NO Means NO

Dear Amitji,

“NO means NO .. and when a woman says so, you stop .. !!” (DAY - 3092)

Sir, what a wonderful one liner which not only needs to be addressed to the youth in India but young men around the world. They have all grown up getting the wrong idea that when a woman says NO it means YES, whether born in India or anywhere in the world. Why blame Bollywood for spreading the wrong message through its movies - so many of them starting, perhaps, with Lal Haveli (1943) in which friend (Yaqub) of the hero (Surendra) defends his continuing sexist approaches to his love interest despite her NO: “ Are dost tum itni si baat nahin samajhte jab aurat kahe na to samjho usne kaha haan”, or through its numerous songs like the popular one - “Na na karte pyar tumhi se kar baithe….”, such misconceived ideas can be found in Hollywood films too, as the so called civilized society is as much a culprit in taking a woman’s NO as casually as in India. In fact, if Shoojit Sirkar releases his movie PINK in Germany, the women there will lap it up the way beyond his imagination They have been agitating with this very slogan - “No means NO”, to include it in the revised law on rape. Women have not had the success so far in wringing legislative change out of political leaders.

It was only in 1997 that the country passed a law to criminalize marital rape, in what at the time was a bitterly-fought cultural battle that united otherwise opposing female politicians across party lines. Now further changes are being pushed by the government to bring Germany's laws up to date and Bundestag (German parliament) is having session to debate new tougher proposals. But campaigners say that the draft law currently under debate is far wide of the mark.

“It’s frustrating and shaming that in Germany we are still fighting for ‘no means no’,” activist Kristina Lunz told The Local.

'Nein' is not enough for the law as it currently stands, Given the importance placed on violence and the lack of any language about consent in the law, campaigners complain that simply saying “no” to a sex act is not enough to class it as a rape in the eyes of judges.

“The idea that a woman is always sexually available unless she fights is a total tragedy, and beyond comprehension,” said Lunz.

Lunz, currently a graduate student at Oxford University in the UK, has herself helped found a campaign under the motto “NO means NO”

With regards

Tilak Rishi