Almost every constitutional or social right that women have today, they have fought for it. They fought to be able to vote, they fought to be able to fly, to lead a country, to sit with men in a boardroom, to talk in that boardroom. It has been centuries of struggle and we have covered a great distance in this journey thanks to the courage of those who came before us.
However, there is still a long way to go. In India, among some other countries, women are still deprived of many fundamental rights – which include being able to prosecute husbands for forced sex. It’s a grim reality for millions of women that has to be viewed in the light of the fact that in a lot of cases, marriages themselves are forced on them.
Recently, there has been an attempt to change this. The lawmakers of India are working to criminalise marital rape, a much-needed, long-overdue step that is being met with criticism, if you can believe it. A certain section of society thinks of this as a tool that will allow women to wrongly accuse men of sexual violation.
This overwhelming fear of being “unfairly charged” for rape is often accompanied by a complete lack of understanding of consent – and that could be the case for many who are against the reform. Most of these people are men, who are so scared, they have started a trend on social media, that is – #marriagestrike.
Apparently, they do not want to get married if marital rape is criminalised because of the reason stated above. Some of these men also think of women’s rights, especially married women’s rights, as secondary to their husbands’, and because of that they have chosen to not tie the knot at all (or at least falsely announce the same on social media).
Now, the best way to engage with such men is legally, because one can never be too sure what the conversation could lead to. But if there’s one message we could send to them, it would be: if criminalisation of marital rape makes you want to boycott marriage, go ahead.
Do the world a favour and stay away from any kind of institution involving women that is legal in nature. And while at it, also avoid any activity that places you in the vicinity of them.
You are a crime enabler or possibly something worse. There is no practical argument to rule that out. You do not deserve to call anyone your wife and you absolutely do not deserve to have a family with this mindset.
In fact, you should ideally stay away from society at large, because the prospect of these opinions rubbing off on other people is terrifying. What is also terrifying is the fact that multiple people have to state that rape is wrong and that it is a crime, so that you might understand that it is.
So many of these people are explaining this to you at the cost of their sanity, so many of them are triggered every time the word is mentioned.
We hope this law is changed as soon as possible so that India can see a day where a woman can look her spouse in the eye and tell him he’d be in jail if he even so much as lays finger on her without her consent. These vile social media trends should serve as further proof that women need the law to back them.