Teach values from a young age

Our societies have to sensitize men on gender issues and make them treat women with respect. We all need to evolve as better humans

Whenever a rape is highlighted in the news channels, the public is outraged. Demands are made to award penal punishments to rapists.

What they forget is that the Government has already passed stringent anti-rape laws. Despite this rapes continues to occur. If the fear of punishment does not deter the rapists then what will be the solution?

Janaki Lenin in her erudite writing on the issue of rape rightfully states “Biology merely provides men with the tools, but culture determines how they use them.”

Our cultures/societies have to sensitize men on gender issues and make them treat women with respect. We all need to evolve as better humans. This is not an attempt to exonerate men completely; neither are we referring to those men with psychiatric or sadistic problems, but getting to the bottom of the issue is the need.

A father and mother go on to create and nurture a child. But since the bonding is more with the mother, the onus of instilling sensitivity falls on her. In the male-dominated society, a woman tends to internalize the attitudes of the men she is with — her father, brother or husband. And she inadvertently passes on the same to her sons who go on to be fathers, brother and husbands. The man on his part lacks the raison d'être. The need of the hour is — a woman must be able to discriminate the attitudes and a man must be receptive to that fruition. The responsibility is more on the mother to make her male child more sensitive, responsive and receptive, more by virtue of the fact that a young boy values his mother’s sentiments more.

The writer is a sexologist.

Mail him at

dr.narayana@deccanmail.com