Euphemisms are an art form in India, and all but one English news channel proudly displayed it on Tuesday.
On Tuesday afternoon, in typical Two Minutes of Outrage School of Journalism, several news channels loudly demanded that the #MumbaiPervert be “named and shamed” for “exposing himself” to a white woman. Except for India Today.
You’d think some poor sop was contaminated when exposed to the woman.
But naturally, the media could not have gotten it sooo wrong.
So, when you want to know what really happened, you go check out Twitter.
It turns out an American woman named Maryanna Abdo tweeted the image of a man who had allegedly masturbated at her. She has since deleted the original image / tweet as the police intervened. A series of tweets on her timeline suggest that she before she could hand him over to the police, he managed to run away, and in a bid to “shame” him, she posted an image of him on Twitter.
So several news reports mostly said the woman was “harassed”, or that the man “exposed” himself to her, making sure to never mention the word 'masturbate'.
To say that she was harassed of course, is not technically wrong. But the double standards are simply confounding. For a country that thrives on Sunny Leone’s, well, assets (and those of even half a cinema starlet or anybody for that matter), why the sudden shyness?
It’s not just this one time though. Several news reports in the past too, skirted around the 'certain word'.
In July, a woman in Delhi had accused a TaxiForSure cab driver of masturbating while on duty, and put up a status on her Facebook post describing the incident.
Read: Delhi woman alleges cab driver masturbated while driving
A lot of news reports just called it an “obscene” act, or using a portion of the woman’s Facebook post if at all they used the word “masturbate”. And there was one priceless (although somewhat inappropriate, given the context) usage - “pleasuring himself”.
In May, a British woman who was visiting India wrote about a man staring at her while masturbating in public in a bus stop.
Read: Indian men apologise to British woman who was publicly masturbated at in Mumbai
Some news reports carried headlines describing it as “sexual harassment” but described in a matter of fact manner in the article's text, that the man masturbated in public.
It’s about calling a spade a spade.
It’s not “eve-teasing”, it’s “street harassment”.
It’s not “ladki badi ho gayi hai” (the girl has grown big now), but the fact she has crossed puberty.
It isn’t the “monthly thing”, but a period.
It's not "outraging a woman's modesty" as the Indian Penal Code of 1860 likes to call it, it's "molestation".
And “boys will be boys” is our politicians’ way of describing misogyny.
One Bollywood “item number” could even be described as an ode to masturbation, but you could never have discussed it publicly – even though some films have scenes that depict male masturbation. Women, naturally aren’t allowed that luxury, person of non-heterosexual sexualities don’t make the cut at all.
Despite there being words in our languages, we choose the euphemisms.
Indian people speak many languages, and as a senior independent journalist once said at a speech in Bengaluru, they also speak English in many different languages.
Our collective problem, when it comes to calling a spade a spade, can probably best be described in a translation of how we describe “shyness” or “shame” in some Indian languages (often the word is used interchangeably).
It literally translates to “shy is coming”.
Pun unintended.
(This is unrelated, but just funny. According to a list on the Stanford University website, the “light saber” also comes with the “family jewels”. WARNING: If you read the full lists mentioned above, you may never be able to see some objects in the same way ever again.)