Kathmandu, October 7
Once, someone said to me, “Feminists wreck their own homes.” I was stunned, not just by the words, but by the logic beneath them. A woman who knows her rights, speaks against violence, refuses humiliation, or leaves an abusive relationship is labelled a “home wrecker.” Strangely, the person who committed the violence is rarely given the same title. The woman who exposes the home’s brokenness is blamed for breaking it. But a home is not saved simply because a woman remains silent inside it. If maintaining a family requires a woman to tolerate violence, surrender her dignity, or remain silent about abuse, then it needs to be clear that the violence wrecked the home, not feminism.
According to an annual factsheet on gender-based violence published by Nepal Police, the majority of sexual offence victims were children (0-18 years) at 64%, followed by 35% women aged 19-59 years and 1% of elderly women 60 years and above. Among the child victims, 63.33% were in the 11-16 age group. 88.06% of offenders were men, followed by 11% boys. The most concerning fact is that 67.53% of offenders had basic literacy, 12.89% had school-level education, and 8.82% had a +2 qualification.
The educational profile of offenders is worth examining. It tells us something extremely concerning: literacy and certificates alone do not automatically dismantle misogyny. A person may be academically educated and remain deeply uneducated about consent, dignity and equality.
Yet public discussion often becomes fascinated with exceptional cases involving women accused of manipulating, falsely accusing or “trapping” men. The phrase “honey trap” is quickly introduced, and suddenly an entire conversation about sexual violence becomes a conversation about supposedly dangerous women. Fraud, extortion and false accusations, where established by evidence, should of course be investigated and punished. Gender justice cannot mean abandoning due process for anyone. Therefore, exceptional cases cannot be allowed to swallow the larger reality.
This is precisely why the phrase “boys will be boys” deserves scrutiny. It has been used for generations to excuse behaviour in boys and men that would never be tolerated from girls: sexual remarks, aggression, disregard for boundaries, public displays of sexual entitlement and irresponsible behaviour.
Small habits that build rape culture
Rape culture is not created by only rape offences. It is sustained through smaller ideas that make larger violations easier to excuse. It exists when harassment is called flirting. It exists when a man’s persistence is romanticised even after a woman has said no. It exists when daughters are told to protect the family’s honour while sons are rarely told that the dignity of women is not theirs to control.
It exists when boys are exempted from housework because domestic responsibility is considered feminine. It exists when a woman who has multiple relationships is degraded while a man with the same history is admired. It exists when women in sex work are treated as morally polluted while the men who create the demand remain socially invisible.
None of these behaviours automatically produces a sexual offender. That distinction matters. But together, such practices can reinforce a gender hierarchy in which men are associated with authority, freedom and entitlement while women are associated with service, restraint and accommodation.
Consider something as ordinary as a family gathering. Women who enter another person’s home as guests may still find themselves moving towards the kitchen, helping prepare food or cleaning afterwards. Men from the same gathering may remain seated, eating and talking. An individual dinner does not creates sexual violence the real problem is the repeated social rituals influences children in a different direction. They teach who serves and who is served. Who adjusts and who expects adjustment. Who has authority and who carries responsibility? When these messages are repeated for years, male entitlement seemingly increases.
In ‘Why Men Rape: An Indian Undercover Investigation’, writer Tara Kaushal investigates the social conditions surrounding sexual violence through interviews with men accused of or associated with serious forms of sexual violence, survivors and experts. Her work repeatedly returns to patriarchy, masculinity, entitlement and the ways everyday social behaviour can communicate who is permitted to occupy space and whose body must remain controlled. Kaushal mentions the provocative idea of “penis privilege” to question something many of us barely notice: boys and men are often granted bodily freedoms in public spaces.
The importance of this argument is not that a man urinating publicly or scratching himself somehow becomes a rapist. That would be an absurd causal claim. The deeper issue is entitlement. Who is taught that public space belongs to them? Who is expected to adjust? Who is told to sit properly, dress properly, return home early, lower their voice, protect their reputation and constantly anticipate danger? And who is rarely given equivalent lessons about respecting another person’s boundaries?
Re-victimisation and imagination of perfect victim
A recent Indian series, ‘Hunkkaar: The Roar’, captures another dimension of this problem particularly well. The drama follows 17-year-old Meenu Rawat after she accuses a powerful spiritual leader of sexual assault. The series moves through police investigation, media pressure and courtroom proceedings, while repeatedly questioning what happens when the credibility of the complainant becomes more intensely examined than the conduct being alleged.
One of its most powerful ideas emerges when the girl questions why she must repeatedly narrate what happened to her. She has already experienced the alleged violence once. Yet the justice process requires her to return to it again and again, before investigators, lawyers, doctors and the court repeatedly. Outside those institutions, society conducts another much more brutal trial altogether.
Why was she there? What was she wearing? Why did she not scream? Why did she wait to report? Why did she continue talking to him? Why does she appear calm? Why is she crying too much? Why is she not crying enough? The fictional scene resonates because the problem is not fictional.
There remains an imagined picture of what a “real victim” should look like. She must behave in a particular manner, remember trauma perfectly, report immediately, possess an uncomplicated personal history and display the amount of emotion society precisely expects. If she departs from that script, suspicion shifts towards her. What society does not understand is that trauma, however, does not perform for an audience.
But we have so many laws
Nepal does not lack legal provisions. Article 38(3) of the Constitution of Nepal expressly prohibits physical, mental, sexual, psychological and other forms of violence or exploitation against women and provides that such conduct is punishable by law, with victims entitled to compensation. The National Penal Code criminalises rape and sexual assaults. Nepal’s Crime Victim Protection Act goes further, guaranteeing victims respectful and dignified treatment during the criminal justice process and specifically recognising privacy protections for victims of offences including rape and sexual harassment.
On paper, therefore, the victim has rights. But formal equality and substantive justice are not the same thing. A beautifully drafted law cannot protect a woman if the police station humiliates her. A constitutional right cannot restore dignity if society publishes her photograph, questions her character or forces her family into hiding. A criminal prohibition cannot produce equality if girls are raised to fear shame more than offenders are raised to fear consequences. Law is essential. But law cannot do the cultural work alone.
Does Patriarchy only harm women?
No! Patriarchy creates different burdens for everyone, although those burdens are neither identical nor equal. Men are taught that masculinity requires dominance, financial success, sexual confidence, emotional toughness and the ability to “protect” women. Many boys learn that crying is weakness, domestic work diminishes masculinity and asking for emotional support makes them less of a man. Ironically, the same man who insists that the women in his own family must be protected from other men seems to participate in objectifying someone else’s daughter, sister or wife.
That contradiction tells us something important: the problem is not protection, but the real problem is ownership. Gender justice does not require women to exchange dependence on “bad men” for dependence on “good men.” It demands that women be recognised as autonomous human beings with rights over their bodies, choices and lives.
Patriarchy also carries an enormous national cost. A society cannot systematically restrict the opportunities of more than half of its population and then claim to be using its human resources efficiently. The World Economic Forum’s ‘Global Gender Gap Report 2026’ ranks Nepal 120th out of 145 economies, with an overall gender parity score of 0.669. Nepal has made significant long-term progress, but substantial gaps remain, particularly in economic participation and leadership.
Gender inequality therefore is not just a “women’s issue.” It is a development issue, an economic issue, a justice issue and a question about what kind of society we want to become.
From Nirmala Pant to Jane Doe
And then there is Nirmala Pant, thirteen years old. Even after being brutally raped and murdered, eight years later, her killer has still not been identified. More than 1,000 people have reportedly been questioned and more than 100 DNA samples tested. In March 2026, Nepal Police formed yet another investigation committee to examine the case. Her mother still waits for an answer that should never have taken eight years. Thousands of kilometres away, another name is now echoing through a very different society: ‘Jane Doe’.
In the United States, a Cornell University student using the legal pseudonym Jane Doe has filed a civil lawsuit alleging that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple fraternity members in 2024. The allegations remain subject to legal proceedings, and the accused are entitled to due process. But after renewed scrutiny of how the matter was handled, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor and the criminal investigation was reopened. Then something extraordinary happened. As attempts were reportedly made online to uncover the woman’s identity, women began posting under the hashtag #IamJaneDoe. Some did it in solidarity. Some shared their own experiences. Others deliberately used the name so that identifying the actual complainant became harder. The point was larger than one lawsuit. “I am Jane Doe” became a refusal to allow shame to isolate one woman.
Nirmala Pant and Jane Doe are not equivalent cases. One concerns the unresolved rape and murder of a child in Nepal. The other concerns serious allegations that remain under investigation in the United States. Gender justice requires us to respect that distinction. Supporting survivors must never mean abandoning evidence, fair investigation or due process.
But the stories meet at one disturbing point. They reveal the extraordinary burden placed on women and girls around sexual violence. One family waits eight years for the state to identify a perpetrator. Another woman fights to keep her own identity from becoming the subject of public punishment. And between those two stories are countless others whose names we will never know. Jane Doe and Nirmala Pant are often treated as exceptional names attached to exceptional cases. I perceive them differently; I see Jane Doe in every woman who calculates whether speaking will cost her more than remaining silent. I see Nirmala in every girl whose safety depends upon institutions and adults taking her seriously.
I see fragments of their stories whenever a victim covers her face while an accused person walks before cameras without shame, whenever a woman’s character is investigated before the allegation itself, whenever families are advised to remain quiet to protect their “honour”, and whenever society asks what a woman did to invite violence before asking why someone believed the offender had the right to violate her.
Perhaps that is what makes these stories so uncomfortable. Jane Doe is not simply one anonymous woman. Nirmala Pant is not simply one unsolved case. They are reminders of what happens when sexual violence meets power, silence, stigma and institutional failure. So when someone tells me that “feminists wreck their own homes,” I say, a woman who refuses violence is not destroying a home. A girl who reports abuse is not destroying a reputation. A survivor who demands accountability is not destroying society. What destroys homes and societies is violence, entitlement and the culture that protects them. The question is no longer why women are speaking so loudly. The question is why they still have to scream before we listen!
