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| A still from Male got raped : Another Side of Tale, |
Staff correspondent, August 9, 2015, NewsCrunch
A newly released video clip When Male got raped is getting some attention for its subject - male rape.
When Male got raped : Another Side of Tale, as the full title goes, is 7-minute long and is produced by Zero Budget talkies.
It tells the story of an adolescent complaining to the police that a friend's neighbour had raped him,
The neighbour, a good looking 40ish woman invites him in, after the friend's door is found locked.
The virgin-man rebuffs her advances prompting her to threaten that she will call police to file a false rape case. The terrified man has no option but to yield and is taken to the bedroom for the act.
The police inspector laughs at the complaint. The friend is jealous and the father blames him. Nobody takes it seriously.
In the end the police refuse to file FIR saying it will be hard to prove rape in court and sends the man back with the message that it takes an inflated balloon to commit the act.
We will not hold bad acting, amateurish production against the video. The policeman, in hired ill-fitting clothes, looks more like a security guard.
Let us focus on the central message: Rape can happen to men as well, while the law and the authorities and the society at large does not recognise it. The implicit call - we need gender neutral rape laws.
Men are indeed raped but mostly by other men. The woman-rapes-man reports, which come out once-a-while appear to be robbery attempts or cases of child abuse.
The kind of rape the movie depicts is minuscule. The line of thought propagated by the movie equates the magnitude of the rape against women with the stray incidents of women raping men.
There is a campaign in the country to check the misuse of marriage and dowry laws to protect the interests of men. Movies like these do more harm than good.
In conclusion, a half-baked attempt.