Socially Sad and Mentally Arrogant: Boys Locker Room
A few days back, the nation rose in the morning, expecting a mundane lockdown day but a terribly horrifying news shook India. Sometimes, we receive a news so heavy, that we are incompetent to balance the weight and soak in the news.
On the 4th of May, Indians woke up to such an experience. The unexpected had occurred. A group of ten school boys, out of which four boys were majors but were still in school, were identified to be a part of a social media group named the ‘Bois Locker Room’. The group members were school boys who belonged to high-class families of Delhi and Noida.
The group chat screenshots were leaked by one of the member of the group. Screenshots of snapchat and instagram groups which had horrifying comments about girls. One of the screenshots showed how a boy said that lets call that girl, it’ll be very easy to do so and he asked the other guy to call more boys. Imagine reading such contents waking up in the morning, the first thought instantly is what if that girl was me or my sister or my friends. And that thought, makes you shiver in fear!
After the girl filed a report with Delhi Police Cyber Crime Branch, investigations begun and in a couple of days most of the boys on that group were caught. The girl was continuously posting stories on instagram abusing and accusing the boys of the dirty deed they had committed. Those boys had outraged the modesty of women and had given rape threats. The youth of the nation rose to a teen conflict. One side was trying to present the internet with justifications and were rattling their brains to find a way to get their guy friends out of this mess and the other side was outraging on the internet.While all this was happening, most girls on social media formed a silhouette about all boys being rapist. The nation needs to inculcate the idea of not generalising and blaming.
That night, I couldn’t sleep, my eyes were dry and my heart was racing. As the clock struck eleven and I lay on my bed, I could feel the mental and emotional exhaustion I was still going through. Numerous questions like why are we not safe in our house, how can people just give up on their boys or how can boys talk about women considering they have mother and sisters at home. I was flooded with puzzling questions. I started thinking about how women have mostly suffered and how from Nirbhaya to this, we hadn’t improved.I am certain, all the Indian females that night fought a battle with their thoughts.
After a few days of investigation, reports started coming out that behind all those snapchat chats was a girl who was trying to outrage her own modesty just to see how her friend would react. The girl had used a fake identification of a boy to prove what? To see if she could be raped by her own friends or was trying to seek some sick validation, what was it? That day I realised how the law states that only a man can outrage the modesty of a woman and not a woman herself. Just because of rare desperate actions like these, the whole women community has to suffer, the whole community is found guilty of misusing their rights and laws, the whole community is cursed. There is an urgent need for men and women to understand that this isn’t a war, no body has to prove who is the best, because both men and women are unique and important to the society, we are human and we need to treat each with dignity and respect!
I understand that I might have skipped minute details and even some major details, but through this article I did not aim to offend or hurt anyone. For accurate facts, please refer to the official reports.
