ONE of my male friends shared a post on his Facebook wall which I would like to share with readers. The post states: “Men should be offended when someone claims that women should prevent rape by not wearing certain things or not going to certain places or not acting in a certain way.”

“That line of thinking presumes that men are incapable of control. That they are so uncivilised that it takes extraordinary effort for them to walk down the street without raping someone. They require that a certain dress code be maintained, that certain behaviours be employed so that maybe, just maybe, they won’t rape someone today.

“It presumes that their natural state is rapist (unknown).”

This friend of mine has more than 500 friends in his friend list (with educational backgrounds of doctors, engineers, civil servants), most of them are male. And whenever he shares a post, it is ‘liked’ by 20 to 30 men within an hour but it has been more than 20 days since he shared the above-mentioned post, yet there is not a single person who ‘liked’ it just to show his approval/support or affirmation/agreement for the post.

This reflects that male chauvinism is so deeply internalised by our society that they consider it to be below their dignity to even ‘like’ a post that is in favour of women. It also shows that  men in their minds hold women responsible for rape cases.

Moreover, it appears that out of 500 men, only one (who shared it) has enough guts to favour the fairer sex. If this is the ratio of our educated men regarding such issues against women, what can we expect from our uneducated class?

MOMINA GIRANAZ United Kingdom