Men Giving Rape Threats To 5y.o. Ziva Dhoni ‘Coz Her Father Performed Badly Shows Our Sick Society

Mentality of men in Indian society has reached a new low with many disgruntled cricket fans giving MS Dhoni’s 5-year-old daughter rape threats because her father is not playing well enough. 

Cricket is one game that unites our entire country. Fans go crazy for their favourite teams and their favourite cricketers. It’s very common for angry fans to lash out on the crickets and blame them for match-fixing if they lose a match.

But one more thing that has become very common with the advent of social media is giving violent threats to a cricketer’s wife or girlfriend if he doesn’t perform well. 

On Wednesday after Chennai Super Kings lost a match to Kolkata Night Riders in the ongoing Indian Premier League, CSK’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Instagram post comments were filled with rape threats. These threats of rape and physical violence were directed towards his 5-year old daughter Ziva Dhoni.

Read that again! Several comments were giving out rape threats to 5 year old Ziva. Mind you, not one, not two but several comments were made in the same vein. 

I can’t stress this enough. Trolls gave rape threats to a 5 year old girl because her father did not perform well in a few matches!

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This is not just sickening but is also a mirror to the toxic masculinity and rape culture that breeds in our society. Something that makes it very easy for 40-year-old men to send out casual rape threats to a 5-year-old kid. A mentality that makes men think that abusing women is the only way of venting out anger and frustration. 

Thankfully the internet did not take this lightly 

After MSD’s Instagram comment section was filled with such disgusting comments several users on Twitters condemned the incident.

A cricket player’s 5 yr old getting rape threats shows what we have become. Or were we always this; and social media is now exposing these people? Unless the Govt and Police take cyber crime seriously we are all unsafe. But then where does the Govt have the time for this?

— Chinmayi Sripaada (@Chinmayi) October 9, 2020

6 Year Old Ziva Is Getting Rape Threats Because Dhoni Didn't Play Well Yesterday. pic.twitter.com/4mDlxEzVFp

— Ayush Verma (@ayushastic) October 8, 2020

Just saw that Dhoni's 6-year-old daughter Ziva is getting rape and death threats because he didn't play well in #IPL2020

Do people realize what shithole we have become? Can you even imagine where we are heading as a country?

Morally dead and decayed nation! pic.twitter.com/tYF9CsMleY

— Aryan Srivastava (@aryansrivastav_) October 8, 2020

Why is it so easy to send out rape threats?

According to recent data provided by the NCRB, an average of 87 rape cases were reported in India per day in 2019. Note the word ‘reported’. The real numbers can easily be much bigger, given the abysmal rates of reporting rape in a country that stigmatises the survivor, not the perpetrator.

Despite this data being out there for everyone to see, in our country, men dare to casually send out rape threats. If they don’t agree with a woman they’ll send out a rape threat, if they don’t like something a man did they send out rape threats to his mother, wife or daughter. There is just no fear at all. 

In our so-called modern world, even today shamefully, sexual violence is often considered a way to avenge any kind of insult or injury. This notion leads to women being treated as ‘property’ and their ‘sexual purity’ being held synonymous with the family/clan ‘honour’ and most cases self-honour as a woman. This is the very reason that behind anonymous tags trolls have been shamelessly sending out rape threats to vent their anger. There is no curbing to stop them, they cannot be identified, and the very reason that they feel that raping a woman is right is what gives them the courage to type such horrifying messages. 

What can be done?

On a platform level to curb cyberbullying, social media platforms can take proactive measures and zero-tolerance against online sexual harassment and abuse. Accounts doing so should be completely taken down.

Platforms should work to make the internet a safe space, representative of equality and opportunity, and not one filled with sexual predators. One where women shouldn’t feel unsafe just looking at their screens.

Secondly, real-life actions and arrests should be hassle-free. Finally, a mindset change has to be bought. It’s high time we teach our boys to respect women rather than try to abuse them. 

Rape is a heinous crime. And to use it to threaten someone or to show your anger just shows the deep-rooted patriarchal mindset of society. Something which believes in harming the ‘woman’ of the family to take revenge from someone.

This incident is not just sick and disturbing it’s also a mirror to our society. On how we are raising our men!

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