There’s no easy way to ask this, so here goes: What is up with men having absolutely no self control in this country?
We’ve seen a bunch of outrageous cases where men have behaved liked uncivilized goons with the most recent one being a man allegedly masturbating in front of actor Sumeet Raghavan’s wife in Mumbai. Touching women inappropriately in public transport, groping them in nightclubs, texting them when you’re not even supposed to have their number. No seriously, where does this stop?
Recently, Lakeisha Kelkar from Mumbai shared an incident where the delivery boy from a restaurant started texting her on Whatsapp. In her post she said:
On 15th February around 12 am, I placed an order with MOJO Pizza- Doubly Loaded (Nerul branch) through my Zomato account. About half an hour after I received the order, I started getting WhatsApp messages and video calls from an unknown number. Starting to feel a little uneasy, I punched the number into Truecaller and discovered that it was the delivery boy who was harassing me. I answered the call and handed the phone to my brother and upon hearing a male voice on the other end, the phone was put down and my number was blocked by him instantly. We tried calling from other numbers but the phone was switched off. The next day, my dad finally got through to MOJO; after hearing the details, they weren’t the slightest bit concerned. They went on to tell us they’d written down our complaint and would get back to us shortly. This was 5 days ago. We haven’t heard from them since.
It’s hard to imagine how many people have been harassed because of the misuse of personal information; and if this is how things are being handled, it would not be a shock to any of us if this continued happening in the future.
Check out the screenshots she attached with the post:
She later updated:
MOJO and Zomato contacted me today.
Zomato informed us that they have acted upon the complaint and fired the delivery boy. They also mentioned that they have suggested that a program be worked out to monitor and put a plan in place to try and avoid such situations in the future. I am glad that they finally decided to do something but still disappointed at how long it took them to take my safety concerns seriously. Let’s hope such issues are not trivialized in the future. Do not be afraid to speak up when someone makes you uncomfortable or harasses you. You are not alone.
Before you go all ‘But dude he was just texting her, what’s the big deal’ let me tell you that it is in fact a very big deal. First of all, the sense of entitlement: Why do men think they it’s okay to take out numbers when they’re clearly not supposed to? In what world is it okay for the delivery guy to save any customer’s number and text them without their consent? Why has every woman in the country been through the ‘ugh I’ll just block this number’ phase. Is it very, very difficult for guys to understand how infuriating and irritating it is to be on the receiving end of texts and calls going ‘You’re cute pls be my friend’.
Who is to be blamed? Patriarchy, deep-rooted sexism, crappy up-bringing or just the fact that these guys are horny douchebags who think they’ll end up getting or the girl (or whatever Bollywood teaches them).
Seriously though, do we need to go back to having no internet just to avoid this? Do we need to sacrifice animals or pray to Satan to get ya’ll to understand that cyber harassment is not okay? We’ve become an international meme thanks to these guys asking for ‘bob and vagene’ everywhere. We’re literally the laughing stock of the world because our men can’t control their Goddamn libidos.
P.S: If you get harassed, don’t just block them, put them up on social media with their names so that they never do it again. If someone doesn’t respect your privacy, you don’t have to respect theirs.
