‘Bois locker room’ chats show how boys of elite Delhi schools engage in deviant behaviour against fellow girl students

When teen boys in elite schools in our metropolitan cities talk about raping or gang-raping their classmates, share nude pictures of underage girls, objectify them and post sexually explicit chats, it means just one thing, that India, as a nation has failed its women/girls. That bestiality is a natural response even among the young, too easily molly-coddled as “raging hormones.” And that education is basically an exchange value for a good life and not true knowledge or enlightenment. How else does one explain this abominable, unhealthy and sexist mindset among the privileged lot of society that continues to see the opposite gender through a medieval stereotype? As an object of prey of possession. How else will we then rationalise the sexual deviance of uneducated juveniles? So, it shouldn’t surprise us when our sensibilities are repeatedly shocked by the outing of “bois locker room” chats of the kind that came out this Sunday. Or the one a few months ago, in which the “bois” in question were as young as 12. What is more frightening is that all these cases involve children of well-heeled parents, who come from “good families” and have had entitled and privileged lives. Liberated even, without developing a mindset to handle the spirit of liberalism. And if these boys think that it is their right to treat women as sex objects then we, as parents, have done a bad job of bringing them up. We have not raised them to respect women/girls, treat them as equals and not objectify them. We have not brought up gentlemen but brutes and misogynists. Spare the rod and spoil the child goes an old adage. That changed when post-liberalisation, the world opened up and millennials were exposed to unfiltered content as part of their experiential education in a new, wider world, courtesy the internet and cellphones. With corporal punishment banned in 2010 and severe strictures against teachers if they overstepped child rights, schools, too, became cagey about stepping into or monitoring extra-curricular or non-school activities. So what do we do now? We have a generation of spoilt, brazen and sexually-depraved boys, who will one day be men and wield power of some sort over someone of the opposite sex. How many Weinsteins have we raised?

For now, we have to be satisfied with the fact that one of the 22 schoolboys has been taken into custody and more have been identified as the police investigate the horrific Instagram group chat that has been deactivated. The teen has identified 21 of the boys who were active on the group and his phone has been seized by the Cyber Cell of Delhi Police. But what of all those groups that no one knows about. And can we truly just blame the boys? What about unsupervised teens left to their own devices by busy parents? What about the expensive gadgets they are showered with to assuage parental guilt or just to get them out of our hair? Do we ever take the time and see what they are getting up to in their free time or locked away in their rooms? Have we ever taken the time or trouble to sit with them and talk about sex and the importance of consent? Have we ever given them the confidence that if they have questions about sex they can come to us and we will educate them as we do for every other thing? And what about the easy access to porn? Most are initiated into sex through these sites which objectify and degrade women. Violent images that get seared in their impressionable minds and desensitise them, making them think that women are meant to be violated. What of the criminal justice system that teaches them that you can get away with it? Our power brokers and politicians don’t make the best role models for our youth. So it is not enough or done to point fingers at the boys, we as a society have a lot to answer for. And some of the answers to these tricky questions are certainly not going to be of our liking. This is reflected in our crime graph. If the latest NCRB data is anything to go by, 33,356 incidents of rape were reported during 2018 involving 33,977 victims, an average of 89 rapes a day. Overall, 72.2 per cent  of rape victims were above 18 years and 27.8 per cent below 18. And social media platform owners ought to monitor such base content.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

‘Bois locker room’ chats show how boys of elite Delhi schools engage in deviant behaviour against fellow girl students

When teen boys in elite schools in our metropolitan cities talk about raping or gang-raping their classmates, share nude pictures of underage girls, objectify them and post sexually explicit chats, it means just one thing, that India, as a nation has failed its women/girls. That bestiality is a natural response even among the young, too easily molly-coddled as “raging hormones.” And that education is basically an exchange value for a good life and not true knowledge or enlightenment. How else does one explain this abominable, unhealthy and sexist mindset among the privileged lot of society that continues to see the opposite gender through a medieval stereotype? As an object of prey of possession. How else will we then rationalise the sexual deviance of uneducated juveniles? So, it shouldn’t surprise us when our sensibilities are repeatedly shocked by the outing of “bois locker room” chats of the kind that came out this Sunday. Or the one a few months ago, in which the “bois” in question were as young as 12. What is more frightening is that all these cases involve children of well-heeled parents, who come from “good families” and have had entitled and privileged lives. Liberated even, without developing a mindset to handle the spirit of liberalism. And if these boys think that it is their right to treat women as sex objects then we, as parents, have done a bad job of bringing them up. We have not raised them to respect women/girls, treat them as equals and not objectify them. We have not brought up gentlemen but brutes and misogynists. Spare the rod and spoil the child goes an old adage. That changed when post-liberalisation, the world opened up and millennials were exposed to unfiltered content as part of their experiential education in a new, wider world, courtesy the internet and cellphones. With corporal punishment banned in 2010 and severe strictures against teachers if they overstepped child rights, schools, too, became cagey about stepping into or monitoring extra-curricular or non-school activities. So what do we do now? We have a generation of spoilt, brazen and sexually-depraved boys, who will one day be men and wield power of some sort over someone of the opposite sex. How many Weinsteins have we raised?

For now, we have to be satisfied with the fact that one of the 22 schoolboys has been taken into custody and more have been identified as the police investigate the horrific Instagram group chat that has been deactivated. The teen has identified 21 of the boys who were active on the group and his phone has been seized by the Cyber Cell of Delhi Police. But what of all those groups that no one knows about. And can we truly just blame the boys? What about unsupervised teens left to their own devices by busy parents? What about the expensive gadgets they are showered with to assuage parental guilt or just to get them out of our hair? Do we ever take the time and see what they are getting up to in their free time or locked away in their rooms? Have we ever taken the time or trouble to sit with them and talk about sex and the importance of consent? Have we ever given them the confidence that if they have questions about sex they can come to us and we will educate them as we do for every other thing? And what about the easy access to porn? Most are initiated into sex through these sites which objectify and degrade women. Violent images that get seared in their impressionable minds and desensitise them, making them think that women are meant to be violated. What of the criminal justice system that teaches them that you can get away with it? Our power brokers and politicians don’t make the best role models for our youth. So it is not enough or done to point fingers at the boys, we as a society have a lot to answer for. And some of the answers to these tricky questions are certainly not going to be of our liking. This is reflected in our crime graph. If the latest NCRB data is anything to go by, 33,356 incidents of rape were reported during 2018 involving 33,977 victims, an average of 89 rapes a day. Overall, 72.2 per cent  of rape victims were above 18 years and 27.8 per cent below 18. And social media platform owners ought to monitor such base content.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)