Remember the day when everyone sees a reason to talk about eliminating violence against women. As soon as I realized this, nostalgia started to seep in. A year has passed since I last wrote on the same topic. And now a year older, I still hold the same assertion that people need to stop doing injustice and cruel violence to women. And all I can ask the men-folk and the women-folk, who continue doing this, is a mere WHY.

Why should a woman be continually beaten, thrown around, humiliated, and tortured from the day she is born? Why should a female be suppressed in all social roles she plays? Writing on this topic is so much like beating on a cliché, it is embarrassing to even think how people do not get it that subjecting a weaker person to violence does not make them any stronger – it just makes them derogatory. It is plain stupid how people will just not stop performing violent acts on each other.

Now the rebel inside me feels that it is high time we just let the perpetrators know violence against us is not the solution. How long can we keep getting abused, thrashed, raped and killed for offences we did not commit? Even if we did do wrong why our fates should be decided by people who do find unmerciful solutions to it? There are too many WHYs. And there is no answer to these. Because we pick to remain quiet, we choose to remain silent, and we learnt to endure. The only reason we are being abused as women is because we accept. It is time now we decided to answer.

And answer not just by holding placards and asking for a violence free life. That has never worked and never will. What they need to know is this cannot go on forever and we need to show them that we will not take any violent action on us. We do not need other people sticking out for rights, no NGOs, no government policies, no UN, nothing of that sort. We are ourselves capable of telling these people to back off. We will stick out for ourselves. Words are never enough, and will never be. No more of those, no meaningful speeches, those women equality pamphlets. We have had enough of that. Now what is required is how at grass root levels all women protest and rebel against all the unfair practices they endure.

It hurts to see so many women in all spheres going through this. All kinds of women – rural, urban, working, housewives, teachers, students, homeless, rich, poor. No matter how accomplished as a woman you are, you always will be targeted. And all this because you were unfortunate to be born a female. It is sickening to see how people hold these connotations like beating up women to show them their place and how a woman should live up to meet a man’s expectations, sometimes ever other women’s. And I am not blaming a man or stronger women for executing violence on a woman. After all it is our fault. We are the ones taking it. We are the ones tolerating it. As long as we continue to do so, we will be beaten, molested, raped, murdered, tortured, and enslaved. For a violence free world, no one but us can make the first move. This must begin at home. This goes out even to all our women activists who love coming out in the open and trying to make lives easier for other women. Believe me when I say this, but these women at home, work, or elsewhere do undergo some kind of violence. They need to try clearing their own contradicting side of the violence they face before trying to eliminate other women’s.

So the next time a man tries something on you, all you have to do is hold his collar and say shut up. If he hits you, hit him back. Hiding from violence or tolerating an unjust action is not a solution. It is time to start training yourself to make the move, to retaliate. As long as we are passive and submissive, this will never end. We need to show them we have had enough and we are not taking it anymore.

Next year, when this day comes again, and when I look online for stats on violence on women that has occurred starting today, Google is going to show me double the figures than it is today. Well at least as a morally obligated woman, I can make an effort, right? And all just because it kills to see what other women have to go through every single day, till they get old and die. And maybe even after that.