Arts
You’re not alone out there, says ‘Not Your Nangi’
“I was walking home when a guy driving a tuk, asked me for directions. Just as I was directing him, he unzipped his pants and said ‘meka onedha?’ (Do you want this?). I broke into tears and ran home.
Nabeela speaking at a forum
Age 13”.
………..
This is one of the many shocking stories shared by ‘Not Your Nangi,’ a social media movement aimed at empowering women, whilst also combatting sexual violence faced by women in Sri Lanka.
Since launching in April this year, its Instagram page has gone on to receive 3,021 followers, while its Facebook page had received 465 likes. This week we got the chance to speak to ‘Not Your Nangi’ founder Nabeela Yaseen, who had remained anonymous up until now.
Nabeela had always been eager to create awareness and take a stand against sexual violence. This is what led her to start ‘Not Your Nangi’.
Just like what most women face, there have been instances where Nabeela couldn’t walk on the road without drawing a sleazy look, an unruly whistle or a desperate pickup attempt.
“At times when my friend and I walk on the road, we get catcalls,” Nabeela says. In one instance, things had escalated to the point where both of them had to get off a trishaw because the driver was acting rather odd, only to be still followed by him and all this in broad daylight.
“I didn’t know the depth of the situation, until I started the page,” she says adding that half the stories she received are yet to be published. These stories leave Nabeela at a loss for words. “Just knowing that women go through this battle every day leaves me dumbstruck,” she explains adding that it is disheartening that some women have to go through it simply because they don’t have another alternative, like having to use public transport for instance.
Thereby ‘Not Your Nangi’ isn’t just based on a personal experience. Rather it’s more of a realization that sexual violence is something that happens on a much larger scale than we believe, to women in general. A majority of the stories which Nabeela receives, happen on public transport. She however stresses that harassment is not simply limited to this or the streets, rather it could take place at your workplace or even in your own home.
And the main reason for it to escalate to the point where it is at now, is because nobody talks about it, perhaps out of fear. And that’s just the reason for ‘Not Your Nangi.’
“The fact that it’s normalized to an extent where you’d either expect it to happen or just pass it off, is quite scary. It’s not normal and you need to voice it out,” she says.
One of the major challenges which Nabeela faces is that certain people trivialise the issue. For instance when her page first came up a page called ‘Not your Malli,’ which was meant to be a joke soon followed. “How can you make fun of a real life, traumatic encounter faced by someone?” she questions.
Similarly another problem, which Nabeela deals with, is sorting out the accurate stories from those which aren’t. She explains that she first looks at the person’s following and their profile picture in order to figure out if it’s a genuine account or not.
Nabeela is currently working on more social media content and also hopes to release a video in the months to come. She hopes to build a team to include posts in Sinhala and Tamil, in order to reach out to more people.
Her main focus at the moment is to build a base. “A lot of the posts are meant to build a base for people to stay updated on stories of harassment. The bigger the base, the bigger the reach.” Nabeela is also putting in the time and effort, to focus on taking her work to a ground level too.
Her plans include building a workshop based programme, whereby she could visit schools, first starting in Colombo and then moving on to rural areas.
Nabeela’s goal is to empower women to rise above the problem, because no matter how much you speak against it, the reality is still quite scary.“Putting these stories out makes you feel you’re not alone.” She adds that at times when a person, does get harassed any help from the onlookers helps control the situation. Therefore it is very important for onlookers to speak out.
Not Your Nangi can be reached via Facebook on www.facebook.com/NotYourNangiSL or on Instagram via Not Your Nangi. Or #NotYourNangi.