On 3rd April 2020, screenshots of a group chat known as "bois locker room" (consisting of boys of ages 17-19 from the Delhi-NCR region) were leaked onto Instagram. The group chat, allegedly created as a platform to let off some steam through general conversation, took a turn for the worse when the topic of discussion shifted from small talk to females and sex.
Several members began sending Instagram posts, screenshots and, in some cases, pornographic images of certain females (all underage). These images were followed by lewd, sexual statements about the physical features of said females. Considering that each was underage, the members' actions were unacceptable.
Needless to say, the screenshots soon exploded onto other social media platforms, and the details of each member of the group as well as the identities of the principal perpetrators of the entire incident became public knowledge. When questioned, some did choose to step up and publicly acknowledge and apologize for their mistakes. However, a larger portion of the guilty party decided to retaliate by insulting and threatening those that stood against them.
They did so by creating a new Instagram account named “boys locker room 2.0”, where they even went as far as to write “use fake accounts so that you cannot be exposed this time” in the account bio. Some members even threatened and began planning the gang-rape of one sixteen year old girl who had the ‘audacity’ to stand up for herself being objectified. The boys even went as far as to make statements planning to extract and leak the nudes of every girl spreading awareness regarding their situation as punishment.
Despite all this, some individuals were confused by the situation. Although acknowledging the impropriety, the scale of the coverage didn’t make sense to them. I have one simple explanation. Rape culture.
Firstly, the fact that this topic didn’t seem like a huge problem to some is a red flag in itself. Even in educated society, it is now so common to have such discussions with zero regard or respect for the women involved that certain individuals genuinely believed the issue was blown out of proportion because “boys will be boys” or “it wasn’t like they physically assaulted anyone”.
I’d like to start by pointing out that whether it was physical or mental, assault is assault. I had friends as young as fourteen who had their bodies dissected on that group. It left them self-conscious, disgusted, and traumatized because they didn’t know how to react to being so tastelessly sexualized. Several of my friends deleted posts, stories and pictures of themselves on social media because the pictures that made them feel beautiful and empowered now made them feel like prospective sex objects. This incident being online did not take away from how sickening and repulsive it is.
Secondly, some responses to the incidents were perfect examples of rape culture, evident in the statements and actions of the people (both male and female) that had the audacity to attempt to defend the perpetrators by trying to downplay the gravitas of the situation. This is a trend I've observed not in just this one situation but so uniformly across large time periods that I've started to believe that rape culture is as intrinsically connected to society as Diwali celebrations are.
There’s not much that can be done in the short-run about rape culture - it’s too deeply engrained into the societal hivemind. Realistically, the most we can hope for is change in the long-term, but that stems from us making a conscious effort to point out instances of rape culture when they arise: rape jokes, casually commenting on promiscuity, the shapes and sizes of female bodies, sexual ‘compliments’, supporting the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality and much more.
And change does stem from this. The fact that we have been able to have a conversation about something once thought so intimate and personal - one which would have been absolutely impossible in the not-so-distant past - is evidence of change. That doesn’t mean we’ve reached the finish line. We have a long way to go, but this incident definitely changed my view on the growth we’ve had. It was beautiful watching so many people step up, from taking legal action against the members of the group chat to supporting the young women. For once, I didn’t come across the typical “those feminazis are back at it again” or “all men are trash” story or post. I certainly saw rape culture, but behind that, unity glowed brighter.
And that gave me hope for change.
Comments