SOUTH ASIANS: stop brushing things under the rug in the name of 'honour'

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]I think a lot of South Asians, we tend to you know, brush the very difficult conversations under the rug. We don't want to speak about it. Do not bring it up. Stop bringing it up because it's causing issues. It's causing tension.

[00:00:11]But it's like if we don't tackle the thing that's doing that, that trigger, whatever it is, we're never going to heal. We're never going to move forward and we're never going to be that one unit family 100% loyal that we actually want. And it often takes the black sheep of the fam and it and it really does and I really feel as though I'm the black sheep of the family to be like, "No, no, no. This is where the problem is. If there's abuse, if there's violence, if there's this, that and the other happening within any household, it's like it should be spoken about." But it's that whole thing of logi gigogi, "What will people think? What will people say?" Honor, you know, honor is it's such a great thing, but it's also the thing that can break a family as well, right? We need to keep the honor, but it's like the person that's doing the dishonorable thing, what about them?

[00:00:59]And it often takes the black sheep of the family to stand up and speak about certain things. But you know what happens these days is that person gets shamed.

[00:01:09]That person is then made to be quiet in the name of God, in the name of shame, in the name of honor, in the name of keeping a family together and I've seen it amongst various different families and different family members.

[00:01:22]Unfortunately, it's that same person that then gets ostracized. And it tends to be the outspoken one, you know? Women who have been abused, like sexually, physically, say this happened by a family member and then the family say, "Well, don't tell anyone because then everyone's going to know." So, we're not protecting the victims. The future victims or the current victims. Cuz you want to keep the peace and you want to keep the families together. The person that's the violent one, the aggressor, is then in the same room with the person that they've done that horrible thing to. And it's like do we not think of the victim and their mental health and their stability and what it's going to be like for them growing up, but no, for the sake of the family, for the sake of honor, keeping the peace and brushing things under the carpet because we're so afraid of letting things out or vocalizing certain things, we're going to allow that person to just go through the that they're going through mentally and we're going to protect the person that's the aggressor. It's so disgusting. I mean, I can only imagine the amount of young girls and young boys that sexually assault in our families, South Asian families and how much impact that has on, you know, future sort of generations and we know in India it's really bad. It is really bad. I think it was John Abraham who said that animals, women and children are not safe in India.