Confessions of a Young Tribal Woman

However, might you still wonder, 'What is gender equality to you?' I pick up the personal responsibility of continuing this dialogue, for the simple fact that gender equality to me means safety. Safety for women and girls is fundamentally important to achieve gender equality. So long as we do not feel safe or are unsafe, our economic, social and political posi- tions are at stake.

Safety is such a personal experience at the end of the day. When I hit my puberty, I faced a terrible phase of low self-esteem and sense of self. I could not comprehend how my breasts were developing, and suddenly at 13, I started bleeding. 'To become a woman' was a haunting experience. I was conscious of how my body was changing and that it could now easily be objectified. I fought against this by wearing loose clothes and covering my chest with my long hair. I hung out with my boy friends less, and this was made easy as I went to an all-girls school. To say the least, I hated that this is what becoming a woman meant. With all these sizes of me, it felt as if some- thing that is so private and intimate is now public. When I was 15 or 16, I witnessed peers of my age get pregnant. Some would leave school and some even went through abortions which scarred them. Being sexually active as a young person was (is) such a terrible thing in a conservative society. There is no sense of sexu- al health rights and your very sense of morali- ty is questioned, especially if you happen to be a girl. I noticed this gap of acceptance as male partners of the pregnant peers were seldom heard of. It was mostly the girl leaving school, being questioned by her church and commu- nity, etc. I remember talking with my friends in school about what we would do if more friends got pregnant. We concluded that we would advice them to abort, as that was the only way she could finish school and fulfill her dreams. In the absence of sex education, such conversations were the only ones that drew us to the topic.

On New Year's Eve in 2017, I attended an event in MG Road, Bengaluru. This event was organised in the light of what happened the previous year-mass molestation of women on the occasion of New Year's Eve at MG Road. The idea was to walk down the streets as women and men, owning the streets and re- defining safety in every sense. A street that is most crammed at this time of the year turned out to be a complete nightmare to us. Due to what happened the previous year, amongst hundreds of men celebrating and loitering I could hardly see any woman. The few men who were part of the event had to form a chain to protect us, as if it was a moment of wild ani- mals finally let loose. A street which had 500 CCTVs installed with ample police officers patrolling, still could not make us feel safe or rather, even keep us safe.

I have been working on the issue of Sexual Health Rights as a young advocate, and the more I delve into this issue, the more I find myself working on gender-based violence. Sexual health rights and gender-based vio- lence are interlinked to its highest degree. In 2019, I was part of a campaign where we documented experiences of marital rape victims and survivors. Through this, I met a young girl whose mother is a victim of marital rape. She spoke about how she is conscious of what is happening to her mother and the many times she desperately asked her mother to leave her father. She further spoke about home not being a safe space not only for her mother but also for her and her sister. Though the mother may be staying with her abusive husband for the sake of her children, home is a place far from safety for anyone living in it. As we gather the stories, we realized how most of the victims and survivors had one thing in common-lack of awareness about sex, body autonomy, pleasure and reproductive system. Most of them even mentioned, they did not know then that what they were going through is abuse, rape and exploitation.

When a young woman from Hyderabad was raped and burnt in November 2019, the story went viral. I witnessed young women being forced to leave their jobs by their fami- lies because they were afraid their daughters could be the next victim if they are not 'care- ful'. Such incidents make anyone more afraid and vulnerable. Though we may be physically safe, our presumption of safety has been taken away. This is why I personally wrestle with the question of how much information is too much information. News channels are not kind, especially to women living in India. How do we nestle news and self?

It is not easy to be a woman in India, and it is even worse to live in 'mainland' cities as a woman from Northeast. We have been called names in the streets, judged as 'morally loose' women, denied services for being 'corona people', physically and verbally abused, and so forth. Racism is widely politicised, making it an 'intellectual' discussion, forgetting it is only the math of valuing the worth of a person based on ignorance and sense of superiority. An excerpt from Aruna Gogulamanda's poem, A Dalit Woman in the Land of Goddesses:

Her eyes two dry hollows bear silent witness
To hundreds of deaths of her mothers, daughters, sisters
Their dreams, respect and their bodies.
Her calloused hands, her unkempt hair
Her cracked heels, her wrinkled hair
Tell the tales of living through fears and years
Of centuries and millennia of violations and deaths.
She was told
That she was dirt,
She was filth and
In this sacred land of thousands of goddesses
She is called a Dalit.

As a tribal woman with Mongoloid fea- tures, I have experienced lack of inclusion of my region even in certain reports that pro- claim its progressive values and virtue. Often, I also fall prey to being a quota of tokenism, something which has deeply affected my pro- fessional credence. Inability of my own peers to understand our cultural and geographical diversity, sidelining the identity I come from is another issue in itself. Such stereotypes and pressure constrain me to always having to advocate for and validate my sense of value through tiresome explanation.

Starting from puberty to becoming a young adult, I have always thought about the theory of safety-as a feeling, as an element and as an unattained need. To feel safe in my physical space, within my psychological mind, in the constraints of my racial identity, in my physiological body also as a sexual being and the societal architect. Where does safety come from, or rather how do I birth safety? Could I create it or only do I imagine it?

I have felt the need to learn, unlearn and relearn the way I could influence safety and if not create it, at least attempt. There is so much power in the knowledge about one's anatomy as it directly projects body autono- my. There is need for Comprehensive Sexu- ality Education in schools. Lack of the same affects not only early pregnancies, unsafe sex, accessibility to contraceptives and so forth, but also contributes to sexual violence. As we discuss sexual offences, we must pursue sex education. Schools, however, should not be the first or only place a child is taught about body and anatomy. It should start from home. Statistics show that one out of every three females and one in every 20 males will fall victim to unwanted sexual contact by their 18th birthday. (Shalon Nienow, MD, Seven Steps to Teaching Children Body Autonomy).

"As adults, we are in a position to help pre- vent abuse from happening to our kids, and to empower them to disclose if it does. One of the most important prevention tools, in my opinion, is to teach them body autonomy. This
Creating safe space is not a mere phenomenon, but a lifetime commitment to learn and allow unlearning in order to relearn. It is not easy, often beyond our comfort, but it is needed.
concept is one that adults do a particularly poor job of teaching-in fact, adults often force children into situations in which their body is treated as the property of others. As a parent, this is an area that I could do better in, one that I might not have identified as a problem if I wasn't also a child abuse pedi- atrician. Think about the number of times that we force our children to hug a family member or a friend, even when they don't feel comfortable doing so, or when this isn't done spontaneously. My children have not lived close to family since they were infants/tod- dlers, and only see said family members once or twice a year. My first instinct when visiting with family is to tell my children to give these people a hug. When I do this, I fail to recog- nize that this person is virtually a stranger to them. Although I have a longstanding history with these people, my girls do not." (Shalon Nienow, MD, Seven Steps to Teaching Children Body Autonomy). Allowing a child to say no, teaching them about anatomy, and how natu- ral the process of puberty is will enable them to be conscious about consent even as a child. I have the habit of caressing and hugging kids of family members and friends, even those not quite familiar with. I became conscious of this action and the reaction some kids will give-a sense of annoyance and discomfort. Though it may mean such a silly thing to ponder on as an adult, I realized the possible consequences from the other end.

As an able bodied person, I often overlook the inclusion of people of disabilities. My own stereotype cloud the possibility of empa- thy and understanding the simple sense of diversity over differences. When I was about 11 years old, I noticed lack of inclusion of my aunt who is a person of disability. It was this experience that made me more conscious of the issue and further, the fatality of my own ignorance. How aware are we about the people who live in our cities and towns, and how are these spaces engineered to accommodate the nature of diversity? I attended a webinar on life during the pandemic, and a disability rights activist mentioned that social distanc- ing has always been the reality of our disabled community. Seclusion and inability to be accommodated affect one's sense of safety. There is so much in the power of conversa- tions and dialogues. There is need to con- sciously engage in conversations especially those that make us uncomfortable. We need to discuss bodies, race, gender, religion, caste and stereotypes around disabilities. How are we affected, and how we are affecting?
My conviction to commit to advocate for safe spaces, and work to create the same in my own means is a long process. Every experience is new, yet similar. Creating safe space is not a mere phenomenon, but a lifetime commit- ment to learn and allow unlearning in order to relearn. It is not easy, often beyond our comfort, but it is needed. We cannot remain happy at the convenience of our ignorance just as much as we do not remain at peace when our own roofs are collapsing. How safe are we, and how safe are we making people around us feel?

As Audre Lorde would put it: "To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don't mean me) or by despair (there's nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it."∎

Sekulu Nyekha, who is based in Nagaland, loves to explore, learn, and engage in conversations. She does not like running, but will never say 'no' to long walks.

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