Unfortunately atleast 75-80% have faced such kind of harassment , as you said this is just tip of iceberg. I often feel we should carry a butcher knife and when we see such things happening, we should just walk across and cut them off. Na rahega baas na bajegi basuri
Reading this was painful. Not surprising, but still painful. I’ve had my share as an Indian woman of being flashed, seeing men masturbate and it is just unfortunate how it is framed. As someone you have to avoid as women. As something you attract. As something you should be “careful” about.
Not as something you should be angry about having to deal with. Not as a public menace, a crime, a national shame. Not as something men and boys should be hugely embarrassed about, collectively in the society the occupy.
It was interesting to see decreasing order of age of the girls whose stories were shared here. Am curious to know if there were stories from women aged 25 and above. I am 50 and have been a witness to penises being flashed since the age of 10-11. But i have not been harassed this way after 25 or so. The reason i am asking this is to see if the perpetrators deliberately choose a certain age group to flash at. They know the girls would be too shocked or horrified or disgusted to react.
This is powerful and it got me back to writing something I've wanted to share for a long time. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to cross post inside my own post. I accidentally just emailed this out to ALL my subscribers - super not happy about that.
I've searched Substack's articles on how to cross post and still can't figure it out. If you know how to do it, would you please advise me? Thank you. And thank you for sharing these stories.
I was 19 when flashing and masturbating happened in Delhi metro with me. I have a 2 year old daughter now and this just makes me more sad. What's the root cause for this shit show?
My mother is a housemaid and used to clean 5-6 homes. When I was 12 I decided to to help my mother for couple of homes which were near to us while she did other homes that were a bit far. One of the home I went to had a young boy of 14 year old. The home had both parents working and grandmother was only one at home. This boy would be in his bedroom and when I would get in to clean, he would stack couple of pillows at the edge of his bed, swing his leg over them and start humping them till he came. I was shocked the 1st time he did it and could not believe my eyes what he was doing. I ignored it and then it started happening more regularly and almost daily. It seemed he almost waited for me to get in his room and he would start humping. He wanted me to watch him as well and deliberately would order me to start / stop fan and lights (sometimes confusingly) so that i have to keep eye contact until I could understand his command. I never had any voice and could not complain but my heart raced to death every day when he did this in front of me. Few times he even stripped down to just his underwear, pulled his shorts up or wore tight ones that almost looked like underwear. I was super scared of him or seeing him eye to eye in embarassment. He used to even give a roll on his crotch when i dared to with a smirk. I had no clue what could i complain about to my mother as he was not naked or flashing or touching me. This continued for 12 long years until i got married as he kept studying until he was 26 years old in some course or other !
Same incident happened with one of my friend in a local bus, a middle aged man was masturbating on a seat in another row. This is so horrible and traumatising.
Unfortunately atleast 75-80% have faced such kind of harassment , as you said this is just tip of iceberg. I often feel we should carry a butcher knife and when we see such things happening, we should just walk across and cut them off. Na rahega baas na bajegi basuri
Reading this was painful. Not surprising, but still painful. I’ve had my share as an Indian woman of being flashed, seeing men masturbate and it is just unfortunate how it is framed. As someone you have to avoid as women. As something you attract. As something you should be “careful” about.
Not as something you should be angry about having to deal with. Not as a public menace, a crime, a national shame. Not as something men and boys should be hugely embarrassed about, collectively in the society the occupy.
It was interesting to see decreasing order of age of the girls whose stories were shared here. Am curious to know if there were stories from women aged 25 and above. I am 50 and have been a witness to penises being flashed since the age of 10-11. But i have not been harassed this way after 25 or so. The reason i am asking this is to see if the perpetrators deliberately choose a certain age group to flash at. They know the girls would be too shocked or horrified or disgusted to react.
This is powerful and it got me back to writing something I've wanted to share for a long time. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to cross post inside my own post. I accidentally just emailed this out to ALL my subscribers - super not happy about that.
I've searched Substack's articles on how to cross post and still can't figure it out. If you know how to do it, would you please advise me? Thank you. And thank you for sharing these stories.
Shame on us, indeed. Thanks for writing this, it couldn’t have been easy.
I was 19 when flashing and masturbating happened in Delhi metro with me. I have a 2 year old daughter now and this just makes me more sad. What's the root cause for this shit show?
Thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for writing this piece.
My mother is a housemaid and used to clean 5-6 homes. When I was 12 I decided to to help my mother for couple of homes which were near to us while she did other homes that were a bit far. One of the home I went to had a young boy of 14 year old. The home had both parents working and grandmother was only one at home. This boy would be in his bedroom and when I would get in to clean, he would stack couple of pillows at the edge of his bed, swing his leg over them and start humping them till he came. I was shocked the 1st time he did it and could not believe my eyes what he was doing. I ignored it and then it started happening more regularly and almost daily. It seemed he almost waited for me to get in his room and he would start humping. He wanted me to watch him as well and deliberately would order me to start / stop fan and lights (sometimes confusingly) so that i have to keep eye contact until I could understand his command. I never had any voice and could not complain but my heart raced to death every day when he did this in front of me. Few times he even stripped down to just his underwear, pulled his shorts up or wore tight ones that almost looked like underwear. I was super scared of him or seeing him eye to eye in embarassment. He used to even give a roll on his crotch when i dared to with a smirk. I had no clue what could i complain about to my mother as he was not naked or flashing or touching me. This continued for 12 long years until i got married as he kept studying until he was 26 years old in some course or other !
Same incident happened with one of my friend in a local bus, a middle aged man was masturbating on a seat in another row. This is so horrible and traumatising.