People that have lived or live in India, is the sexual harassment as big of a problem as what is displayed in the news and do women fear going out into public?

hey there I’m an Indian guy and unfortunately it’s pretty much what you see on the news. Especially in North India when it gets dark, the safety of a lone girl walking in the street isnt that guaranteed. it’s toxic masculinity crystallised. I’ve happened to walk in the same direction as a lady late at night and their reactions upon realizing there’s a guy behind them makes my heart break. they grab their bags, cross the street and start walking faster. I almost wanted to say hey I’m not a rapist but that would have been weirder lol.

Friend of mine went to India for a few months. According to her it’s usually alright for western women since Indians know that pissing off the tourists that come to their region is a bad idea considering how much money they bring. She looks Indian though and while most of the time you just had to adjust to local culture, i. E. not going out alone and stuff like that, there was an incident where she was walking in the countryside a guy followed a few meters behind her on his bycicle, literally masturbating while riding. She got angry and told him to fuck off but he just ignored it, the people passing by on a scooter just laughed and kept driving. So she pushed him and he almost fell in front of a car that could break just in time. He was so shocked that he finally fucked off.

If that guy would have wanted to harm her it’s likely that nobody would have helped her, and considering she almost got him hurt that might have been an option.

2nd hand anecdote. But I dated an Indian girl for a few years in one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. She said specifically that she hated Indian men for this very reason, as if somehow it was beyond their control how they acted around women. No matter what she was doing or who she was with, the amount of “oh you’re Indian? I’M INDIAN TOO! We should date!” was constant. The amount of evil stares I got as a white man was impressive. I could only imagine how actual Indians in India would behave.

Born and raised in the US, but I’ve spent extended periods of time there in my childhood and visit about every 1-3 years. Also, I’m fluent in the language of my parents’ home state.

Toxic masculinity is rampant in India and movies really reinforce this. India also churns out more movies over a year than any other country. There is rarely a movie where the heroine isn’t the costar, and most of the focus is spent following the heroics of the male, and several sequences of songs sung by the hero, heroine, and more often than not both.

Women are shown as stubborn, bitchy, and/or ditzy. There are more movies where the woman needs to be saved, or doesn’t know what’s good for until she realizes the man is what she needs (this happens of course after a piffle of conflict and a weak attempt at asserting her independence).

Don’t get me wrong there are some great female driven indies (no pun intended), but in the mainstream almost all movies are formulaic and are not female driven. That being said, there are some classic films and indies that have a great female lead, and show the strength of femininity.

I don’t live in India but I went there with a group of people from College. We were constantly followed by men who would stare at the women in the group. And I mean… STARE! Without shame, without trying to hide or pretend they were doing something else. They would literally stand by our side and stare at the women like they were watching TV. Some of them would even pull out their phones and record or take pictures of the women. If this happened, the men of the group would form a human wall around the women in order to hide them.