STOP!

Though the idea had been simmering in my mind on sleepless nights, I started this blog on a rare idle afternoon at work on impulse, out of a deep sense of outrage. Now, I am a liberal and often unpleasantly libertarian, but I am hopelessly old fashioned when it comes to certain things. A profound respect for women is somewhere on top of that list. A sense of everyday courtesy is other e.g. holding doors open for people, respecting others’personal spaces, taking virtues like loyalty seriously, being nice to old people etc. Surfing blogs that day, I came across this, this, this, this,and this, and , as outrageous examples of regressive, crude misogyny masquerading as politically self-righteous criticism as any. I am a fierce advocate of freedom of speech, but there’s a difference between the blatant abuse of public spaces (think repressed, ‘harmless’, exhibitionist near a school with something hanging out); the wanton violation of someone else’s private space; persistent, creepy, predatory preying, and exercising one’s right to one’s opinion. The former is the germ of all the evil that is perpetrated on the vulnerable, on the pretext of self-righteousness, ‘traditions’, ‘history’ and the oft quoted ‘she/they asked for/deserved it’. This includes sexual assault and mass murder.

So I did something which I don’t do often. I signed myself into blogger (and so a blog was born!) stopped by and lost my temper. I probably said things I shouldn't have, and my comments reek of the worst kind of tabloidesque, reactionary, provocativeness, but hell, was I mad!! So did others, and that appeared to have stopped this sleazeball for a while. But as with all such specimens, he backed off the more intimidating of his targets and focussed on the slightly gentler one (who also incidentally, had the courtesy to engage with him consistently). Now I try to help victims of violence for a living (among other things), from different parts of the world, and I can recognize a pattern when I see one. As bloggers inhabiting a common space, creating social norms for that space as we go along, I believe we have a responsibility to stop the abuse of that space when we see it. If the blogosphere, which is a child of the twentyfirst century, cannot set an example and break away from exploitative and abusive attitudes, which were products of so called less enlightened times, we can hardly expect this century to be any better than the previous ones.

Or let me put this another way. Today it's some strange person's blogspace that's being violated, tomorrow it may be the blogspace of someone you love, and then it may be the person you love, who becomes subject to the violation. Me, I am not going to sit around and wait until that happens.

This is crude misogyny, under cover of a faux anti-elitism, seeking to abuse and violate. It is often the precursor of more unpleasant acts of violence. It is the germ of attitudes that lead to Jessica Lalls, Meher Bhargavas, Priyadarshini Mattoos and Teena Brandons. Stop it. And stop it now. Tell this stalker what you think of him.

The End.