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Amid all the worldly problems we humans try to fend off, sexual harassment is a seriously messed up problem constantly haunting us. While women are the main victims of the crime, it would be ignorant to assume that men don’t face the brunt of it.

At times, people desensitise or rather don’t empathise a man’s molestation charge or allegations of an assault he places on a woman. Sometimes they don’t even take sexual harassment charges seriously or laugh it off. Like, Riya Sen’s co-star from the web-series, Ragini MMS Returns.

Recently, a sex clip from the web-series surfaced on the web. While people are doubting it as a publicity gimmick on part of the makers, Nishant Malkani spoke about shooting sex scenes with Riya Sen.

Nishant told Bollywood Life

“So I remember the other day when we were shooting for this love making scene, Riya suddenly got so happy and suggested I should pull down my pants and flaunt my butt cheek just like how John Abraham did in Dostana 2. I didn’t take her seriously until she literally pulled down my pants while we were shooting the scene and exposed my butt cheek. I was like whattt?? At least you could have told me before doing it and she was like oh don’t worry, people seeing your butt cheeks are going to love you. Trust me all the women are going to love you…you have a great body and this and that I couldn’t go beyond “Riya kya kar rahi hai yaar, bata toh deti?”

He continued to call it funny.

“I don’t know if that’s (the scene) there in the film or no ya but it’s a very funny thing that happened. But I hope her words come true. Like whole world talking about me and my butt (laughs).”

If you are finding it funny, then might we suggest to read it again? We think what Riya did to Nishant counts as sexual harassment and objectification. She pulled down his pants without his permission, and then objectified his butt claiming women would love to see it.

Consider the scenario if the genders were reversed. Would it be funny if a male actor did this to a female star? Wouldn’t there have been an uproar and people would have taken serious offence?

The guy, who is a newbie in the industry, says he didn’t mind it but at least she could’ve told him before doing so. So there’s was a breach of consent, clearly. And, in his own words, he couldn’t go beyond, “Riya kya kar rahi hai yaar, bata toh deti?”

People fail to acknowledge that men too fall victim to harassment and objectification. But in most cases, they don’t even know that what they’ve faced qualifies as harassment. Things like these can’t be taken so lightly and there should be awareness about men’s sexual harassment.

Now, there might be a section who would claim that if the victim doesn’t have a problem, why the brouhaha? To them, we would sincerely like to say, an assault is an assault and it needs to be stopped. Can we please stop normalising such instances and stop branding them as ok?

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