A Dhaka Tribune report on Saturday said amid the alarming trend of sexual violence against women in the country's public transport sector, a private commercial bus service, named ‘Dolonchapa’, dedicated only to female passengers was launched in Dhaka. The report also said the buses brought some relief to women who use public transport in our capital city.
The introduction of women-only buses, for that matter the intention for introducing them, clearly shows that we now have forced our women to escape the clutches of sex-mongering men by staying away from them. If the women stay away from men, the men wouldn’t get the opportunity to harm them. By thinking so, we seem to have also accepted the fact that men in Bangladesh are not changeable and we will verily allow the men to remain what they are — sexual aggressors and keep the women away from them.
What a solution to the state of sexual harassment against women in the country! This is an ostrich-like attitude on the part of the policymaker as well as the entire population at large. Since we’ve seen sexual harassment and gender atrocities against women aren’t declining in our society, we’re being compelled to think of such an alternative where women have stay away from men in order to stay safe. What an attribute to the menfolk of the country!
As a man, I feel ashamed that our women are happy travelling separately just because we can’t stay away from assaulting them sexually whenever we get an opportunity. What an impression we men have created for ourselves in the society! Shame on us!
A study has recently said around 94 per cent women commuting in public transport in Bangladesh have experienced sexual harassment in verbal, physical and any other form. This figure is the highest in South Asian countries.
Most of the time, the women — when victimized on the public transports — while seeking help, don’t get any response from the co-passengers, who are mostly men, in the face of physical harassment.
Experiences of hundreds of women suggest that at that moment, the co-passengers behave in such a manner as though it was the woman’s fault to have a female body and the aggressors have the right to encroach up those bodies. The male co-passengers always urge the victims to forget about the harassment and go on with their lives.
There must be something wrong with our national psyche. The men in this country are always seen to consider women as ‘mothers, sisters and daughters’ who, the men say, must be valued and respected, and yet they keep on violating them like nobody’s business. Our rhetoric doesn’t match our acts.
The reports on sexual assaults in the educational institutions as well as in workplaces have become common. School children in Bangladesh have been and are being victimised by their male teachers and peers and most of the girls and women are continuing with their live with serious mental traumas.
Although the situation at workplaces may be a bit better as some do maintain some sort of harassment policies. Despite those policies, news of sexual harassments in our garment factories resounds across the media. Apart from a few women’s rights activists, no one is actually talking about the situation in the apparel sector.
We Bangladeshi men aren’t alone in our sexual hawkishness. The men seem to be suffering from sexually-driven disorders across the globe. If we think Bangladeshi men are at our peak in committing gender crimes these days, we might as well look at some other countries also. Sexual assaults on women don’t seem a country-specific phenomenon; rather, these crimes are happening everywhere in the world —indiscriminately.
Indian city of Kolkata is a classic example as far as harassing women physically on public transports. For the womenfolk of Kolkata, who commute on public transports, sexual assaults are a daily affair. Women travelling on taxis and auto-rickshaws also face harassments on a regular basis. Recent media reports from Kolkata said that a man was found masturbating while sitting beside women in a bus. An Indian man recently masturbated also on a flight while sitting beside a lady.
The women in this Indian city used to be completely silent about these assaults; they never told anybody and never reported these incidents to the law enforcers. However, time has changed there and the ladies facing these horrendous crimes are protesting against these heinous acts. Interestingly, the police in Kolkata are also trying to teach their womenfolk how to protect themselves from the clutches of men.
Hollywood actor Morgan Freemen has been accused of sexual and verbal harassment by eight different women. CNN said the women, who claimed that Freeman subjected them to inappropriate remarks about their bodies, allege that he harassed them on the set of his films, at his production company Revelations Entertainment and at press junkets.
Many Bangladeshi women who have recently returned from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have narrated horrendous tales of sex crimes about how the men of that country had behaved with them. It’s only recently that the country's formal consultative body, has approved a law to criminalise sexual harassment. Previously, the rulers of that country seemed quite nonchalant about sexual crimes there.
A few women have recently brought complaints of sexual harassment against New York state agencies. One woman had claimed of being subjected to "unlawful retaliation" after she testified against a male co-worker for sexual harassment. In another case a few days later, a female attorney filed a federal discrimination complaint against the state after she says she was subject to sexual harassment by a male boss, who "fostered a sexualised frat boy culture."
In October 2017, The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that dozens of women accused the American film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse over a period of at least 30 years. More than 80 women in the film industry subsequently accused Weinstein of such acts.
The New Zealand Herald reports that the country’s Law Society was shocked at the number of sexual harassments and bullying in the profession following a survey on the issue. The survey showed nearly one in three female lawyers had been sexually harassed at work and more than half of all lawyers had been bullied.
This workplace sexual harassment has become so acute across the globe that many companies are now hiring private investigators to root out these crimes.
The extent is so huge that it can be felt on https://metoomvmt.org/.  A total of 17,700,000 women have reported a sexual assault since 1998. The goal of the initiator is to reframe and expand the global conversation around sexual violence to speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of who survived assaults. They want perpetrators to be held accountable and they seek strategies implemented to sustain long term and systemic change in the society.
If we just simply google the phrase ‘sexual harassment’, a huge box of worms will open up. The millions of news items that would pop up on men’s misconducts would lead you to believe that men aren’t acting like humans; they’re acting like sexually-obsessed men.
How long are we going to continue like this? Would it be possible for us to act like humans as we may have did once upon a time?
Ekram Kabir is a story-teller and a columnist.