New Year’s Eve is a time of celebration when one anxiously waits for a new beginning but the start of 2017 only reinforced the idea that women are limited in their freedom in countries like India and Germany.

Women in Bangalore, India were groped, grabbed, pinched, molested, and catcalled despite the many safety precautions that were taken like police officers and CCTV cameras. This act of mass-molestation is not something new but is quite familiar to the streets of Bangalore or the likes of Cologne, Germany where there was a repeat of last year’s mass-molestation by migrants.

The home minister of the state of Karnataka blamed the women’s western sense of dressing which she claimed enticed men into committing  such acts of sexual assault. Had they not wandered the streets without the presence of a male family member, such incidents would not occur.

That very same day, #NotAllMen trended on Twitter in India as men began to take offense to the generalizations made about sexual assault as it was not representative of all Indian men. Rather than address the issue head on and take responsibility, they resorted to a hashtag that enforced the fears women come to face every day.

Currently there is no legislation concerning acts of mass-molestation but that is something that needs to be addressed. The importance of this issue may seem minimal to many Americans but the truth is that everything carries over. Indian women were blamed for their Americanized style of clothing which speaks volumes about American women.

Before legislation is approached, it is important to enact social change that will spark a movement about this. Most Indian women are still living in a very traditional environment and they need such events to gain the attention of world powers like the United States so that the publicity will force society to rethink their decisions.

While that is still in the works, Indian women are beginning to reach out to a new demographic: parents.

From a young age, Indian women are reared to follow a strict set of mantras that encourage modest dressing, discourage late nights spent outside of the house alone, and cover a broad sense of topics that limit their freedom.

These mantras point back to the fact that if disobeyed and faced with the consequences, women would be blamed for their lack of heedfulness.  However, an Indian male is never raised with mantras that provide such restriction or caution. The lurking fear that is always skirted around but never called out by name (rape) is almost never a point of discussion when born male.

It’s time to change that.

It’s time for parents to start teaching their sons about consent.

It’s time for sons to be taught that a woman’s role as a wife, a sister, or a mother should have no say in whether he is enraged by acts of sexual assault and rape.

It’s time for men to learn that there is no excuse for sexual assault or rape and that nobody is deserving of it or asking for it.

Women should not be living in fear of the world they are forced to circumnavigate. Rather, men should actively take a stance against and protect them from the issues that they are plagued with in society.

Signing off,
Joanne