I am a woman, and I live in a fear of being raped.

I am a woman, and I live in a fear of being raped.

I live in fear of walking anywhere on my own, not knowing who might be silently watching, or stealthily following behind me.

When my head goes to rest on my pillow at night, I fear of our home being broken into, and what they might be looking to steal from me.

Riding in a taxi alone has become a trauma in itself, as my mind always wonders who this strange man is, where he might be taking me, and how I can escape from this moving vehicle if I need to.

The stats tell me that 1 in every 6 women in India has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. But we all know that number is far lower than the real one, because so many assaults go unreported.

Why ?

Because we feel shame.

We are often convinced it was our fault. We shouldn’t have drunk so much. We shouldn’t have been wearing that. We shouldn’t have gone back to his flat.

And funnily enough, talking about it in detail with a tonne of strangers who often don’t give a flying fuck about us, seems less appealing than burying what happened.

I am plagued on a daily basis by both my paranoia and vulnerability, yet I know I am one of the lucky ones. Because I haven’t been raped.

I don’t know what it feels like to have a wild animal put his hands on my body, and use it for his pleasure. I don’t know what it feels like to have someone on top and inside of me, who I did not invite in.

I don’t know what it feels like to be a woman who picks herself up after being stripped of her dignity, and violated simply because she was born with a vagina. A vagina that certain animals — not men — believe exists and belongs to them.

I don’t know how these women carry on with their lives — folding their laundry away, smiling at colleagues in their workplace, and being intimate with other men — without it entirely consuming them. I don’t know how they begin to heal from the deep-set trauma, and move on from such a horrific act of war on their body.

I’d really like to know — how do you do it? How do you manage to be such a powerful and resilient human being? Because the world needs more incredible women like you filling it up. My heart bleeds in rivers for you. I am sorry you ever had to suffer through this pain.

I am sorry.

I think about being raped often. Too often for my liking. Even when I’m someplace dark at night, and my partner is with me, I’m still afraid. Because I know that doesn’t protect me — not from a herd of animals with weapons and cruel intentions.

You see, this isn’t an essay shitting on all of you out there. Because I feel for the men too, who have excruciatingly suffered as they watched their women being robbed of their humanness, or as they tried to comfort and understand the ones who desperately wanted to let them in, but were still in their own personal rehab without an exit date.


I am terrified, and I am furious.

Furious that I feel like I am one of the “lucky” ones. Sometimes I think I should throw myself a party and celebrate with triple chocolate cake. Then I stop. I rewind. I replay that thought. And my soul trembles as I realise there is nothing to celebrate. Not a damn thing.

I am furious that this has been our burden as females to bare for centuries.

Furious that our bodies continue to be objectified and sold for pleasure.

Furious that rape continues to be used as a weapon against women, embedded in continents and cultures both far and wide, and closer to home than we realise.

And in a blinding rage that the world continues to teach us as girls and women, how we can prevent ourselves from being raped, instead of teaching the men of this earth not to rape.
We should be teaching boys and men not to rape.

We should be teaching them to believe us when we share our stories of assault, harassment, and abuse, because #yesallwomen have a #metoo story to share, somewhere along the wide spectrum of being mistreated by the men around them.

We should be teaching them to see us as true equals, in a world where men and women are made to beautifully compliment one another; celebrating each other’s strengths, instead of looking for any kind of weakness to exploit.


Because maybe then, just maybe, we wouldn’t feel like walking targets wherever we go. We wouldn’t be told to carry rape alarms, and not take taxis on our own, and not walk home at night, and be asked “are you sure you wanna wear that?” by our parents.


But until then, I will always be a woman who lives in fear of being raped.