Women:
What is the term 'women'? A gender? A problem? The problematic gender they say! Quite agree to them at some point. Problem is from two aspects one a from women's aspect and other is from men. People often misunderstood the term 'feminism' and when we mention people it includes both Men and women too. What is feminism? Is it against men? No. When we talk about Feminism it means equality, Equality between Men and Women both. It's about upliftment of women's status and not about lowering men's status in society. It's about equality and NOT superiority.

Whenever there's a mention about Indian women the very first thought that comes into people's mind is about women being harassed in India! But no one even thought that same can happen with the men too! Radicalism in feminism leads to severe belief of just oppression against women and therefore creates a whole new victim card and easy loophole of women victimizing themselves. Currently with social media burst, it's easy victimizing one's own self.

The best case study for that was the #metoomovement. As it was based upon radical feminism, but 40% of the applicants were the case of women defaming someone or alleging out of specific vendetta or simple malignant attempt for some gain.

Indian constitution has given enough laws to safeguard women's right and protection, but ever gave a thought about those rights being misused rather than for their safety?

With the increasing number of cases of harassment and assault against women there's an increase in the number of cases of fake complaints against men. If they are threatening and harassing somebody behind the name of laws and rights given by Indian constitution then definitely as women we don't deserve these laws! Indian constitution has mad laws for protection of women and not to use as a victim shield against innocent.

Stop false case
In this male dominating society, there's no one who will believe that male has been molested or the complaint filed by female is false or fabricated. Women taking advantages and filing false cases is something which is not unheard of. There are many assumed believes about women in society and men in society and assumedly men have the evil part to play but we as a society has no idea where this is going. This assumed believes are leading courts and justice system confused and hence this is becoming a stumbling block in our justice system.

This has to be stopped because women out of anger or jealousy or be it vengeance are destroying an innocent's life. It's really important to stop the misconduct by men but we must also rebuke the actions of these women whose actions are impeding our legal system and legitimacy of complaints filed. This can be stopped when court will start rigorous prosecution of false cases. They should know which evidence is fabricated or which one is accurate.

In plight of these cases we did found some takeaways: The Bombay high court recently imposed a fine of Rs. 25 lakh on a woman entrepreneur for misusing gender protection laws. The woman, along with her husband, was involved in a trademark infringement fight with Mumbai-based Sapat and Company and had allegedly threatened to file false molestation charges against the court receiver.

This is a sad reality of our society that the prominent part of our legislation has been misused in this way. For the Gender whose empowerment has validated is leading male towards gross and derogatory charges. Such gross misuse of our legislation should be strictly condemned by our all court of justices.

"There is no dearth of cases in which fake allegations are levelled against men for ulterior motives. Our helpline remains flooded with such complaints in which the real victims are men," said Indu Subhash, who works for the rights of men.

"Laws are like double-edged weapons. If they are made to protect the rights of a person, they can also be misused to throttle the liberty of opponents," the Delhi court had observed, while acquitting the man of rape charges in a case in 2008. According to the survey around 3.3 crores of cases in Indian courts are pending. Every minute they use to frame a false case is wasting the precious time of our Indian Courts.

There comes a delay in essential verdicts because of people misusing the laws for settling their own vendettas. Where courts are trying to make our system smooth by settling more number of cases as soon as possible such cases becomes a hinder in their achievement. Hence the woman who tries to misuse our laws should be punished effectively. Our system do no support or favor any gender hence whoever tries to play with it will be liable for their misdemeanor heavily. That's what equality is!

Normalize norms about man
Our Indian society laugh and will not take it seriously when a man say he has been raped. What our Indian society think is that only men can rape woman and men will only do this heinous crime and they are not ready to accept that a man can also be raped. This a very big disgrace in our society. There is no laws regarding to the men rape in our law.

Sexual assault of men and boys is a frequently happening crime as any other crime which needs the attention of people and law makers. While some people may agree that rape of men happen in prisons, most do not even care to think that sexual assault against men and boys happen in a much broader way than they think or care to know.

The Judgment by the Supreme Court that decriminalized the consensual sexual relations between adults of the same gender, which was a crime under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, is still looked down upon by many people in India who still consider homosexuality a taboo and a disease which means that the homosexuals still have a long road to travel in order to be empowered and given their rights.

Therefore, in a country like India, where two years back, people were not even ready to accept homosexuality as a natural phenomenon and believed it to be a taboo, the idea of a male member of the society being raped, by any gender, still has a long way to go before it gets recognized by the people.

A common theme emerging in treating male rape victims is a lost sense of manliness. Male victims voice their concern in reconciling their masculine identity with their experience of being raped. Personal stories of male rape mirror female rape in terms of a sense of shame, humiliation, and self-blame, but males are even less likely than females to report an assault.

Is it ego or vengeance?
If we go through our newspaper, the most read or heard news would be about women, women being exploited and filing cases against men. How does it happen? Out of the nowhere they realize they were sexually harassed and it was not a right time to file a complaint when they were sexually harassed and now days later, weeks later or maybe years later they find it appropriate to file a complaint! It's not that every complaint, every issue or case filed is fabricated or false. But if we look closer some men really are getting dragged into such cases even if they are innocent.

Did we ever give it a thought that why such things happen? Are women doing this out of ego or out of vengeance? After the rise of #metoo moment the false cases against men are on hike. Even our former CJI Gogoi faced such issue. Sometimes it may happen the case is filed against the right person but the issues may get fabricated, for example, in domestic violence cases, sexual harassment laws are misused. And it may happen court may not find it necessary to verify each and every charges.

It's out of vengeance women filing fabricated cases, in #metoo movement around 40% of applicants were the case of women defaming someone or alleging out of simple malignant attempt for some gain. These days, I agree there's an oppression against women, there was, there has been, it should still be eradicated. But this victim card use of the loophole should be erased as an option too.

Conclusion
Just because men are expected to be tough and strong, doesn't mean that they don't face challenges that women face in their daily lives. While we say rights of women are to be followed, we shouldn't ignore the rights of men are also there. The main goal is to empower the women in society, not to neglect the other gender in order to uplift the other in the society. Focusing only on one gender is injustice, unfair and violation of the fundamental rights of people under Article 14 and 15 of the Constitution of India.]

"With regards to the existence of both male and female survivors, the US's Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta has estimated that 18.3% of American women and 1.4% of American men have experienced rape at some point in their lives. Both percentages are likely to be underestimated.

It's just that woman should understand that how things work the society is with them but not at the cost of making nay false use of their power to protect themselves we have to equal with everyone in a society.  The toxic mentality of the society needs to be changed and the truth should be

revealed to everyone and the sooner it is done, the better.

Written by:

1. Riya Navin - GLS Law College
2. Puneet Jangid - GLS Law College