Editor,
In recent weeks, public discourse has been flooded with slandering young women involved in extramarital affairs. Society has been quick to brand them as 'home-wreckers', dismissing their actions as mere greed or moral failure.
It is easy to point fingers and hurl insults from behind a screen or across a community circle. What is far more difficult - but deeply necessary - is to stop, look past the outrage, and ask ourselves a painful question: Why are our daughters making these choices?
Before they are subjects of public scandal, these girls are someone's daughters. They are children born into our homes, raised in our communities, and shaped by our values. Yet, when they stumble or make choices that defy societal norms, we disown them through collective humiliation. We treat the symptom while completely ignoring the underlying rot in the system.
Could it be that our society fails to treat its women as equals, creating environments so stifling that a young woman feels it is better to seek escape anywhere else than to stay in her own home?
In many traditional setups, a daughter's autonomy is heavily restricted. Her voice is secondary, her choices are monitored, and her sense of worth is often tied to submission. When a home feels like a cage rather than a sanctuary, the urge to escape becomes overwhelming.
If our daughters are 'digressing', dating married, older men, and even settling for the structural inequality of polygamy, we must look at what they are running away from, or what they think they are running towards.
An older, married man often represents financial stability, authority, and a twisted semblance of security or validation that these women might feel deprived of elsewhere. If a young woman chooses to be a secondary partner in a polygamous setup rather than an equal partner in a modern, single marriage, it reflects a deeper crisis of confidence. It suggests that our society has failed to convince her that she is capable, worthy, and permitted to build an independent life on her own terms.
We have taught our girls to look for protectors rather than empowering them to protect themselves. Instances of older women also have been found, wherein they are one of many wives. In such cases, we may very well remove the 'immature young' criterion but every other argument stated above regarding respect and regard in the society still stands.
Blaming these women as uniquely 'greedy' is a lazy escape route for a society that refuses to hold men equally accountable. An extramarital affair requires two people, yet the weight of social ruin almost always falls squarely on the woman. By focusing entirely on her supposed greed, we shield the older, married men from their own breach of vows and abuse of maturity and power dynamics.
Arunachal's society needs to move beyond performative moral policing. If we truly care about preserving the sanctity of our homes and the future of our youths, we must start by looking inward. We need to create homes where our daughters feel seen, valued, and equal. We must build a society where a young woman does not feel the need to compromise her dignity or settle for a fractured relationship just to find a sense of security or escape.
They are our daughters. If they are lost, it is because the path we built for them was too narrow to walk on.
Anonymous