Booklet on rural women’s private woes

SNS Kolkata, 03 December, 2015: To create awareness about the sexual brutalities that rural women are victims of, the organisations, Saffo and Jeevika Development Society, have brought out a booklet titled Meyeder Katakatha (What women have to say) as part of their collaborative event ‘Beyond Boundaries’to be held on 3 December.

The district-level public event aims to reach out to rural women on the issues of female body, desires, sexuality and similar issues and topics that are still considered a taboo by them.

The booklet, based on the study conducted with over 150 domestic and social violence survivors for a year, revealed the startling fact that for these survivors, the term ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’ evoke traumatic experiences, memories of oppression and violence.

The book compiles letters in the form of statements of helpless young women, who are victims of the “sadistic patriarchal society”. For instance, a woman named Sathi (name changed) recounts the traumatic experience of another woman, Alo (name changed), her stepmother, who it appears is younger than Sathi.

Sathi writes, “When my father brought Alo, I felt her condition was even worse... And then her relentless cries could be heard Rs the sound of bed and her suppressed sobs,” Sathi writes. Seeing the torture, Sathi developed disgust for the institution of marriage and for heterosexual relations.