Spanking okay but not slapping? Dear Rangoli Chandel, let's nip your doubts about consent in the bud

Dear Rangoli Chandel,

Sigh*… Before we begin this, allow us to make a quick suggestion that we are not asking you leave social media. The right to be stupid is an absolutely fundamental right, one enshrined in our constitution and which our voters amply display by electing the worst among us to lead us.

While we love the entertainment (not to mention the page views) your brilliant comments give us from time to time, but it becomes quite dangerous when you inject your brand of inanity to something as important as consent.

You’re no Harley Quinn but perhaps it’s time to have a talk about consent, one that this nation has enough trouble understanding.

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We get the fact that as a devout sister to Kangana, your sole objective is to uplift her. But does that come by demeaning other women? Your recent dig at Taapsee Pannu’s ‘Thappad’ would have accounted for a different perspective, but sadly it’s just your way to fire bullets at an attempt made to normalise divorce and strengthen women who are fighting their own battles.

Here’s what you said, “I think if my partner slaps me I will leave him temporarily send him out of the house and make him live alone for months or years, may not leave him forever if he suffers him mistake and apologies..”

“Dear friends I want to know is it ok for your partner to slap your butt cheek but not your cheek, why face cheek gets more privileges than butt cheeks? Why butt cheek being treated like an outsider? These are the questions bothering me pls help give your views on this. I asked Kangana she said she will probably demolish someone who slaps her but she likes when her partner spanks her, I was confused I asked what is spanking? She said it’s like a slap only but not on face cheek but on butt cheek .... oh!! Now I am even more confused”

While there’s a precedent for you being confused, to equate spanking (a consensual sexual act between two consenting adults) and slapping is deeply problematic. While you might have meant it as a joke – though the humour quotient is conspicuous by its absence – let us understand the difference.

Slapping is an act of violence, breaching a person’s private space and intimidating them in public. You are entitled to all your political arguments with the makes and actors in that film without blurring the lines of right and wrong.

If that wasn’t problematic enough, you added that ‘women shouldn’t compromise their career for a man’, agreed, but to further add that ‘women need to stop finding escape from competitive world and career struggle in a marriage, and that you know ‘young girls whose sole motive is to find a well to do man and live air conditioner life tucked away in the comforts of his home... no matter how intelligent and educated they are they just don’t want to work, such women deserve a tight slap’, is a sham of a statement.

While it’s scandalous that we are still saying this in 2020, let us make it clear. It’s a woman’s choice what they want to do in life. Feminism is about choices. If a woman wants to be a housewife to a rich husband, that’s her call. If she wants a well-to-do man and live in air-conditioned comfort, that’s her call to make.

Just like the man who attacked you with acid, a person who is slapping someone is also breaching your consent. As someone who has fought and won against the evil side of patriarchy, you are the last person we expected to stand up against a woman who refused to be treated like a punching bag.

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