My boyfriend/husband is not my protector. My autonomy is my protector.

Long back, a Malaysian macha texted me, “Got boyfriend ready ah?” I was like, “Why?” He said he doesn’t want a guy’s curse.

I left it at that then. But what he implied niggled me for the longest time – he was more worried about offending an unknown to him man and didn’t respect my autonomy on myself. He didn’t know anything about me but he already fixed that I am a prospective flirt/gf/friends with benefits.

This is a patriarchy induced male thought process (with the exception of the likes of Neelambari) that women are unclaimed land (porambokku). Fortified by movies like Draupathi – land and women are one, many Indian men simply won’t take “No,” for an answer. It’s either that or thinking that as long as a woman has a bf/engaged/married, she’s to be left alone because another man “owns’ her and he shouldn’t be hurt. In your brotherhood, you’re reducing women to objects men can own.

There’s also this ‘booking’ thingie. If a guy likes a girl, he’d warn all the other guys to stay away from the girl, publicly announce that the girl is his, tell other guys to call her sister/sis-in-law beat up other boys for looking at her, and force her like Gilli Prakash Raj, Arjun Reddy, and Manathai Thirudi Vittai Prabu Deva. Not to forget the Kandravi Karrabu Dhruva Sarja.

I have also seen guys say, “But I like u,” when women say “I don’t like you.”  This is male entitlement – you’re a woman. I like you. That’s the end of the story. Because I like you, you must pander. The other entitlement is, “You’ve slept/roamed with other guys/divorced/widowed, so why won’t you sleep with me/don’t you need pleasure from men? Why this patthini vesam? (virtuous woman mask).

In DMs, when a girl says bye or good night, she often gets asked, “Y bye? Talk me.” And they message “Hi” again a few minutes of saying good night. They video call without even asking.

Women should be safe, our decision and preference respected at all times. We having a bf/husband is irrelevant.

#Rosa