Swearing Off Misogyny

How one man is fighting patriarchal norms by attacking an often overlooked symptom-the normalization of sexist profanity

- Naorem Anuja

MONIKA BAZZAD WAS on her weekly video call with her father, a policeman from Haryana, when he broke out yet again into a misogynist slur. He'd had a bad day at work and thought little about the impact of his language on his daughter, who flinched at the word.

"I asked him why he chose to use words like that. Don't you know what they mean?" she said. Challenged by his 23-year-old daughter, and unable to defend his casual use of sexist profanity, he handed the phone to his wife and walked away. That was a year ago, and now Monika proclaims her home a gaali bandh ghar (A profanity-free home).

Monika is one of the many young women who have joined the Gaali Bandh Ghar Abhiyan (Stop the Swearing campaign), a crusade aimed against the misogyny that abounds in swear words. Started by 39-year-old social activist Sunil Jaglan in 2014, while he was Gram Pradhan of Bibipur, Haryana, the campaign began as a response to the easy use of abusive language he found rampant within his village. "In our panchayat meetings, I noticed that whether men talked about problems facing the village, or made wisecracks, they would regularly slip in cuss words-most of which would invariably be the kind that shamed women or their anatomy."