Boys Locker Room

Boys Locker Room has been in the news for all the wrong things the group had been into. This Instagram group of hundreds of boys mostly aged 16–17 have been morphing pictures of girls, objectifying them and even making plans on gang-raping girls. This came as a great shock for the whole social media. This resulted in a demand for stringent legal actions against these juveniles. Well, this is not something new and in my opinion, this is not even surprising. Such discussions have been very common not just in private chat rooms in social media but also in classrooms, hostel rooms, and other public and private spaces.

But can we completely blame these teenagers for whatever deeds they were up to? Doesn’t society have a major role to play in this? From the day a child is born, they are taught that women are objects that are bound to obey her man’s command. Kids are taught that women are merely second fiddle everywhere. Boys and very often men are unaware of the fact that women just like men have sexual desires. Many adolescent boys believe that there is some hormonal problem with the women if she has such desires. And the worst part is even girls are made to believe this myth. This, my friend, is because that’s what they see on television, social media, mainstream cinema, commercials, schools, and their neighbourhood and even at their home. Women are objectified everywhere. And teenagers, what do they know? After all, this is what they see and hear. At that age, they easily get fascinated by all this. In most of the cases, they don’t even know what’s wrong in here. They were never taught what consent is. All they have come across are porn movies. That’s the only sex education they receive. It is indeed sad that porn movies have become their teachers.

What these adolescents did is erroneous and unjustifiable, but it’s not entirely their fault. It’s this society and the system that has to be blamed. While sex education is very important and helpful to change the mindset of the people, that alone cannot change anything. We as a society have to upgrade ourselves. Sex education will certainly help this in the long term. But for now, we need people to talk more about sex, sexuality and gender through all available mediums. We have to realize that our language, culture, literature, movies can all influence our perspectives and thoughts.