I was going through Instagram when a story of a Nepali man accused of raping his wife surfaced on my feed. I found it shocking that even after finding him guilty, he was only sentenced to Rs.50,000 fine and 3 years imprisonment. Yes, I found women’s freedom to be cheap in our country, nonetheless, expected the society to shower the convict with rage and disgust. 

My curiosity compelled me to scroll further to the comments section. To my disgust, only women were seen showing sympathy to the victim and agreeing with the court’s verdict; some weren’t entirely satisfied with the severity of the sentence. On the other hand, most of the men shamelessly made fun of the news.

Turns out, our Nepali men think wives are the properties of their husbands. Examples of the comments like “poor guy,” “what kaliyug is this?” “you can’t have fun with your own wife?” were the most common ones. However, the comment that stood out from the rest was, “ordinary rape is news, this is not.” 

These were our educated men talking. I felt the urge to retaliate with my comment, but again, I knew my effort would go in vain. These were people, stupid enough to make fun of marital rape, an extremely serious issue. I would just be another girl to them, a subject of laughter. 

I thought I would post in on some other media, like Facebook or talk to my friends about it. But what would that do? We would condemn how unfortunate all of this was, and end the episode by putting it on the values of our society. I did not want to limit myself just to a dead-end. 

So, here I am venting my frustration.  I don’t know what to do, or what women can do to stand face to face with the male dominant society. Seeing all these, I am afraid to be a Nepali woman and what would my children learn from similar incidents? Is this how it is going to be? Am I going to teach my children to treat people equally? 

I just want to have a simple normal life, we all do. We just want to follow our dreams, choose what we want in our lives and say no to sex if we don’t want it. What is so offensive or unacceptable about it? We are just as capable and freedom-loving as men. How complicated is that? Why is it so difficult for men to understand that?