Navigating Solutions and Darkness

Photo by  William Isted  on  Unsplash I wanna say I had a productive social media cleanse, but considering it was punctuated by horrifying real life situations, I'm not so sure it comes out to a net win.

I wanted to write yesterday, but I was too tired and too drunk. Slept for ages. Before that, we talked for hours about how we feel re-traumatized when just reading about accounts of sexual harassment and assault. About the feeling of helplessness as we realize over and over that even the men in our lives who could be considered understanding are separated from us by such a vast ocean of disparity. They've never experienced any such thing, and they probably never will. And these are the ones who do not wilfully follow a pattern of harassment towards every woman they meet. Those guys are farther away, beyond any hope of redemption. As I see a lot of what we term victim blaming in comments and opinions (from dudes, mainly, but also women) I think about how these people do not, in fact, understand how consent works, or what sex feels like for women. They can never even imagine the subtle shift from control to lack of control that may occur - a crucial, very interesting point in tim...

#MeToo is making a comeback on my Twitter, thanks to KavaNope in the US, and a comedian named Utsav Chakraborty in India. All the chatter about Utsav points to a consistently misogynistic personality - one that doesn't come through in the videos he acts in, or in his public persona. Since then, person after person has been coming out with their stories. Of young men, of older men. Of colleagues and bosses. And yeah, none of this is surprising but it's still surprising and exhausting. Yesterday a friend said something about how I'm really into 'the whole #MeToo thing,' and today somebody else said it and they still don't seem to understand how much these things affect us and everything we do. How much they take for granted. How I sort of don't have a choice about "being into the whole #MeToo thing." My college roommate and I encountered this dude who also briefly attended the same college, and there were some professors and stuff we all knew...

Much is discussed about the promise of the girl child, especially in India, where some of us tend to ensure our girls never see the light of day. But WHATABOUT... What about the boy child? The young, sharp, promising looking child that dares to look right at you and speak truth to power? The young man whose talent knows no bounds, who delights you, makes you laugh, stands up straight, his spine unbending? What about the intelligent man, the soft spoken man, the well spoken man? The one who reflects the cosmetic attractiveness of chivalry, without its murky undersides trailing after him? Every time I see such a boy or man these days, my heart sinks. Despite myself, I ask, where's the hitch, where's the catch, show me your flip side. Too many times have I been captivated by the shining beacon of fresh and youthful masculinity only to find that those older women jokesters were right after all. Men are trash,  they say, over and over again. And now I agree, over and over ...