‘Bois Locker Room’-an Instagram chat group comprising several teens from South Delhi was being used to objectify, slut-shame and plan ‘gang-raping’ under-aged girls. As frightening as it sounds, the group came into notice when a Delhi-based influencer on Twitter exposed the whereabouts of the group with supporting screenshots. According to the influencer, the members of the group seemingly teens and have posted derogatory comments about women in the group. They had also circulated morphed images of girls and used statements like-“We can rape her easily”.
As the news spread like a wildfire over the internet, the influencer and her other friends said to receive abuses and rape threats online. More to this as #boyslockerroom began to trend, the above user’s IG accounts were too reported being hacked.
While the screenshot of the group revealed most of its members, soon user started claiming to know some of the ‘Bois Locker Room’ members. As a result, some of the schoolboys had issues apologies on Twitter while others simply came out saying they were ‘inactive’ in the group. However, it seems Twitterati is not willing to let this go.
MetooIndia account tweeted,” Thread: Students who are 16, 17 years old, are casually talking of gang-raping girls and women, swapping nudes without the consent of these women on Reddit, with not even a hint of fear of exposure. The dire crisis of rape womxn face, starts with this rape culture #boyslockerroom.
This online chat group talks a lot about the deep-rooted rape culture in India along with victim-blaming being mostly associated with conversations about rape. Even when #MeToo movements were making rounds in India, it was the victim who was questioned first. Similarly, this incident is being said to be a “stem from toxic masculinity”. Few responses to the #Boyslockerroom group raise serious concern over the safety of women in India.
This problem may be bigger than what we are seeing right now as this is not the first case of schoolboys caught with violent and sexually explicit remarks. Previously we have seen a similar case of eight boys hailing from a reputed school in Mumbai to make a WhatsApp group about their female classmate.
According to the Indian Penal Code, morphing photos and sharing intimate or private images online without the consent can be a violation of Section 66E and Section 354C of the IT Act.
Photo credit: Google
