Lemon Tree Hotel’s Rape ‘Joke’: Inexcusable ‘Casual’ Sexism

Time to womansplain: women are not mens’ playthings or properties.

Time to womansplain - women are not a man’s plaything or property. (Photo: iStock/Anoushka Kapoor/The Quint)

No matter how far women and the movement for equality comes, society will find a way to keep constructing new walls that remind them they are only good for “puckering their lips and wiggling their bottoms”.

A Lemon Tree Hotel branch in Bengaluru did exactly that when they put up a “joke” about a man using his wife to excite a gorilla and then throwing her in its cage. They were clearly chuffed with their modern-day spin on King Kong.

They must also have felt very smug with their ‘clever’ spin on the I-have-a-headache-I --don’t-want-to-have-sex excuse women supposedly use to ‘get out’ of having sex with their partners.

A man using his wife as a plaything to arouse the gorilla only goes to show that men think their wives are private property; to use an abuse as they please.

The man finds the gorilla’s supposed arousal funny, and throwing his wife in its cage only goes to perpetuate crimes against women and rape culture.

Lastly, consent is a concept that seems to have evaded the writer of the “joke”. Women do not owe their partners sex; whether or not they are married to them. It also goes as far as suggesting marital rape, when their wives try to brush off the topic of sex.

But wait, that’s a concept that the fabric of the Indian society cannot support, right?

Another user Priyanka Choudhary posted about a similar “joke” she found in a Gurgaon property of the hotel. They take more digs at women and marriage and make men out to be the sad victims of the institution.

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Priyanka Choudhary)

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Priyanka Choudhary)

Clearly, sexism knows no borders and Lemon Tree Hotels is proof of that.

Men, women do not owe you their bodies. They are not your property.

And stop using innocent gorillas as bait for teaching anyone a “lesson”. This is not what Harambe died for.