An open forum on sexual harassment

In the time we’re living in, safety and protection is of utmost importance. Rapes, theft, murder or something as simple as being touched on the train, in the bus or even on the road, are events that are occurring on a much more frequent scale than earlier. Some things we shrug off in disgust, knowing that’s just how humans function. But sometimes the incident stays with us much longer. Whether we do something about it or not, we can’t seem to get it out of our minds. Talking about these things always helps, but most of the time we don’t know who to turn to. Even if we do turn to someone, will they really understand us or is sympathy all we’ll get?

In the midst of such a time, we have four young girls, who have started a forum for people who have faced sexual harassment at any point in their lives. They are students of Wilson’s College, Mumbai and are in their final year of Mass Media. This open forum, called ‘the Circle’ aims to start conversations on abuse and different forms of violent abuse. Asrida Jain, who started this forum with her classmates Nadiya Sehgal, Pooja Nair and Mitali Adhikari, said that the inception of this started when she was having an everyday conversation with her friends and the topic of being stared at, name called and commented at was overlooked and not considered harassment by society. They formed this group so that more youngsters would know that it’s fine to talk about such incidents in a time when its taboo for being to discuss such things and just keep mum about it.   “The forum was born of a need for a platform where no one will judge you, and people can share anything and everything without any fear,” Adrija said.

The group meets every Friday, minus the days when exams are on. They were surprised at the number of people that turned up and spoke about being groped or stared at or knew of such instances at some point in their lives. What was even more surprising was that boys didn’t shy away from attending this forum. This initiative is being taken to other colleges as well.

Equal rights activist Harish Iyer said, “I think that it is a great initiative considering that these students are going to be adults soon. If they know about abuse and are aware of ways to deal with it, there is no better way to make them aware about this”.

Source : http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/others/Wilson-College-girls-start-forum-to-discuss-sexual-harassment/articleshow/49445527.cms