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“I've had a lot of what I thought were rock bottoms, only to discover another, rockier bottom underneath.”
- Bojack Horseman. And what being a woman in India has felt like lately.
The whole country is still going through the aftershock from the brutal murder of a 31-year-old doctor-trainee, who was found dead on August 9, 2024, in a lecture hall at R.G. Kar Medical College in Kolkata. The victim was raped, strangled, and suffered extreme violence at the hands of the accused Sanjay Roy and possibly others during her shift. The incident was followed by nationwide protests and strikes by the medical community along with candle marches across different cities demanding justice for the victim.
The entire online space had darkened in the last couple of weeks with discourse around the safety of women in India. But just as we were reaching a position of empathy towards what women go through that resembled at least a collective understanding of the need for change, it was crushed by a report published by The Quint that revealed search trends on Google for photos and videos of the victim including, if you can believe it, ‘rape porn’ of the incident. According to data from Google Trends, searches for terms like ‘rape video’ and ‘rape photo’ following the victim’s name spiked by 160-190% in India and the victim’s name was searched for over 3000 times on porn sites.
Despite the inhumanity of a trend like this, it isn’t the first time this has happened. The case of a veterinary doctor raped and murdered in 2019 also saw a similar trend of millions of searches for her name on pornographic sites along with the Kathua’s minor girl case from 2021.
When we talk about bringing the death penalty to India as a punishment for gender-based violence, where do we draw the line? At Sanjay Roy or the millions of netizens that derive the same pleasure from harm towards women but are saved by their anonymity? Based on gruesome details from the post mortem of the victim, it is speculated that the Kolkata case was a gang rape and there were other people involved who haven’t been caught yet. And right now I can’t seem to separate these faceless monsters from the ones that hide behind the screens.
The nature of these search trends emerges as a very dangerous snake eating its own tail. The police investigation on Sanjay Roy revealed that he was addicted to violent and ‘unnatural’ pornography as per the content found on his phone. A psychological analysis of Sanjay conducted by The Central Bureau of Investigation further unveils him as a sexual deviant with “animal-like instincts” and an absolute lack of emotion or remorse while recounting the crime.
The enemy here might look like Sanjay Roy but it’s way bigger and definitely more pervasive than one person. The culture of violence and contempt towards women is a systemic evil with roots older than any of us. When older generations speak of our traditions, the implication is patriarchy: a force constantly fuelled to overpower and control women.
There are people who will argue that this war isn’t gender-based but that couldn’t be further from the truth. As a woman who has spent a good amount of her young adulthood marinating in internalized misogyny, I can tell you what that inherent resentment and contempt towards the feminine looks like.
You can see it peeking through the veils of online micro trends and 'dark humour'. From un-based hate towards Taylor Swift and anything pink to punch-down domestic violence jokes, to ‘Only Fans detected opinion rejected’, to the lack of autonomy on reproductive rights: the feminine always suffers.
It’s also the reason women and the queer community fall into the same pocket of oppression. We take the hate and we take the blame for it too; for not choosing better. But riddle me this: if not all men, how do we know which ones are the bad ones?
All of us have witnessed it with our peers that we confide in and open up to breaking the illusion of safety and oneness with a little sexist remark that alienates us again. I cherish my connections online. Sometimes it does feel like I’ve found my people. But then I see the same people leaving hurtful and crude comments about women on posts in the name of humour, the latest one being, and forgive me for being graphic, “...a hole is a hole!" How do we even begin to solve a problem women face when we can’t even be perceived as people?
And even when we are, even when we’re granted some humanity as a woman, it’s only as someone’s sister or mother. The norm is to only care about a crime when it happens to one of us: a family member, a friend, or someone we relate to socially.
There are still plenty of cases that do not come into certain socio-economic cohorts that go unheard simply on the basis that we can’t relate to them, whether it’s rural women, marginalized women, dalit women, women from lower caste, sex workers, women below the poverty line, women in orthodox communities or even women from a certain religion. The degree of wrong in our minds is highly contextual and depends on where a woman falls on the social ladder. It’s harsh but it’s true. This selective outrage that stirrs up all hell for a doctor trainee but brushes marital rape under the rug because “it happens” is also part of the problem.
But I’m not trying to use what-aboutism to stray from the latest case. My goal is only to show you the blind spots we have when it comes to societal issues as big as gendered violence. Allyship is a way forward. And despite my inclination to crawl into the cradle of pessimism, I know that allies still exist.
We often call them ‘men written by women'. A man written by a woman has nothing to do with emasculation or submission. He’s just a man that embraces the feminine within him and in the process opens up an avenue for connection with the women in his life. Men who have healthy relationships with the women in their lives do not see women as objects or something to be conquered. This connection is the best remedy, as far as I can tell, to the brain rot patriarchy, pornography and the entire machine of misogyny perpetrates. And despite the odds, I’m placing all my bets on that connection.
