Tuesday, October 9, 2018

#MeToo Campaign in India and Way Forward

What is this trend about?

The phrase "Me Too" was popularized by American actress Alyssa Milano on Twitter in 2017.  #MeToo is the latest global fad / trend which Indians have copied from the West. As a 'third world' nation craving for our place on the globe, Indians copy a lot of global trends only at their face value. Most of these are hypocritical in nature and are completely forgotten / abandoned afterwards. MeToo is also one such trend which is just the latest fashionable trend being followed in India and promoted by TRP craving media. 

Role of Mainstream Media (MSM)

Mainstream media in India does not have any better job than assassinate famous people's character and conduct 'media trials'. Mainstream media even pass the judgments in most cases, and then go on to haunt democratic governments for not doing enough according to what they ordered!

Like Award Wapsi fad / tirade this will also vanish without trace in a few months.

Is this trend genuine?

I fail to believe that all of a sudden, most male celebrities in India have become predators and sexual assaulters; just because an American actress popularized a hash tag on Twitter!

What happens in most cases is as follows - most of the time these are "consensual relationships". Until the woman keeps getting monetary benefits out of the relationship, she will keep mum. When the relationship turns sour and she does not earn anymore out of it, she will call it "rape" or "assault" or whatever.

In a lot of cases, such women also simply accuse rich and famous men so as to earn "extortion money". For every such #MeToo complaint which is being made, I guess there would be 5 other cases where the woman would have earned her "extortion money" and would have kept mum. This is plain criminal.

Somewhere, this media propelled trend is sick. It is sad both for men and women. Because it is dishonest and opportunist at the core. No one can know what really happened 10 or 15 years back, but these women are trying to destroy careers, homes and families of rich and famous men for their own selfish motives. This is shameful.

At the same time, some of such reported incidents might be true. It is our collective responsibility to think of ways to prevent such crimes from happening. 

What can be done to prevent such real crimes?

For the MeToo related real crimes; most such crimes have happened when there is a victim and there is an exploiter. E.g. there was a movie director and there was a female actress in search of work. The relationship was 1:1. Number of females on the road did not matter to what happened inside closed doors between two people.

I think such crimes are side-effect of how civilization is working. There is too much pressure on young aspirants and the 'rat race's is too harsh. If there were too many jobs for those female aspirants who went to see their male bosses; they won't have chosen to be exploited at that time. They are now accusing their perpetrators when they are rich and strong. So justice should not be a privilege of rich and strong women. We have to ensure even poor and weak women get justice if they are harmed. And that can happen only by creating a happier, more prosperous and civilized world.

- Rahul 

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