Recently, an interview clip of Babil Khan went viral for his take on romantic relationships. But unfortunately, things took an ugly turn and people began trolling him for it, in a rather nasty way. The actor was in conversation with Humans of Bombay founder, Karishma Mehta and talked about refraining from seeing women as conquests and how he’d like to surrender to the equality between him and his partner.
Here’s the video if you’d like to take a quick look.
‘You have to understand that she’s not an achievement. We’re so used to saying “Bro I’ve got this girl,” that is such a regressive statement. You don’t acquire a woman, you partner up with a woman. My definition of love is to surrender to the innate equality of me and you.’
– Babil Khan
Internet being internet, people have decided to give a character assessment of Babil Khan with a 30 sec clip. And the tweets have definitely gotten too much, too hateful. To go so far and assume such things about a person based on a short clip blurs the line between deriving a simple analysis and sharing an opinion to being hateful and judgemental. Again, let’s not forget this video is heavily edited and we can’t decipher someone’s personality on its basis.
Some people are conversing about how men who seem like feminists and believers in absolute equality can often be the opposite, in real life. The fact that many women have come across men who might have said all the right things, but ended up being terribly disconnected from the idea of equity and equality is at the root of this discussion.
As a woman, I myself am all too familiar with certain men who are well-versed in feminism, theoretically, but lack the accountability and self-awareness to be practical feminists. We’re not here to shame anyone and say that there is no room to make mistakes, but I think most women are at a stage where we’re hoping for genuine, solid support from men.
And though I understand why so many women here are warning other women of men who can say things you’d want to hear for a self-serving agenda, I don’t think it’s fair we’re trolling a celebrity who is simply speaking his mind.
However, some people have defended him and asked how people are deriving so much about his personality based on a 30-second video.
Perhaps as women, we’ve lost faith in humanity so much that we have a hard time believing that men can embody true respect for us, but it’s also true that there are men who say all the right things, but don’t have the same beliefs internally. And neither of these things justifies the judgment that Babil is getting here.
