A month after the rape and murder of Moumita Debnath: Save your sympathies, we want your outrage.

The stories buried within our bones are the reasons we continue to cry out for our sisters.

Earlier this month, the tragic news of the rape and murder of Dr. Moumita Debnath in a Kolkata hospital shook India and the world—yet another case where a woman’s body and life were treated as disposable in India. 

Protests shook the nation, with women taking to the streets to decry the relentless violence and abuse that plagues the lives of women in India and across the globe. 

It’s a tale as old as time.

The names of women who have been defiled and disposed of in this way in India is too long to even count and those who have their stories told publicly, their names and stories heard and acknowledged, are even fewer and far between. 

Moumita was a doctor, someone who is intended to help the sickest and most vulnerable in our society and yet even within the walls of a hospital, this world could not keep her safe. 

But it's not just women who are professionals, women who are esteemed and respected who are victims of the sickest parts of our society. 

The women who are poor, the women who are working class, the women who are unhoused, the women of “lower” castes, they too are commonly victims of the depravity of our society and are simultaneously deprived of the opportunity of having their lives as worthy of remembering.

They deserve our outrage too.

Moumita was a doctor and deserved so much better, but there are so many women who aren't even deemed worthy of our grief. 

While we like to think we are beyond a world where we ask what a woman was wearing, where she was, why she was alone, why she allowed herself to be around men, or any of the other countless reasons women are blamed for their own circumstances—the scrutiny faced by women for the actions of men continues.

The culture of tolerance for men’s indiscretions at the expense of women’s safety enables this cycle to continue. 

As it does, the news cycle passes as it’s impossible to constantly focus on the horrific crimes against women taking place every day. 

We wonder how crimes so awful could take place but the logic that contributes to the horrific treatment of women in our society is never truly weeded out. 

Individual men are sometimes arrested and held accountable but we never truly address the way that we all have a hand to play in allowing men to believe they can behave with impunity. 

It is normalized within society and culture that men and boys can do bad things for “boys will be boys,” but a woman who is in the wrong place at the wrong time will bear the brunt for being dishonourable.

As I grew up, this sentiment only became ever clearer in the culture I grew up in, as I watched men mistreat or abuse women, cheat or harass women, speak over and belittle women, and that many would just turn the other way. 

Women carry their family’s honour between their legs and if it’s stripped from them, with no agency of their own, it’s still somehow their own fault. 

Women should be docile, complacent, amenable and dutiful. To be anything else is to be disobedient and defiant—the worst thing a woman can be.

While I continue to feel a deep sadness about the Moumita’s tragic death and the horrible rape and murder of so many nameless Indian women, I moreso feel rage, rage that this is still a conversation that needs repeating. 

As the headlines pass, there are thousands of women burning with hurt and anger that their experience alone will never be enough to turn the tide. 

Remember this the next time you see women uniting in fury that another sister was stolen in such a heinous way.

Remember this the next time you listen to women seething about the things they continue to endure just to exist in this world. 

Remember next time the world fails women—that you should be angry too. 

I refused to tolerate that “boys will be boys,” but that female rage and rebellion is unladylike.

Our docility is rarely rewarded in this crooked world, so we may as well raise hell. 

Our defiance and our rage is all we have left. 

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