63% of people don’t know where to lodge complaints on cyber crimes." Hence, focusing on petty issues is really a waste of resource, time and energy.

Ritushree R Singh

1st semester