Fallen Woman: A Myth?

A few days back, I chanced upon the delusional ravings of a demented soul, who had been ousted from a cyber community. Though his ramblings obviously were a product of a hyperactive imagination and a crushed ego, those incoherent vitriolitic outbursts afforded me a few hours of amusement.

However, one post titled * Lost Woman* did stand out and lingered on in my mind long after the laughs did. Quite predictably, it contained unsavory allegations of immorality against a woman. I presume the author imagined that the lady in question would be discomfited and humbled by her public embarrassment, but on the contrary,I found it pathetically funny.

The humor lay in the fact that the author, in his bid to paint his victim as the proverbial scarlet woman, went berserk in linking her with much younger boys, most being mere babes barely past their adolescence. The final effect was hilarious.

But, what rendered the writing pathetic was that it mirrored an age-old primitive thinking which shrouds a woman's morals. Laugh as I did, I also wondered how many around me shared the thought that the chink in any woman’s armour is her chastity, which is to be zealously guarded from the smallest of whispers against it?

Why is it considered a humbling prospect for a woman to be perceived as a Fallen/ Lost woman? Who decides if a woman is tainted or not?
How many people take a moment out to consider their eligibility to sit in judgment?
And how many do actually think about the victim’s plight?

It is indeed tragic that, in an age where technology & knowledge is advancing in quantum leaps, there still are self appointed guardians of morality who are all too ready to pronounce judgment without considering the human feelings involved.

We may well protest but the evidence of such judgment is seen all around us. In the media, in our lives and now, in the cyber world. It is so embedded in our psyche and the fabric of our society that one automatically lapses into a stereotyped non thinking mode of judgment, often without realizing it.

Sad but true.

It is not often that a woman is allowed the luxury of assessing her situation and determining her course of action, without pressure bearing down on her. At the end of the day, a woman like any other person is the best judge of her own situation and deserves an environment in which she can make decisions without pressure of society’s approval weighing down on her.

And, the only way we create a difference in this faceless force called society is to consciously not judge but instead, walk in the shoes of the person being judged and think how we would like to be treated if there ever was a reversal of roles.