I Feel

Honour doesn't come from the vagina, says Catherine Mathai in reaction to our rape story.

We should teach our daughters to react to rape as a loss of power situation. Honour does not come from the vagina. Just as when someone rubs himself against your arm, you don't cut your arm off, instead you shrug it off; we need to teach ourselves to put it in perspective of an accident. Something that happened and cannot be changed. What can be changed is the reaction to it.

A pal once told me that she was brought up to believe that going into the temple during periods is bad. She said I am not able to throw off this guilty feeling in me and so I adhere to it, but i never told my daughter about any such tradition and so she does not have the same hangup. 

Similarly how many of us actually talk about rape in the family when this happens. We need to tell our husbands, brothers and sons that we will be the first to give him up to the cops if something even remotely like this is done by him. It works, believe me. If they know that there is no support at home, then they are automatically careful to avoid such friends. We tell our daughters to be careful when they go out, but do we tell our sons to be careful not to give offence? We presume he will not do these things, though what he does when he hangs around with his friends in the market, we don't want to know. It doesnt work like that. The only way to avoid it, it to confront it. Zero tolerance zone. That is what is required. Stop the small things, the big things will stop itself. 

Stop it in your home and surroundings, it will disappear from the streets. We need to take control. We need to teach the girls to make noise about it. Making noise is the best defence. Another good strategy is to attack some old man or woman sitting next to this guy and say this is your son and see what he is doing and so on. In their haste to disown the miscreant, he will get involved and be on your side in a second!