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This Video About Shameless Men Justifying Why A Woman Is A 'Thing' To Be Looked At Is Scary

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*For representational purpose only.

Let's imagine a scenario. You're walking down a street, out to buy veggies. Or you're standing at the bus stop, waiting for your bus. Suddenly, you feel a gaze on you. You turn to look. A man standing at the paan shop nearby is staring at you. Uncomfortable, you look away - only to see a man old enough to be your father literally undressing you with his eyes.

Sound familiar?

It is something you probably face every single day. Does it bother you? Yes. But do you do something about it? Well, some of you do. But most of you don't. Why? Because you're conditioned not to. You're told right from your childhood to ignore it. Such things happen, you're told. Let it be and they'll go away.

But then, have they ever gone away? No, they never do. Because of a simple fact. When we don't question or stand up for ourselves in such a situation, we inherently encourage them to go further. It's almost like a challenge - if I can get away with this, what else can I get away with?

So we, at Slang, decided to grab our cameras and tackle this issue directly. We have an issue with these guys, we figured, so let's go talk to them. Let's make our feelings known. Because keeping quiet is obviously not doing anything.

We were there on the streets of Mumbai, simply walking down the road like we did everyday. Except this time, when someone stared, we stopped and ask them why. At first, the idea was to question. We wanted their side of the story. We wanted their opinions. But we did not expect the kind of opinions that we would eventually get.

While one man compared women with flowers and the Taj Mahal (waxing some not so eloquent poetry along with it), another man defended rape. Why? Kyunki kapde adab se nahin pehne hain.

We were shocked. And we just didn't know how to respond. The thing is , sometimes we tend to live in a bubble. We don't understand that things that appear, on surface, to be so called harmless irritations might be symptomatic of a much larger, deep-rooted issue. That is what we discovered in the process of making this video. And we wish to bring this issue to the limelight so that we start talking about it. The video is nothing but a mirror that has been held up to all of us. This is the world we all live in. The objective of this video is not to shame these men for their opinions - they are simply representative of a much larger issue that affects our country. Instead, the objective is to portray it as a debate between the two opposing mindsets and to educate. This is not something that can be swept under the rug. Through this video, we would like to spark a discussion, because at the end of the day, it's only when we accept the issue and start talking about it can a solution be figured out.

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