Words and phrases like most teen cultural expressions come and go out of fashion. Certain phrases we use in our ‘casual conversations’ might leave our previous generation (or the slightly older ones from the current gen) a bit perplexed even though they might be harmless.
One such fad off late has been the use of the word ‘rape’ to describe negative stuff like defeats, injury etc. or to represent positive things like beating, winning among others. How often have we heard this-
- “ I am gonna be raped tomorrow”
- “My team will rape the opponents”
- “Oh, I just raped the economics exam. Fuck yeah”.
- “Team A got raped by Team B”.
And every time I hear this, it startles me as to why the word rape has been tossed around to describe such small things, as if it's a joke? How can one team winning over the other be equated to rape? There is nothing cool about rape and committing such heinous crime. Imagine how a victim of sexual assault ( might be one near you as well) would feel hearing the word being thrown so casually in our daily conversations. To use rape so ‘casually’ to describe simple things trivializes its actual meaning. One of my friends pointed out, the use of ‘rape’ in casual conversations is accompanied by laughter. Have we forgotten the devastation of the act, and the vulnerability of the men and women who face it?
Rape is not the only word to be used in this context. Kill, murder, have undergone this, and with the current usage, its not long before ‘rape’ will be used to describe petty things.
Let me try to dissect this for you.
- 97 women are raped in India everyday.
- Of all the rape cases that have been reported, nearly 14,000 victims include minors as victims.
- Nearly 77% of the rape convicts have not seen jail even once in their life. They are still roaming scott free among us.
These are just the cream of chilling facts about rape. Many foreigners, label our society and hence our country as the rape capital. By using this word so casually, we seemingly appear to approve of sexual violence against men and women. And as I pointed out earlier, diluting the meaning of such words.
Will you be using the word so casually if it was someone you know who was subjected to rape? Probably not. Enough said.
Do I have a solution for this? Sadly no. As a start, I ask my friends from not using it so casually. Secondly, I try to spread awareness and talk to people regarding the trauma people go through post this. And finally, share this stuff on all possible platforms I can.
Are you considering changing yourself after this? If yes Great. If not, I don't know what will.
Open to suggestions and comments.
