I sit here reading a book, near the window of the hostel I stay in Australia. It is the time of summer around here. I see a bunch of young boys and girls sitting on the grass outside the hostel, chit chatting and laughing. Girls are wearing miniskirts and colorful tiny sun dresses to greet the summer. However, I cannot see any guy groping at their bare thighs, but they speak and laugh normally with the girls enjoying the weather. This is a hostel for both genders. Although we have separate rooms to sleep, we all have to share the living rooms, kitchen and the dining room. A girl who runs to her room from the bathroom wearing a towel is not very rare scene here. They may go through the living room while there are guys watching TV even some times and still, we hardly ever hear a rape in these hostels.

Since the amount of rapes has gone high in Sri Lanka, you can find many people who are enthusiastic to tell the opinions made in their heads to anyone who listens. One of the really popular opinions is that rapes happen when women wear revealing cloths. I happened to stop and think about that. These Australian girls who I live with wear way more revealing cloths than I have ever seen in Sri Lanka and still they are happy and safe. But our mothers always tell us that “You can wear anything there but you can’t do so here”. What is the reason for this?

Sri Lanka became rapidly westernized in many areas during the 90s. Although we embraced and got used to western culture, there was a thing we missed. As you very well know, each plant needs its own friendly soil in order to grow and give a good outcome. In other words, when we build a house, we need to put a sound foundation to hold it strongly. Similarly, if we are going to embrace trendy and revealing cloths, movies and songs from the western culture, the foundation of liberal thinking and good self behavior should be practiced. That is where this went wrong!

Sri Lanka still has the framed and closed traditional thinking patterns as a foundation while a westernized culture is being formed. In between these two contrastive things, there is a big confusion among the people forcing the society to have an immature, primitive mindset.

Our media is in the biggest perplexity in this matter. They show sexual advertisements, movies and similar programs every minute of the day and ask the women who stay at homes to be within a forced traditional culture. Men who watch these half-naked sceneries in the TV and internet do not get what they see from the women in their homes. The so-called culture may have forced their heads in shame of their desires to ask from their women to fulfill them. So the sex maniacs go out there, trying to get them fulfilled from anything that even looks like a woman. Therefore, my dear readers, you cannot ask a woman to close from head to toe and expect a decrease of rapes. The solution is in the way of thinking. The foundation that we missed should be created even now containing a good sex education and self behavior in every individual. If we cannot get off from this primitive way of thinking, the number of sex maniacs will increase day by day.

“Either you should completely stop sexual sceneries, movies, fashion and ask women to close themselves from head to toe like in Arab, or else we should practice a liberal way of thinking” Are we going to stay in this already messed up primitive mindset or are we going to change in to a free and liberal mindset and go forward with a stable philosophy of living? It is yours to decide…

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Written By : Achinthya Amarakoon | Translated By : Vindya Vithana

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