Author: Namita Bhandare

While we’ve been chipping away at the traditional silence around menstruation, its progression to menopause is still deemed too awful to talk about

A recent survey in the United Kingdom (UK) finds that one in 10 women has quit a job due to menopausal symptoms. The Indian Menopause Society estimates that 150 million women in India live with it, symptoms of which could include hot flushes and night sweats (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

It’s yet to stream into India, but Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is already top on my must-watch list. A 60-something-year-old played by 63-year-old Emma Thompson looking for sexual pleasure! A nude scene!! It’s Armageddon.

G Gopakumar’s acquittal of Franco Mulakkal, a bishop of the Jalandhar diocese, is the latest in misogynist rape judgments and tells you why sexual assault survivors remain reluctant to speak up. In two words: Rape trials

The acquittal of Tarun Tejpal in May 2021 falls into this pattern and is rife with graphic details about the survivor’s past sexual history, despite the law stating that it has no bearing on a rape trial. Like the Mulakkal judgment and like so many other rape judgments, it transgresses into the personal to become in a very real sense another violation of the survivor. And like the Mulakkal judgment, it is a cautionary tale on why women don’t speak up. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

During India’s #MeToo movement in 2018, a question I often heard was: But why is she speaking up now? On the face of it, it seemed reasonable enough. If you are the victim of a crime, why would you hesitate in complaining?

The online ‘auction’ of Muslim women exists in an ecosystem of hate. But the sexualized attack on Muslim women is not new. Over the past year, there have been at least three “auctions” — May 2020, Eid in July, and November on Clubhouse

It reflects the divisiveness sown by media that makes free use of labels like “jihadi” and “anti-national” and, where hours after the arrest of an 18-year-old woman accused, anchors spin tear-jerker backgrounds of how she’s an orphan as if that justifies criminal behavior. (HT Photo)

Four early arrests, three in Mumbai, smell like the beginning of justice for over 100 Muslim women who were sexually assaulted in an “auction” on New Year’s Day. It’s what happens when the State takes notice of a crime of this magnitude and acts.