We need gender unbiased harassment laws

The recent case of the suicide of actress Jiah Khan and the subsequent happenings created a lot of stir in media and social networks. There were a few posts criticizing the way the case was handled and also some people believe that there was an attempt to accuse a man (in this case someone named Suraj Pancholi, her boyfriend) of her suicide. Many also feel that some of the laws like dowry law or sexual harassment laws are heavily biased toward women and they often misuse them to blackmail men and their families. Some of these posts take the familiar route of accusing the victim of her actions and feeling sympathy with the accused. In this case Jiah, no doubt is responsible for what she did but it's also necessary to investigate what made her take this step. This case is an ideal example of our attitude towards these types of problems. Some people want to blame men for whatever wrong happens with women and some people always want to blame women's behavior for whatever wrong happens to them, these two polarized groups always fight with each other. We see somewhat similar attitudes when people try to accuse victims in most rape cases and blame their dress or behavior for a crime committed against them, by doing this they are not helping to solve this problem but they are making things more complicated.

In the last few years, there have been some laws introduced in many countries to curb the number of cases related to sexual harassment. Mainly these laws are designed to protect women's rights and deliver justice if there is a crime committed against them. Some laws are purposely made very strict to make sure that perpetrators of these crimes don't make use of loopholes to escape the punishment. At the same time, we also see that some of these laws can be misused, so there seems to be a two-fold problem here. We need very strict laws to control crime against women but at the same time, we need to make sure that there is no misuse of these laws. Another important point is that it would be a big mistake to assume that only women are sexually harassed or physically assaulted, these crimes are also committed against males, so we must have gender-unbiased harassment laws. This will provide protection to both genders from any harassment crimes against them and also reduce the feeling that some laws are very biased towards a particular gender. There is no doubt that we need these laws but also they need to be unbiased, crime committed against women is as bad as crime committed against men. Victims need justice and proper support to deal with these situations. Our social structure is such that currently women are more prone or vulnerable to these incidents that's why we see most of these laws designed particularly to protect them. It is the responsibility of lawmakers to make sure that laws related to sexual harassment and torture (like dowry) are gender unbiased so that all people feel that they are not unfairly targeted or neglected purposely. Path to seek justice and protection should be offered to all and its availability should not be based on a person's gender, religion, caste, or something else.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)