Maanvi Gagroo Writes An Open Letter "Misogyny begins at home. It seeps through our words"

The past few hours have been rather infuriating and rightly so, ever since the shameful and disgusting chat screenshots of an apparent 'boys locker room' came out. The screenshots showed conversations between some 20 teenage boys from South Delhi where they continuously send pictures of girls and objectify them in all the possible ways.

Things like rape and other issues are also casually mentioned by these boys in a conversation making a joke about it.

Several celebrities have already taken to social media expressing their opinions but actor Maanvi Gagroo, who was recently seen in Four More Shots Please! Season 2 and is known for a range of other films and shows wrote an open letter about the entire saga to The Quint. The first line of her letter read “The measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls. – by Michelle Obama.”

It is followed by “Yes, misogyny begins at home. It seeps through our words. It reinstates through our actions & it is enabled through our gender-based morality. No, we cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility by blaming it all on bad parenting because this is not the first or the only time a 'boys locker room' has existed. And it sure as hell won't be the last.”

She added,  “Every time you laugh at a sexist joke (sexism: noun; discrimination, prejudice or stereotyping on the basis of gender), every time you decide to save for your daughter's wedding but your son's education, every time you ask a rape victim what she was wearing and why she was out... every action of yours is potentially rewarding or punishing a young mind for their words and actions."

Questioning, “Why don't we see our men through that same lens of skewed rationality?” The letter further read, "Why have we placed a woman's 'izzat' in her vagina but no such yardstick for her male counterpart exists?! We live in a society that accepts assertion of patriarchy in more ways than we care to realise. Male privilege is real and male entitlement, a real threat. We need to do better than this. We need to bring our children up better. We need to adopt a Skinnerian model of punishing toxicity and rewarding empathy. We are shaping minds with our thoughts, words and actions. Every single moment."

She ended with, “We have to do better. And 'boys will be boys' is just not gonna cut it anymore." Mumbai Police's official Twitter account has also expressed outrage on the incident by tweeting, "Boys will be boys - never an acceptable excuse earlier, will never be one ever after #StopThemYoung"

What do you think about the same? Leave in your comments below.