A Brief Glossary Of Shitty Behaviour

As we find ourselves amidst the unstoppable outpour of India’s #MeToo movement, the silence broken over the last few days has made us, as a society, reflect on the extent to which we have normalised and justified toxic traits. Each crucial call-out has left us emotionally exhausted, but what’s even more tiring is hearing multiple accused men use mental health and their supposed lack of knowledge as excuses to play the victim instead of the perpetrator.

However, the frightening fact remains that we casually engage in behaviour that can be deeply problematic, shrugging it away into terms like ‘savage’, which may sound cool as a sticker on your Instagram but also downplay the seriousness of their impact on someone else. While terms like ‘gaslighting’ are acknowledged for their severe effects, we fail to recognise that even acts like ‘trolling’ and ‘ghosting’ can take dark overtures. What’s worse is when such terminology masks unacceptable acts, potentially becoming a breeding ground for cases of mental harassment due to their offensive, antagonising and isolating nature.

To help you better understand the millennial-era terms that represent actions you should be wary of, we teamed up with Megha Kashyap, coordinator for gender justice at Oxfam India, to break them down through the tales of Mr. Cocky, a character representative of all the shitty behaviour that makes you a class-A dick.