Every time a girl is raped or murdered, society responds with outrage. The busy streets of the capital fill with protestors demanding justice, while institutions promise investigations. Social media buzzes with posts calling for accountability and justice. Yet, amid this collective anger, one uncomfortable question often remains neglected: What were the social conditions that existed before the crime? Violence of such magnitude rarely emerges in isolation. If rape represents the extreme expression of patriarchy, then we must examine the social ladder beneath it: Normalisation of male entitlement, silencing of female voices, everyday behaviours, institutional failures and cultural tolerances.

As a society, we do not fail girls on the day they are attacked; we fail them on the day they first try to speak, and we ask them to stay quiet. The social normalisation of domestic violence, casual badmouthing of women, and failure of educational and religious institutions to openly challenge these social evils often create a culture of silence. When harmful attitudes are left unquestioned in everyday life, silence becomes a learned behaviour. This silence is further reinforced by institutional gaps. Many schools, particularly in suburban and rural areas, lack confidential reporting mechanisms where young girls can safely share experiences of harassment or intimidation. At home, complaints are often suppressed because the families fear social judgment more than injustice.

In many communities, misconduct by boys is still dismissed with phrases like ‘boys will be boys.’ Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung described this phenomenon as ‘structural violence’—harm caused by social systems rather than individuals. This is where the heinous crimes take root, not with the violence, but with normalisation that precedes it.

Sexual violence rarely begins as violence. It develops through a gradual social process. The first stage is the normalisation of misogynistic jokes, peer approval of emotional manipulation, and the trivialisation of harassment. The second stage is social protection, where families, friends and even institutions downplay boys' behaviour to protect their future. The third stage is silencing girls, where they are advised to stay quiet to avoid shame, effectively shifting the burden from the perpetrator to the victim. The final stage is the escalation, where the normalised harmful behaviours grow into coercion, abuse and extreme violence. This is how society becomes an indirect enabler of the very crimes it later condemns. Patriarchy survives and thrives through the normalisation and forgiveness of harmful behaviour.

Recently, I overheard two boys casually normalising emotional manipulation, infidelity and deception as masculinity. Psychologist Albert Bandura’s social learning theory suggests that behaviour is learned through observation and modelling. When young boys grow up hearing peers glorify manipulation and infidelity, learning to see deception as cleverness and emotional exploitation, then we should not be surprised when empathy disappears later. Meanwhile, patriarchy operates through fear embedded in families, and society continues to control girls rather than protect and empower them.

These patterns are reflected in national data. More than 17,000 sexual violence cases have been reported in Nepal in the past five years, with 3,178 cases recorded in fiscal year 2024-025. Yet there is limited public information on how many perpetrators were convicted. Disturbingly, most survivors know their abusers. And when victims speak, they encounter suspicion and blame instead of support and protection. In many cases, society interrogates the survivor more than the perpetrator. In recent years, speaking up has become the second trauma after the abuse. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence explains how victim-blaming and moral policing are so normalised that victims themselves begin to internalise silence as a responsibility.

The recent incident of a girl brutally murdered after rape raises an uncomfortable but necessary question about our education system. Are we producing socially responsible citizens? Our education system largely focuses on academic success, and largely fails at teaching consent, emotional responsibility and gender respect. This absence of ethical and emotional intelligence education often leaves young boys learning masculinity from peer validation, media influence and unchecked social attitudes.

Character education is a social necessity. It must go beyond textbooks to include gender sensitisation, consent education, and safe reporting mechanisms in schools. A safer society will not emerge simply from stricter laws, but from classrooms that teach respect as seriously as they teach success.

The fight against patriarchy will not be won on the streets after tragedy. Fighting for justice after violence is necessary, but working on preventing violence is where our real responsibility lies. This requires building homes where girls are heard without fear, schools where complaints are treated as warnings, and communities where boys are taught accountability. A society that only reacts after a girl is killed is a society that has ignored many chances to protect her while she was alive. If we want fewer names on protest banners tomorrow, we must start listening to the unheard voices today. The real measure of a just society is not how loudly it protests after violence, but how seriously it works to prevent it.