I don’t run anymore. I’m afraid to.
Recently, I gave my ten year old niece the same advice my mother gave me when I was only slightly older, words that have held me in good stead over the years,
“Never look them in the eye. They’ll think you’re asking for it.”
“Asking for what?” my niece said, her voice lifting in curiosity. “I don’t even know them.”
I couldn’t explain to her then, not without upsetting her mother who’d just come into the room. How could I tell the not-yet-teenage girl what I actually meant? That there would be men on the streets who would want a piece of her, to touch her, to pinch her, to make her cry, and then as she’d stare helplessly back they’d sprint away, delighted, goal achieved. And that if she looked them in the eye, they’d think she’d provoked it somehow. And worse still, she might think it.
“To avoid being shamed, we must do what is necessary.”
This piece of advice from my mother has kept me safe and sane over the decades of living and working as a single woman in India. I ignore stares, lecherous comments, and catcalls. I try and keep myself safe, holding a benign distance from any advancing male, scanning their body language for trouble, skirting expertly if one perchance came too close. Over the years, I, as many of the women on the crowded Indian streets, have perfected the art.
“That is how it is,” my mother used to say, “what else can we do?”
I can’t help but think what kind of psychological damage this attitude has done to me, and to women everywhere. Women who constantly worry about being late from work, about walking out in the dark, not having the freedom to wake up too early for a run or stay up too late after a party. We have been taught to inherently mistrust men on the roads, so that we are safe, and we treat even the good ones that way. We are riddled with constant suspicion, second guessing, fear…
Fear of abuse and not just abuse itself is akin to childhood maltreatment.
Several studies talk about how childhood abuse and trauma alter an adult’s reaction towards life. One among them is a study undertaken by Ryan Herringa of the University of Wisconsin Madison which cites: maltreatment in childhood, even at the lower severity levels found in a community sample, may alter the regulatory capacity of the brain’s fear circuit, leading to increased internalizing symptoms by late adolescence. Furthermore, the impact of maltreatment during childhood on both fronto–amygdala and–hippocampal connectivity in females may help explain their higher risk for internalizing disorders such as anxiety and depression.
Not surprising, and pretty much intuitive, wouldn’t you say?
I read an article in Spark Magazine once, that talked about women’s right to loiter. The article goes on to explain the concept of “Why Loiter?” movement: Founded by Neha Singh, a movement based on the book “Why Loiter? — Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets” by Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, Shilpa Ranade. In the book, the authors draw from feminist theory to argue that only by celebrating loitering “a radical act for most Indian women” can a truly equal, global city be created.
Women, as do men, love to loiter out on the roads. Only we know from very young, it’s not safe.
‘Loitering’ should be a primary fundamental right. It equates to being, doesn’t it? How can I be afraid to be and how can that not, in some way negatively affect my well being and sensibilities? And more than anything else, this lack of freedom on the roads makes me sorely aware of my apparent inferiority, telling me I don’t deserve to be free, in a space mine as much as theirs, in a country as much mine as theirs.
I love to walk, I love to run. I want to be able to do both of those things without a parallel dialogue of fear running in my head. Without men coming close and accidentally brushing against me. Or whisper what they’d do to me if they had me alone.
In the end I want the right to be free on India’s roads.
I want the road given back to me.
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