When patriarchy pays bill for transactional sex: What if she says no?
It is not about one Himanshu or one Pranit. The most unsettling aspect was that almost everyone gathered for the crowd-work segment received the comment as an innocent joke
Of course, that remains unthinkable from a male point of view, because SHE is always expected to say YES—yes to all kinds of exploitation and coercion that are conveniently masked by a 'caring patriarchy'. And every time she says NO, she becomes a big question mark in 'his-story', because men are
Of course, that remains unthinkable from a male point of view, because SHE is always expected to say YES—yes to all kinds of exploitation and coercion that are conveniently masked by a 'caring patriarchy'. And every time she says NO, she becomes a big question mark in 'his-story', because men are
Of course, that remains unthinkable from a male point of view, because SHE is always expected to say YES—yes to all kinds of exploitation and coercion that are conveniently masked by a 'caring patriarchy'. And every time she says NO, she becomes a big question mark in 'his-story', because men are
Of course, that remains unthinkable from a male point of view, because SHE is always expected to say YES—yes to all kinds of exploitation and coercion that are conveniently masked by a 'caring patriarchy'. And every time she says NO, she becomes a big question mark in 'his-story', because men are rarely trained to deal with a woman's refusal.
That is what triggered the ₹370 biriyani controversy during a crowd-work segment of a stand-up comedy show in Gurugram, hosted by the viral influencer and comedian Pranit More. A 22-year-old attendee named Himanshu Jangra shared a supposedly humorous anecdote about spending ₹370 on a chicken biriyani during a date. Merely because he spent ₹370 on biriyani, he felt entitled to a sexual favour from the girl. Aha! What's wrong with such a male expectation? The crowd erupted in laughter, and even Pranit More, who commands millions of followers on social media, appeared to relish the remark and later posted the clip online, perhaps anticipating its viral potential.
It is not about one Himanshu or one Pranit. The most unsettling aspect was that almost everyone gathered for the crowd-work segment received the comment as an innocent joke. It must have been such a relatable situation for them, I suppose, because from the time of our 'foremothers', we have been conditioned to consume anti-women jokes as harmless entertainment and accept gender-biased humour as something perfectly normal.
When a woman is offered a free date, is she expected to compromise for the man so that he can make his money 'vasool'? When the video triggered a wider debate on social media about transactional sex and consent, both Pranit More and Himanshu Jangra issued public apologies and deleted the video. But do you think the message it carried was equally deletable? Absolutely NOT. Publicly undermining a woman's dignity is not a harmless act of humour, it's a kind of 'gang-rape'. It is a form of collective humiliation, and very often groups of men derive pleasure from such shared degradation.
Himanshu's male ego might have been bruised when the girl rejected his demand for sex. Deeply disappointed at not being able to encash his biriyani bill, he narrated the incident before a gathering where she was once again objectified through the collective male gaze. The thunderous applause he received for his sexist remark must have given him a perverse sense of power. 'How can you expect a girl in your bed simply because you paid the biriyani bill?' Nobody in the crowd seemed willing to ask this obvious question, because the remark had been effortlessly normalised. Who cares about her consent?
This is not merely a debate about a woman's consent. More importantly, it serves as an eye-opener to the so-called innocent jokes that routinely erode a woman's dignity—jokes that must be edited out, if not erased altogether, from the cultural spaces we inhabit, both online and offline.