Ramjas holds seminar on harassment - Indian Express

New Delhi, November 5 In the wake of the recent case of sexual harassment in Ramjas College, the students of the Literary Society in collaboration with Blank Noise project organised a seminar on “Gender and Sexual Harassment” on Monday . Last week, the College Complaints Committee investigating the sexual harassment charges against Ramjas College.

Vice-Principal B N Ray recommended that he should be suspended until the enquiry is over. A handful of students attended the seminar to hear Annie Zaidi, an active volunteer of the public participatory group Blank Noise Project, hold forth on the subject of street sexual harassment and eve teasing. While Zaidi maintained that 99 per cent of the time, it is women who are victimised, the seminar threw light on the not too often talked about male victims.

A young male student, who was cagey about disclosing any details, narrated incidences of sexual harassment that he faced while studying at a different college in Delhi. “My roommates would force me to listen to lewd jokes and insisted that I use filthy Hindi abuses. They'd slip into my bed and say I reminded them of their girlfriend,” he said. Zaidi said that while such incidents did not extend into sexual activity of any kind, it was clearly sexual harassment. “I would like to come out and tell people that this happened to me, but who will believe me? Nobody believes men when they say that they're being sexually harassed,” said the young student.

Zaidi advised women to be armed with a strategy to confront or deal with such harassment face-on, “Use cameras if you have any, or note down details of the vehicles which those who harass you are using, don't let anyone tell you that you are being victimised because of what you're wearing,” she said. Zaidi further elaborated on how those who indulged in eve-teasing tend to pick on girls who come across as more docile. “Women, who dress conservatively, are harassed more because eve-teasers think that they are less aggressive than their skirt-wearing counterparts, but that's not true,” she said.