THE FEMALE GAZE

The papers are stashed with news of rapes and other means of assault on women everyday – acid attacks and shootings being a typical feature. Sometimes one or two of these become major news and the dining table becomes a pounding table over them. Have such antisocial occurrences increased in the recent past? Or is it just that the media chooses to focus on them more? There are innumerable assault cases that still go unnoticed every day! Who is to say there weren’t just as many, or perhaps, more, before it caught such widespread attention? Historically, for centuries past, world over, men have always looked at women’s bodies as areas of conquest, as something to be possessed by right. Will things ever change?

Feminism is ostensibly taking center stage. Advertisements advocating change in male mentality, seminars, media discussions, etc. are becoming common place. Feminism has even seeped into casual conversations! But at the heart of it all, people still believe women need to be restricted. And they do. Anybody can be dangerous if they take an eccentric interest in an ideology. Women are no exception. Left on their own, women, too, can be very bold; contrary to the popular stereotype. Things do need to change. Women do need to fight against this universal assumption that men seem to have. But how many of us can fight outright when our life is hanging on the balance?

Would fighting back with violence solve the problem? It is more likely to simply bring out the bestial side of both sexes triggering a destructive frenzy. Feminism is needed by all means. But it should perhaps dress itself up differently and speak a different language. Headlong attack cannot undo an age old assumption that women need to be controlled. True that women have broken shackles that bound previous generations. But the male gaze hasn’t changed. And it isn’t just sexual assaults that need to be looked at to notice this. On a daily basis, things that men say and do, at however a small level, have that time-beaten assumption at the root.

Every woman grows up literally going through a separate course of study, learning and trying to understand this thorn in the male psyche. Every girl, in our country at least, has this fear reinforced, as she grows up, by numerous attacks on her body, major or minor, and commonly in public places. A common girl cannot afford to display stubbornness and simply declare that she will not restrict herself in terms of time or company. Any news report of assaults would be nothing heard new to a common girl – most often she herself has or has had a close acquaintance go through similar experiences. A fear she cannot escape from must, thus, perpetually burn the inside of her. She can never unleash her complete self – never realize her full capability – while this apprehension dogs not only her but everyone who loves her and cares about her.

Though news reports and media discussions are a great step in creating awareness and handing out justice in certain cases, it is also going a long way in enhancing the anxiety and unease within common households. What then can help move towards a solution for the issue; the law? Well, that is another weather-beaten road altogether. The law, however, can only control men’s actions; it cannot alter male gaze. Can the male gaze be altered at all?