We need a new way to swear … one that doesn’t demean the women of India

A Mumbai street cleaner tackles a footpath next to a mural. Indian women are regularly subjected to sexist profanity. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images

I was shocked. Scrolling through my Twitter feed, I stopped at an exchange between a women’s rights activist I know and a troll in which the activist, someone who often talked to me about the gendered nature of our cuss words responded using maa-behen ki gaali (misogynistic abuse).

My mind went round and round, trying to decipher if this was hypocrisy or an unconscious expression of rage. I settled for the latter, as gendered slurs are so embedded in our everyday speech that we use them (mostly in angry or in stresss) without stopping to think. In unguarded moments, we spit them out.