1. Recently you must have heard the case of a girl slapping a boy in public many times because he made lewd comments about her attire. You might have seen it on U-Tube also. I saw it on U- Tube and it was pretty intense. What is your opinion on this? Do you think the girl went too far by slapping the boy repeatedly?
Responding assertively and effectively to negative things that happen in life, is a positive behaviour. A stern frown, or complete ignorance, or a complaint made formally, or calling for help, or laughing at him with a likeminded group of people, may have been better responses to be shown by the girl. Her response was obviously too protracted. More information is needed for a better conclusion. Interviewing this girl would be invaluable. However one cannot help thinking that she probably started enjoying the little fiasco, may be for it was being televised! If that is the case, then it is not an effective response to a negative unjust thing that happened to her, but a cheap attempt to be famous overnight.
2. What would the psychological condition of the girl have been when the incident happened? Because she slapped him repeatedly and knocked his head against the wall. What would her psychological condition be now?
Probably she was extremely and rightfully angry in the begining. Just imagine, if a stranger tells you that your nose is too long or your perfume smells bad, how you would feel. His comments were an example of aggression. Bowing down to aggression is not the best way to respond to aggression.
To comment on her psychological status now, more information is required of her current condition.
3. What compels young men or boys to make lewd comments about young women and girls?
It is not natural for men and boys to make unpleasant comments about women and girls. If somebody thinks it is normal and natural behaviour, that person probably knows nothing about women.
People who know nothing of women are afraid of women. Similar to people who know nothing about black people are afraid of black people; or Muslims; or persons with a mental illness. If you are afraid of somebody, either you you run away or you attack.
Complicating this fear, they have this intense desire to associate with women. In other words some people are afraid of women but want to have them, too. And they don’t know how to associate with somebody who they fear and do not understand. So they attack.
Making lewd comments on women is a way to attack women as these pathetic men can’t understand them, but they want them, and they fear them.
However, if a boy is raised in a culture where above behaviour is prevalent, he tends to believe that this is the norm, and tends to behave in the same way; Just like it is normal to say “how are you?” when we meet someone. Worse, a girl who is brought up in such a coarse culture, may expect such comments as a woman.
4. What would the psychological condition of this man/boy be now? Do you think he is psychologically scarred by his misadventure even though he is at fault?
What I have heard is that he had made a comment on the girl’s attire being too revealing. If this is the case, then this is unacceptably disrespectful. If he had unpleasant emotions because he saw the skin of a girls’ arms, the problem is in him. Let us all hope that he learnt a good lesson. And let it be a good lesson for all other coarse and unsophisticated men who do such uncultured things.
One may even interpret his masochistic response to her attack, as evidence of his fear of women, but wanting to associate with them and not knowing how to do it properly. If that is the case, one may take pity on how he was brought up as a child. If that is the case, then the scarring had already occurred, way before this ‘misadventure’.
Yes, if this ‘misadventure’ was severely traumatic to him (no wonder if it was), spiced up by the extensive media exposure to the video, he may be having significant negative psychological sequelae.
5. What are the psychological factors at work in this event? Is there something deeper at work here?
Let us imagine that this man made a lewd comment and the girl gave him a long stern look that made him lower his gaze, and then she walked away. Remember, all people who behave aggressively, are full of fear. Aggression is the way they cope with their fear. Then that is an example of aggression being met with assertiveness.
However this seems to be, going by information that is available, an act of aggression met with an act of even more severe aggression.
6. Is there anything you would like to tell me other than my questions?
Some people responded to this video going viral by identifying with the man who made the lewd comment. They remarked that “If I meet that kind of a girl, I, too, will end up battered.” This is absolutely true, if they also belong to the kind of men who don’t know how to make friends with women, but dearly want to do so, and therefore are afraid of them. Such people are probably already psychologically disadvantaged; and agrresion, ranging from making lewd comments to committing rape and murder, could be the only ways they can think of to deal with women they so fear and desire.
