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Written By: Preethi Ananthanarasimhan

I remember It was about more than seven or eight years since a scandalous sex tape leak, I recently came across a picture on whatsapp making rounds which had the victim of the scandal in it getting on about her life- a casual picture with probably her colleagues or business clients. It looked like any other corporate professional talking to her clients. But the picture was being circulated asking people if they recognized her. To which, to my shock, many people responded with humour ironically, a lot of pride at their memory and also some even bad mouthed the girl. To which there were snider comments about her, implying that she is somehow loose. I could almost see a smirk in those msgs!

I write this article with a lot of pain. Pain of knowing that the society is so chauvinistic that there is no fair perception of anything. More so, when it comes to sex. Women, no matter how righteous they are,the respect they deserve is sadly connected to their sex life! Women are virtually not entitled to sex- at least not as openly as men are. It should be a secret. A highly private affair that nobody is supposed to know about, and of course only after she marries! And if somehow, by accident, it becomes known that she is having sex, especially before her marriage, she suddenly is characterless and loose. Oh wait, you also need a guy for sex don’t you? But nobody cares about him. It’s the girl who is characterless and shameless to be having sex before marriage even if she is in love with her boyfriend and trusts him. I will not even attempt to write about how unfair it is to expect women to be virgins before marriages while men aren’t, but even if it was shameful to be involved in sex before marriage, why isn’t the guy’s involvement acknowledged? Its ok for guys to openly talk about sex and how they enjoy it without jeopardizing their integrity. Its ok, everybody knows guys have sex. But girls should not! What a terrible thing to do!

One of the comments went as far as saying “she is the girl who was getting f****d” and in the regional language that sounded more vulgar and implied that she was asking for it.  Would they talk about their wives the same way? Well, don’t their wives get f****d too? Ouch, doesn’t sound as good, does it!? It’s the ‘WIFE’ we’re talking about it, not just a random girl. Wives are somehow more righteous than girls, are we to deduce here?? It’s a shame that our society still doesn’t have it to show the respect she deserves to a girl. Even if she is a victim of an accident somehow she’s defamed. It’s as if we are looking for reasons to brand girls.

There wasn’t a single person who said, yes, it’s that poor girl whose private affair was leaked and made public. Yes it’s that girl who got defamed for no fault of hers. The girl whose boyfriend leaked their sex tape!

What hurts me is not that they watched it in the first place in their teens but that in their thirties they are still not human enough to empathise the girl. Ironically, the people trash talking about her are not even slightly ashamed of watching a leaked sex tape of a couple who were in love and are happily married now. How can our generation and educated people be so insensitive and disgusting to not see the plight of this lady trying to move on from this horrible incident in her teens? That they would have struggled hard to get over the horrible accident that happened all those years ago? And in spite of knowing that it was an accident by her boyfriend the girl is talked badly about; her character and righteousness is questioned and laughed at.

Would they be as insensitive if the tape was their sister’s and her boyfriend’s? or their wife’s and her ex’s? Since she had sex with somebody she was in love with and unfortunately the world got to know about it, she is not as righteous now as she was when nobody knew about it eh? What I do not understand is, there were no talks about the guy she slept with who actually made the tape and leaked it to the internet. And I am pretty sure nobody would remember him. There were two people involved and yet the girl is the one who gets defamed.

In this day where internet is so easily accessible and gadgets are so easily misused, a bad accident like that could happen to any of us. Such things actually reveal the true perception of society on social issues. And in spite of such blatant overlooking of men’s involvement in such scandals, people still wonder why feminism!