Objectification and control over women's sexuality is a deep-rooted patriarchal evil. To maintain their superiority, and to ensure the subordination of women, patriarchy restricts women from expressing their sexual agency. But isn't the root of the problem actually in the rampant male gaze?
Some days your dress would be too long, on other days you won’t be covering ‘enough’. Every day there will be something that is not ‘enough’. To be honest, the society knows and primarily utilises two words 'slut' and 'gold-digger' to bring women down.
St Xavier’s Kolkata Woman Prof case
Recently, a father of a male student in St. Xavier, Kolkata, filed a complaint against a female teacher because he reportedly caught his son looking at her ‘sexually explicit pictures' on social media.
In the complaint, which is now being reportedly widely, the father alleged, “To look at a teacher dressed in her undergarments uploading pictures on social media is utterly shameful for me as a parent since I have tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body… It is obscene, vulgar and improper for an 18-year-old student to see his professor dressed in scanty clothes exhibiting her body on a public platform.”
Why Is Slut-Shaming Always The First Resort?
A scantily clad girl, a girl wearing shorts or having more male friends? She is a slut! A young girl in a relationship with a rich older man? She is a gold digger! In the entire scenario, the prime focus of the society is always on the woman; the kind of clothes she wears, where she goes, and the way she chooses to exude her sexuality.
It’s such an irony when the gentleman alleged that he has been trying to ‘shield’ his son. But what was he shielding from? The objectification of the female body?
Frankly speaking, I didn’t even get the hang of this incident in my first reading and had to read it at least thrice to have a correct understanding of the situation.
A male student consuming allegedly sexually explicit pictures, then why was the finger only pointed at the woman? Because while controlling female sexuality, society also loves to police, and shame personal and professional choices made by women.
Society cannot process a situation when a woman takes control of her sexual agency. The male gaze is normalised but when any person wants to embrace their sexuality or identity it becomes problematic for society.
Female objectification and sexualisation are the concepts that have been normalised (though now being challenged on a large scale) and proliferated through labels such as ‘boys will be boys.’
It’s 2022 and high time that we as a society instead of deviating from the problem, start focussing on its root causes and eradicate them to find long term solutions for the same.
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