Just Let 'em be...

Being a man, I feel it is naturally hypocritical for me to write on a subject like sexual harassment. I have done my share of ogling at women, passing comments, etc. Although I would like to think I have not "offended" any woman, there is no way I can say whether it is true.

Amit Verma sums is it up quite well in his post here. Especially this part of his post makes a lot of sense to me:
"I suppose women are used to the male gaze, and I can't imagine how. But everytime a man talks disparagingly about letches, he's being hypocritical, to some extent or the other. After all, we all 'check out' women fairly often. If we're male, we have the gaze. Maybe we've just learnt to make it less obvious. One man's checking out is another man's letching. Where do you cross the line?"

I have discussed this with my female friends and it was quite a revelation for me when they told me that they face such things almost every time they go out, whether they are alone or in a group. I can't help squirming when I hear about the kind of things they go through almost on a daily basis. I know I can't truly relate to the sort of harassment they go through. I do not even know whether raising a voice in public will even change anything. I am slightly pessimistic about what raising one's voice in public will do. What if the girl actually does not want me to raise my voice and give undue importance to such an episode? As one of my friends put it quite succinctly, "just let women be". Wish men paid heed to these words.

Many of my male friends think that harassment has a lot to do with the dress that girls wear. They argue that "revealing" dresses naturally "provoke" guys more into passing lewd remarks, etc. I do not really agree with them. The kind of instances I have heard and seen about do not really indicate any such tendencies. Inspite of all the "modernization" in our culture, I still don't think all girls still have the freedom to wear anything they want to. Most of them are very conscious of what the society will say if they wear "bold" dresses. With people like the shiv sainiks and similar "ethnic" groups playing police and custodians of the "great indian tradition and culture", I don't know whether we will actually see a day when women are given complete freedom in our country.