“I received a Twitter link, opened to find a tag written “Find your Sulli of the day! Unable to comprehend what it meant I clicked on it to find a picture of a girl, confused I reclicked it and found my friends picture, reclicked another friend appeared and continued to do so and trembled to see my own picture put with a price tag,” says Hana Khan, a pilot in the profession.
Hana Khan is one of the victims of the slut-shaming application cum website named Sulli Deals which possesses 80+ pictures of women journalists, students, activists, researchers, generalists and educated members of society.
“Sulli Deals” an app cum website came into the limelight on July 4 has pictures of women collected from public social media accounts with the motto being stated, “Community-driven open source project.” Sulli is a derogatory term used on Women and this app cum website seems to be another pathway to suppress the women voice.
Reuters Foundation in its report stated that India to be the fourth unsafe country for women to live in. The country wherein more number of women are educated and gaining the same social status as that of men are on the other side suppressed through all the possible means of scariest threats like that of rape and murder. There aroused a time after the Nirbhaya incident, the women were targetted, raped, killed and threatened. And then, to mock the society, “Zyada Boldiyato Maardalo” was inserted to the phrase “Beti Bachavo Beti Padao”, which is tragically is the current situation in India wherein women is worshipped as Goddess Lakshmi and Bharat Mata. Sulli Deals is another name in the list seems to have stood on toes to suppress all those active, educated and intellect women minds.
It has been more than a month since the application with filthy ideology is continuing to work. National Commission for Women took cognisance of the issue along with Delhi police investigating the same, has not made any single arrest under the offense so far. It indeed is sad to state that till date we in India, lack a strong IT Laws, which could protect individual privacy and dignity.
A time has come where all the women organisations of the nation has to voice against such a heinous, unethical move taking motivation from the bold Savithribhai Phule, the first women teacher of our nation; who fought the men who tried to stop from getting educated, who should be our true role model.
It’s time to toughen up like this poem below:
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrop,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainity of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
– Maya Angelou
Sumayya Parveen A is a Journalism, Eng. Literature & History Graduate & IAS Aspirant. She is also a budding writer and poetess.
