'Not all men'
Written on
‘Not all men’
they say
till the guilty consciences get
glossed over by repeated refusals
to see the truth laying there,
trembling under the weight of
questions that don’t matter;
What was she wearing?”
But where did her dress end and skin begin”
She was Inches short of appropriateness,
they declare.
She was smack in the center of the Venn diagram of rape,
Straddling the circles of rapeable attire and time
It’s obvious she asked for it, they explain.
And I can’t scream anymore without coming apart at the seams,
And I can’t ask
But what about the week old infant girl?
What about the 70 year old cancer patient who you snatched from death’s mouth, only to violate and send back in haste?
What about the fully clothed girl sleeping in her own bedroom, inside a locked house?
What about the little boys and girls in school?
Where do they fall in your neat diagrams of acceptable rape?
How do you justify the young and the old and the sick and the new born
taken against their will each day somewhere someplace?
Which new theories will you pass to undermine our rage and explain away
the constant, unrelenting male gaze that
scorches the skins of women trying to
get through the day?
When will you stop and listen to the sighs of girls coming to terms with the crippling fear that will be their sole companion till death?
Would you care more then?
Nazreen Fazal
Writer, Wife, Mother, Indian, Muslim. So many labels, one me. I write, I rant, I ramble in order to make sense of everything happening around. Join me on this journey as I share snippets of my life, going about work, my parenting wins and fails, and the murky waters that's long distance marriage.
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