“Rebel women deserve to get raped.” A video posted on Instagram, only to later be taken down, by Shivani Gupta, i.e. @sunkissedshitzu, featuring a middle-aged woman from New Delhi, sparked an incredibly angered response from all over the world.
It is no secret that India has a more conservative approach to women, tending to side with traditional ideals and shame women who go against them. While the younger generations of Indians are making moves towards the more modern age and allowing women to have more freedom to express themselves, there are many things - namely people - holding them back.
These so-called ‘traditional’ ideals are very restricting to the 21st century woman. They require women to always be respectful, wear modest clothing and be a general maestro around the house. Similar to the phrase ‘children should be seen and not heard’, there are many older Indians who think that this phrase should apply to women.
The woman in the video is shown to be surrounded by many irritated young girls and women, many of whom have their own copy of the video, and who are asking her to repeat what she said, as well as challenging what she said. The woman has no hesitation to say that the young women of today with their short skirts and dresses deserve to be raped due to their apparent ‘indecent’ clothing.
The video was taken after Gupta and her friends had eaten at a restaurant. The older woman had approached them, saying that women who wear such short dresses get raped, and when challenged, allegedly proceeded to ask the men in the restaurant to rape girls who wear such clothing. It was in response that a group of outraged young girls decided to follow the woman to challenge her views, which is when the video was taken.
Instagram fell under fire after the social media had taken down all traces of the video, claiming that it had not followed ‘community guidelines’. This caused an outcry as it took down a video such as this, however allows things like fascist propaganda and extremist posts to remain relatively unharmed unless many people explicitly report it.
The problem here lies in the fact that there are many older Indian women who are in agreement with the woman who instigated the entire event, and they then proceed to teach these ‘values’ to their sons, who grow up thinking of women as lesser beings, or worse, objects. Little can be done to change such things alone, but hopefully the outcry drowns out the more prejudiced.
