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@article{184087,
        author = {Bhavya Gaba},
        title = {Muted Grooms and Loud Silences: From Women’s Oppression to Men’s Muteness in Indian Marriages},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {4},
        pages = {193-195},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=184087},
        abstract = {Silence has always been gendered. For centuries, women carried it as their burden—silenced by households, customs, scriptures, and cultural conditioning. Feminism came in to break this silence, insisting that muteness no longer be confused with virtue but heard as violence. When women gained voice, society reorganized laws, rituals, and cultural forms to make their voices heard. Yet silence did not disappear; it shifted. In contemporary India, men—especially grooms—are increasingly the ones muted. Weddings choreograph their passivity, films trivialize their presence, and law sometimes presumes their guilt before they even speak. This shift is not equality; it is substitution. What was once women’s enforced silence is becoming men’s inherited muteness, dramatized by the rise of pseudo-feminism and female chauvinism. This paper examines the transition of silence: from the centuries-long suppression of women to the contemporary silencing of men. Drawing on literature, cinema, law, and cultural rituals, it argues that pseudo-feminism risks producing reverse patriarchy, replacing one form of injustice with another. The muted groom emerges not merely as a cultural figure but as a symbol of imbalance in the promise of gender justice. True equality lies not in trading silences but in building balance where both voices can coexist.},
        keywords = {Feminism, pseudo-feminism, female chauvinism, muted grooms, Indian weddings, gender justice, Section 498A},
        month = {September},
        }