In the Tamil film, Iraivi (2016), there is a scene where an elderly woman gets shouted at and abused by her husband before many people. Many of them advise her not to cry to which she serenely states: “As if I have not been doing that all my life.”
In recent times, Tamil films such as Iraivi have been attempting to bring out the intricacies of male abuse in the modern domestic sphere; this is laudable, but they also leave us puzzled why even well-educated, and sometimes well-employed, women in Tamil Nadu are trapped in violent domesticity by being tolerant to domestic abuse and even give up their self-respect to save the family honour.
