“Be it men or women, violence is always a violence. Do not promote violence against the men, treating it as a bravery,” says a distress call centre launched for men.
A group of 40 NGOs launched a distress call centre for men nationwide. The organization was shocked to receive 1500 calls only from the Telugu states. Most of such calls were the abuse complaints saying that, women are abusing men and conducting the violence.
Ms Uma Kiranam, the founder of the All India Men's Welfare Association, All India Forgotten Women's Association, and True Equity Network, launched a month long campaign called Violence Against Men and Boys Month (VAMBAM) said that, when a woman semi-nude poster on the public roads is violence, why cannot the men poster be? Violence is always the violence, be it men or women.”
VAMBAM spread the awareness about the issue through the various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc, by conducting the campaigns. The activists said, “They aimed at sensitizing the people about men's issues and spread the message that, it is "important to identify the violence, what constitutes it and identifying the root cause of such violence correctly." There are generalizations like "all violence is male generated" and we intend to break this.”
Why special acts to women, why not men?- Uma Kiranam
Uma condemned the abuse of the women friendly laws like ‘Domestic Violence Act’ and seriously demanded the gender neutrality act. Speaking on this, Uma said, “Laws are just a part of the problem. You can do few things similarly and few things differently. But the main point is, we should be proud of ourselves and respect each other” Uma said.
Reacting to the issue, a few of the officials say that, how can a woman and man be the same. Giving the equal rights to them is correct, but treating them equally might not be possible in all the situations.
Authors view:
Generally, we are well aware of the abuses and harrassments on women. But, though not equally, there are many harassments, men are facing by women too. But focusing on them do not give much hype and so no media is interested in those.
On the other side, even such cases do not come out, as there are no societies, which are concerned about men’s problems and turn against the women. So at this time, an initiative like the men’s organization above is a right one, so that it gives an awareness to the society about the other side of few women.
By Phani Ch
