Expressez-Vous

By: Tasnuva Tabassum

As I was waiting in the car, immovable in the well-known traffic jam of Dhaka city, looking around for something exciting to catch my eyes, what I noticed was a girl waiting for the bus in a bus stop and two men behind her continuously staring at the “wrong places” and passing comments to each other. The girl looked uncomfortable as she waited for the bus, which never seemed to show up among the cluttered vehicles in the road. As I was witnessing this kind of an unethical behavior of the men towards the girl, I wondered why the girl was weak enough to not raise her voice and just ask them to “shut up”. Why she chose ignorance instead of what, that could make a change?

This is an oh-so-familiar phenomenon in the streets of Dhaka, which is happening every day. Eve-teasing, as we call it, is men’s street sexual harassment or molestation of young women who travel their own streets to and from work, school, or their assorted tasks. In the male dominated society of Bangladesh, this eve-teasing, has mostly been ignored. These teasers, who have nothing better to do, have the decency of their souls sold out to the devils of disrespect towards women. This particular issue needs a recipe for change because eve teasing leaves a huge impact in both our individual and national life. Victimized women and girls do not only get psychologically troubled, but also continuously feel insecure to go outside their homes. They develop a sense of disbelieve and humiliation against men. In fact, within the patriarchal social fabric, eve teasing is a weapon to weaken, hurt or force women to consign to domestic affairs. It evidently restricts women’s mobility in the public, which contributes to their diminishing participation and contribution in outdoor activities and also causes early marriage. There is increasing realization that eve teasing severely restricts the mobility of women and girls, which is unquestionably a threat to women’s empowerment. All together, though apparently invisible, the cost of eve teasing is huge at our national and individual life in Bangladesh.

Along with that, in Bangladesh, it has gradually become brutal form of sexual harassment often resulting in grievous hurt, abduction, acid throwing, rape murder and forced suicide. Eve-teasing, though, had been previously considered under the VAW reports of BNWLA since 2000, but from 2005 the organization has declared crusade against eve-teasing and published a poster trying to bring this matter into the limelight and held various discussions, meetings and event held a press conference to create awareness as well. In 2004-5 the Bangladeshi women’s group, Mahila Parishad distributed a poster and conducted a campaign against eve-teasing because several young women, students, and even young girls committed suicide owing to social pressures-shame-daily harassment. In 2007, Advocate Habibun Nessa of Naripokkho, reported 29 suicide deaths in the last four years. In some cases the police colluded with the eve-teasers and blamed the women for their own problems. Bangladesh has no laws against eve-teasing, much less respect for women who dare to venture alone or even in groups in the streets.

Along with the law enforcement being weak on this issue, there are also various other causes which leads to this unacceptable behavior of these teasers. Firstly, it’s the silence and ignorance. The silence and ignorance of these victims add up to themselves being teased frequently. If every girl was brave enough to just say “SHUT UP” in the faces of these big –mouth-bastards, who are apparently “small everywhere”, then to some extent, we could see less of eve teasing. It is very much disgraceful, shameful, and dishonorable for us if we ignore them and increase their guts to speak trash with their big mouths. However, in some cases, raising our voices is not enough when it becomes inaudible to the world. But in that case, we should not be weak enough to let our voices end up inaudible. With the spread of education and economic well-being, the consequences of eve teasing are now widely known. We should demand perpetrators brought to justice. So, what we need most now is to voice collective protest and action against eve teasing. Side by side, without ensuring a sensitive, supportive and responsible law-enforcing force, all efforts will go in vain. After all, they have a huge role in preventing all dreadful and unlawful incidents including eve teasing. So let’s get together and voice our collective protest against eve teasing and be familiar with it as a crime against humanity. For dignity, respect and self-confidence, every woman has to raise their voices, shut up the big mouths and therefore, make a statement.