Change the gender narrative

Three years after a young woman named Swathi was murdered by a stalker at the Nungambakkam suburban railway station in the heart of Chennai, another young woman was hacked in the city at the nearby Chetpet station on Friday. Police said that Surender, who is accused of attacking the woman, Thenmozhi, had been in a relationship with her. However, her father refused to let them marry. Thenmozhi is believed to have broken off the relationship and moved to the city. Surender is alleged to have come to the station on Friday to convince her to marry him. When she refused, he allegedly hacked her. After attacking her, he was seen jumping onto the train tracks. Both are being treated. 

On the same day, a woman in Tiruchy who was also attacked by an alleged ‘suitor’, died of her injuries. There is a long tradition of Indian films, especially Tamil films, romanticising the man who refuses to move on after a woman breaks up with him. And the woman is made to see the error of her ways and reunite with the hero. In real life too, love hurts, but more often and more violently the woman than the man. Women exercising their agency in turning down a relationship—long or short, real or imagined—too often pay with their lives. Worse, this crime is often minimised or even justified both by public and even the media, in films and headlines. 

What is needed to change the culture and save lives is the privileging of the perspective too often deemed the ‘Other’. In the case of gender-based violence, it is the perspective of women, queer persons and other marginalised groups that needs to be privileged both in media and in policy. Gender-sensitive planning would ensure well-lit and policed public spaces. It would ensure that law enforcement is trained suitably. It would most certainly ensure that the stories which permeate culture privilege not one perspective, but rather are informed by all perspectives, especially those of the marginalised and the othered. Into that heaven of freedom, let the next generations of women awake.