Staring Hurts
I was in my 9th standard in school. I used to walk to school and back home with my sister and a couple of other female friends everyday. It was an age when I used to find excuses to just go out with friends, walk around our colony, go to shops, bakeries etc., with them. However, one day I noticed that there was this boy (probably in his 20s) staring at me and continuously observing me from his house whenever I came out of my house, into the verandah. I brushed it off initially as probably a coincidence, but as days passed it started to happen so often that I noticed that whenever I came out of my house, he would be noticing me. I used to be scared to even sit in our verandah. I stopped going to shops. I would insist on my mother going to the shops to get anything for me. I literally locked myself up in the house when I was not in school. Even when I went to school, I would take the longer route just to avoid that boy.
*******************************************************************
I was very fond of wearing western wear and after pestering my mother repeatedly, I got myself a pair of jeans dhangri pants which cost 1500 rupees back then in 1999. My mother insisted that I take something more generic like a salwar kameez which I would wear often, but I insisted and made her buy them for me. I wore them once to a function. It was a birthday party with a gathering of around 100–200 people. At the party I noticed that the cameraman was continuously staring at me. He followed me with his camera wherever I went. I tried avoiding him, tried to hide behind people, tried to do everything in my capacity to get rid of his gaze but I couldn’t. Then I started requesting my mother to just leave the party as soon as possible. Finally after an hour of all this extremely uncomfortable situation we got out of the party. But the fear didn’t leave me. As my mom predicted, I stopped wearing those pants. That experience left such a deep scar that I couldn’t dare wear those pants again. I blamed those pants for whatever I went through. My mother kept asking why I don’t want to wear them, why I waste money buying clothes which she knows I will never wear, but I had no answer.
*******************************************************************
I couldn’t share with anyone what I was going through because I was worried I would be scolded for observing “boys’’. I was scared that I would be the one to be blamed because afterall if I am not staring at them, how would I know they are staring at me? I was scared I would be reprimanded for wearing inappropriate clothes and making wrong gestures which invited “men” and brought this upon myself. I was worried I would lose my freedom. I was worried I would be given lectures about how women can never be equal to a man and how I should stop fighting these losing battles of asserting my equality.
I could never explain how violated I felt. I couldn’t explain the extreme debilitating fear I experienced because of these incidents. I couldn’t bring myself to explain to anyone how much these incidents scarred me for life; Even today, I am so extremely hypervigilant that I invariably steer away from a group of boys standing in my street. I walk past them as quickly as possible. I laugh to myself that I work with the Women Development and Child Welfare Department where I tackle cases of women survivors of Gender Based Violence every single day and yet I am still scared of men.
In the two incidents I mentioned above, mind you those men never touched me inappropriately nor spoke any obscene language with me. But the way they looked at me was extremely scary. They created a lot of insecurities, fears, self doubt, low self esteem and made me hypervigilant. It also made me very easily irritable, anxious and angry as a person. I blamed myself for the longest time. I believed it was my fault that they were staring at me that way. It took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t bring this upon myself. WHAT THEY DID TO ME WAS SEXUAL HARASSMENT. However, despite accepting the fact that it is not my fault and what I experienced was sexual harassment, the psychological impact they created on me, still continues to affect me because trust me, such unsolicited staring can NEVER be taken in any positive sense even if we try our best because HARASSMENT IS NEVER FLATTERING.
Note to all the women out there: Whenever you face any form of harassment, please don’t tolerate it silently. When you face the slightest discomfort, please speak up. There will be people who will blame you, pick on you for no fault of yours, somehow try to convince you that you probably perceived a certain “good” man’s gestures wrongly.
It would be a while before people understand the problems we face. NEVERTHELESS SPEAK UP. And please feel free to reach out to me.
Edit: It is unsettling and at the same time heartwarming to note that so many of my female friends are coming out openly and discussing about their experiences. A big shout out to everyone of us who persisted despite going through such harassment. We never stopped getting good grades, never stopped working no matter how messed up we were emotionally.
We should really be proud of ourselves :)