This Thing Called Rape Culture

Yesterday, a girl was being harassed by a stranger on Instagram – asking her out for coffee. She said no and to please stop messaging her because she didn’t know him. He apologised and went away. For a few hours! Only to come back with “Hi…” ‘How are you?” & “I can’t stop myself”… The girl gives him a piece of her mind, threatens to shame him on FB & goes on to do just that.

What unfolded thereafter was priceless.

There were women supporting the girl or standing up for herself and outing the guy who couldn’t take no for an answer.

There were a few supportive men but one man, in particularly who consistently vocalised his support for the girl and for her standing up.

There were a few who went on with the you shouldn’t have spoken to him, you shouldn’t have snubbed the poor guy, he was only asking you out for coffee….. that crap…

And then, there were the MRAs – heard of them? Male Rights Activists who, you know, suddenly read a couple of articles here & there, appreciate the current jargon and assume themselves to be politically correct by throwing in key words that allege allyship.

And that’s where things took a turn for me.

You see, the rate of violent crimes against women – domestic violence, sexual violence, online harassment, in person harrassment, etc… has only been on a consistent rise. With the rise of the feminist movement (which is not ‘anti-men‘, by the way), a lot of groups who misunderstand the term or take it too literally, end up messing up with the movement entirely. So anyway,  in this entire business of keeping our girls safe, there is this whole new idea of policing them ‘for their own good’ and training them in kick boxing & martial arts, not for the love of it or for the health aspect, but more so as a tool to keep them safe from a potential assault / attack / rape.

In short, telling our girls and women to learn how to keep themselves safe – avoid eye contact, dress up.. no strike that… cover up!, don’t tell men to go away, learn self defense, etc.. and all of these ideas are only taught so that if and when the unthinkable happens, it gets to be OH SO EASY to tell the girl, ‘You shouldn’t have done that!‘ or ‘You should’ve done xyz‘ – the onus is put on the woman to explain herself, and take responsibility for the incident. The assault and the attacker – who, in the entire narrative, is either long forgotten or categorised as the poor guy while the woman’s character is being assassinated, past faux pas pulled out of the closet and all that drama.

So here’s how things unfolded for me in this entire drama.

Going back to the 12 odd comments before I came into the conversation, I couldn’t be bothered with the public shaming the girl engaged. That’s the least of my concerns. He was a creep and not someone she knew – one of those PM trolls. Neither shaming nor engaging with such fools is my style, so not commenting on either. However, what was bothersome was the open shaming that her so-called ‘friends’ were throwing her way.

My comment in the conversation was in shock & disgust at them and in the context of the policing that was being freely given to the girl. It went like this:

“This is like teaching the girls martial arts so that they can ward off ‘potential rapists’ – ffs why should they train in martial arts to keep themselves safe instead of for better coordination or strength or something else?! The jerk didn’t know what no means and if he ‘cant help himself’ then he deserves worse than what you gave him.”

Of all the comments on the thread, it took one chauvinist to pick on this one because of ‘potential rapists‘ and his assumption that I had likened the troll harasser to a ‘potential rapist’ and that the girl had several chances to clearly close the conversation rather than leave it open when he persisted. See where this is going? The conversation went back & forth with male fragility reeking in every response and the patriarchy practically waiting to burst in flames of fury at me when….

wait for it…

The chauvinist is joined by his wife. What better way to slam a woman speaking tough words than by sending in another woman, right? Well, bang on right!!! This woman how turns out to be the ideal desi wife – uber supportive of her husband’s stand and pointing fingers and creating pedestals for me to sit atop and later dragging her own into the picture (definitely higher than mine)… Oh, what followed was the saccharine sweet mess of husband & wife trolling the posts, Liking & Loving each others comments (yeah this was fun to watch) and applauding each other’s goodness for all to see and dragging old crap of the girl in question’s to prove that they’re better…

OMG… this was a guidebook for the patriarchal misogyny 101.

Yeah somewhere in the middle, they kinda forgot about me – poor me, not getting the attention that these kindergarteners were so desperately seeking. Out of nowhere the couple get 2 assistants, one of whom pinches a picture from my facebook featured pics and posts in in the comments and openly asks me out (I think he asked me out, silly me) for coffee, and another jumps in to make some lame, “No wonder y’all are single.” comment.

Ok…. so what’s the deal?

The deal is that this kind of behaviour right from asking for coffee to the social structure of victim shaming & gaslighting especially when women speak out against online harrassment is nothing but misogyny and a kick in the gut of every single girl & woman out there who struggles with it. It is easy to label every woman who cries foul as a misandrist and not true to the cause of feminism and equality. They fail to work on their inner patriarchal prejudice and male fragility and they fail even more to see that the misogyny rests with a lot of the women too. I’ll bet my last penny that this guy who was making all these tall claims would have been raised in a patriarchal family and most likely with no sisters. His mother probably endured violence and they have either learnt to normalize it or learnt that they should say the right things to be perceived as politically correct but end up doing all the opposite shit, thinking all the polar opposite thoughts and then getting a handful of applause from others who are obviously just as entrenched in the misogynistic parlay of everyday existence.

Yes, shit stinks.

But then, there is something called as hoping to set the ball rolling and getting education right. Right? So here were some thoughts that I posted back on to the thread. As expected, there has been not one comment on it after that…. either they’ve realised what idiots they have been sounding like.. or.. they really are the idiots and chose to finally shut their trap. [A=girl who posted, X=Guy who took offense, Y=His Wife]

Let’s get a couple of things straight – not because I need to ever explain myself, but because if you people are the kind of woke youth living with the pseudo feminism that you are flaunting then you DO need this education. What you do with it is your thing. Most likely, you’ll ignore is as ignorance speaking – but somewhere sometime when it comes to bite you in the rear end, perhaps you’ll know how to deal with it.

1. My original comment was not in response to A’s OP, it was in response to the 12 other comments with various takes on it. It was in response to those comments that were giving A advice on what she should’ve/could’ve done to keep her space safe instead of addressing & denouncing the guy’s behavior. THAT kind of a response is no different from telling women that when they are eve-teased or harassed or raped that they asked for it because of the clothes they were wearing or because they were spotted at a bar.

2. Although X keeps saying that he agrees with a no is a no is a no, he also keeps harping on the fact that A shouldn’t have led the guy on with open ended questions etc… The onus is being shifted to A in this case. As far as the guy’s behavior… X indicates that his “approach could have been better”. THIS IS MAN TALK. He (X) may not have heard the term, but he sure as hell engages in it – shrouded in pseudofeminist terms like, “I’m all for women being safe.” Sure you are! Sounds sexist to him & his wife because a woman called him out on HIS BS. So be it. Bite me! This is a man literally making an allowance for a dude to ask a girl out for coffee – all he needs is a fine tuning of his approach so that her ‘no’ would probably be coaxed into a ‘yes’.

3. Calling this out as ‘man talk’ is then labeled as a sexist remark & ‘bad behavior’ by a woman supporting ‘her husband’… who thinks that I asked him to stay out of the conversation because he’s a man. No, stay in the conversation if you add value to it – NOT because you want to come in to tell a woman who is angry at being harassed, how she should have responded instead. That is an attempt to mansplain her choice and no, he does not have the right to do that, not even if his unconsciously patriarchal wife believes it is. How she expresses herself is entirely her entitlement.

4. For the ‘how would you feel?” bit…. Silly me… these people are on the ‘equality’ trail – throwing politically correct jargon without really even seeing the woods for the trees. My question to the wife is, when your husband will tell you what you ‘should have done’ instead of expressing your anger in whatever way you feel is right (or express it in a way that doesn’t rock the patriarchal boat of male fragile egos), then perhaps you will know what it feels like to be told what to do instead of standing up for outing someone who is on the path to rape culture.

5. Rape Culture is a thing – I’ll post a pyramid below that’ll help you see where you & others who liked your pseudo righteous speeches for equality stand.

6. The word is equity not equality. Look it up.

7. X says, “Make is a strong no” – why?? Why should she make it a strong no? Is a softer first time, ‘no’ not enough? Or do people need multiple opportunities to try and try until they succeed in getting her to say, ‘yes’?

8. Gaslighting – you’re right, you won’t find ONE instance – you’ll find plenty. You’re holding the match stick! Every time you are asking A to second guess why she is upset and she could’ve done it differently, that the poor guy was just innocently asking her out (like a creepy troll on IG DMs) and has been so ruthlessly been outed – it is asking her to rethink her upset, it is gasligthing.

9. Oh yeah, to the guy who skimmed my picture off my profile, I hope you enjoy it! And to X & the other guys who liked his comment asking me out for coffee – enjoy the joke? – well, a person who laughs at that is doing exactly what this post is all about – a guy has taken my picture, downloaded it, reposted it without my permission and it gets likes & encouragement from other guys. Are we talking sense of humor here or something else? Sense of humor I guess… C’mon boys, let’s all have a party here at the expense of this woman who asked a man to shut up & keep the explanations to himself. You have proven to me & maybe to yourselves that participating in such behavior & possibly calling it humor IS being part of the problem & you have done exactly that.

10. Finally, you don’t have to be a woman to stand for feminism and feminism does not mean hating men and neither does standing against patriarchy mean hating men. For the dimwit incel who thinks we’re all single – haha.. shine on! Perhaps somehow you’ll get lucky, in the meanwhile, intelligent men will hopefully continue make their mark & find their way to make this place a better one.

Bottom line, this is not new or a first. This happens every day and all the time… all over the world. This is violence against women – online harassment – and guess what else? It is a constant systemic effort to shut women up… and it doesn’t just happen at the hands of men, women openly and aggressively engage in this. Funnily enough, women shush up harassment of women but freely and willingly call out other women who call out men.  Sometimes it is just because of vengeful misgivings of the past, but vocal women seem to get it double time.

And of course, #NotAllMen and #NotAllWomen

This one thing, the thing all online harassment of women stems from, is the desire to stop women from sharing their opinions and thoughts on the Internet — to chip away at our power and presence in an increasingly important space.

~ Sara Alcid – Everyday Feminism

Phew! This definitely needed telling… this needed the emotional labour.. this earned the massive headache I have since last night from this puke-worthy debate with people more than a decade younger than me – our youth! Youth who dropped ten huge rocks in my gut just thinking about the kind of adults’ hands we are leaving our tomorrows in. This is where these upholding citizens of our community end up perpetuating these sickening values of harm and self-righteous but misplaced elements of equality and political correctness.

Sigh! Will this ever end? Will these people ever grow up? Sadly, I have personal experience with people hitting their mid forties and showing no sign of maturity or any evidence of understanding their gender-based privilege and demonstrating their misogyny in full effect. These folks, yesterday, I’m willing to guess that they didn’t know the full impact of their words & behavior and were just gushing with the effect of the fire of youth (and some lingering adolescence lol) to want to have the last word, gang up on social media by calling in friends to prove a point, and bolster some inadequacies with self-promotion. I wish a voice of reason and attempt to understand was demonstrated instead of a vile attacking of each other’s characters and social reach.

Until then, we watch the gloves and we watch the hands – hand in glove in this scary beat dance called Rape Culture.

The Privilege of Politics

This whole narrative of the 2019 Elections has been a pain. It’s been a crazy row of thought, ideas, ideology, finger-pointing, memes and fear mongering. I just didn’t get it. But hey! Minority speaking here…

Just so you know, minority doesn’t automatically been pro-Congress in my case. This woman – me –  from the minority thinks, watches, reads and then relates to it. This minority – me – is also a mother.

So this minority woman – me – was just kicked in the gut when the fear and vulnerability, an aftermath of yesterday’s election results came out. I’ll be honest and say that with all the moolah and emotional churning of the electorate on the basis of religious & cultural reason, the future seems filled with landmines. Every step seems to provoke thought because, after all, the country has voted on the basis of promoting a faith & culture that doesn’t necessarily include me. The agenda from the Chief of the party was made resonantly loud & clear – the country was going to be saffronized…. He was looking at ensuring the implementation of NRC in the entire country &l remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddhist, Hindus and Sikhs. In other words, my thoughts were, “Ok, I’m not an infiltrator and this is my home, but with the kind of barbs that the local supporters were aiming, where exactly were they going to push me to? Am I going to be considered a pariah in my own country?”

So those fears are real and honest… until right-wing supporters would jump to defend the narrative with, “There is no such thing as divisiveness in the BJP” or “It’s all propaganda”

This is where it is important to understand the role of privilege in any community. It could be schools, colleges, organizations, building complexes, cultures, countries and governing bodies. Privilege.

The thing with privilege is that it is bestowed on the chosen ones – the ones that support the group in power – the dominant voice and culture. Historically, we have the white colonizers who approached most of the brown, South Asian countries or largely the Global South, with an air of superiority – one to erase the indigenous culture and save them with their own versions of civilization and also capitalize from that power.

Now, economy & commerce aside, there is much to gain from power – any kind of power. Power can be quantitative or qualitative. Think of the power imbalance in a intimate violence – there largely are just 2 players – the abuser and the victim – 1:1. But the abuser has a qualitative power of dominance over the victim. In societies, it could be the dominance or a larger people (numerically) or the dominance of authority much like the dominance of the few but powerful smart & powerful white men over his brown / black savage subjects (qualitative).

In this equation, the ones in power have access to the unique privilege by way of belonging to the flow of power. In the aftermath of the Elections, there was a clear advantage to those belonging to the winning cadre of allegiance… and there was a clear privilege by being a part of the presiding ideology. And for the most part, when they experience privilege, they are either largely are blind to the cries, fears and pains of those in the minority of this power dynamics…. or worse, they don’t care.

Phew!

But the right, with the unprecedented and stupendous inflow of moolah and electoral  bonds have used the strategy of flooding the media platforms with memes and doctored media files to be shared repeatedly (tactical psychology – in other words, brainwashing) and quite aggressively envisioned and executed this strategy throughout their first term (clearly while the Opposition were settling down for a siesta or licking their wounds) and set the arena for the next phase – the 2019 Lok Sabha elections…. and very smartly too, all the 2014 promises were immediately lost in translation with the democracy that was looking for change was busied with regular WhatsApp forwards, concocted videos, tweets with Pappu jokes and, well, their own speech faux-pas manipulated in such a way to make it seem that the Pappu in question had said them.

*slow clap*

So, when the results have come in, I still feel that the win has been spurred on by using this very ‘propaganda’ to appeal to a majority. The strategy has been to use emotional propaganda, by the current social media platform of aggressive defamation and modified media pushing the masses to stop thinking logically & instead vote emotionally on the basis of their religious and cultural fervor and by establishing a narrative of making an opposing candidate look like an idiot.

A country with a mass majority of a Hindu population (Hindu by birth/religion & not Hindu thought or Hindu geography) is anyway a majority, but the consistent messaging (which a poor strategy Opposition anyway was lacking in) has only helped in gaining this advantage. The BJP, brilliant in strategy & development but sadly, their ethos is divisive and harmful. Right-wing supporters deny it as propaganda, but a majority anywhere is going to yield power (physical as well as emotional – quantitative as well as qualitative). In India’s case, standing with the flow of a narrative that supports qualitative ideology AND what happens to be the quantitative majority, they wont or don’t see divisiveness and harm.

Not your circus, not your monkeys perhaps…. but….

The minorities of the country do see it, feel it and experience it and it is the exact colonial mindset that is suppressing and denying them that fear. The fear that the BJP ethos is creating is real for minority communities and denying that or turning a blind eye towards that because it doesn’t apply to the privileged ‘Hindus’ who are being called to be ‘unapologetically Hindu‘, is not just harmful, it is almost a premonition of the grief that can readily be perpetrated with such incendiary ideas. Who stopped anyone from being Hindu in a predominantly Hindu country? Of course, if we are addressing NRI Hindus who are a minority in other countries, then perhaps that narrative and the learning from that needs to be applied in our own country, right?

I’m very wary and cautious, also, of the kind of candidates that have been fielded by the BJP – again, a strategy to use their dangerously aggressive ideas to emotionally pull the sentimental constituencies. Sadhvi Pragya & Surya – (seriously?) but I was shocked to see a comment yesterday on a friend’s wall which said that the person was thrilled to have someone like Pragya who is needed because of her “aggressive Hindutva’. I guess that is what the people are asking for….

It makes me think of the kind of support the angry electorate in the US lent to Trump. There was a need to validate anger and violence – a desire to put a leader on the pulpit who condones such behaviour and in turns allows the public to follow suit. After all, ‘Follow the Leader’ is a game we all are taught in kindergarten!

Is this what the country wants? Really??

If anything, I have seen the BJP supporters consistently push the agenda of ‘Hindu’ thought instead of actually living it – these are Hindus who are largely non-practicing Hindus – neither in thought nor philosophy, but maybe only in some misplaced ritual – but would flash the Hindu trump card because that would give them the ‘privilege’ in the current system. I have seen educated people, pro BJP, propagate and make their decisions based on facebook & whatsapp memes and only basing their arguments on false stories and jokes. Seriously? That is the the quality of the electorate? Or did the IT Cell actually believe that that would the best way to get the fastest results based on their understanding of the electoral intelligence quotient? Every BJP influencer I have seen has their facebook pages full of IT Cell generated jokes and forwards that establish that narrative – true or false is easily enmeshed into unbelievable & shady.

The BJP must be having a more ethical vision and way forward, but I am yet to find a single supporter speak anything sensible and progressive other than defending self-generated allegations, making more allegations, throwing in Pappu & mafia jokes and highlighting that it was time to defend our culture and why should we (Hindus) be forgiving always? Er…. because there are things called values & civil code of conduct and basic niceties that even little children are taught? What is the alternative, otherwise?

And all this, I speak as a practitioner & teacher of Hindu thought as well as having married into a ‘Hindu’ family where the primary focus was misogyny, lack of respect to other faiths and a steady humiliation of other cultures by high-horsing ‘Hindu’ culture without knowing the significance of either. There! I said it! This is as personal for me as a Christian as it is for me professionally & politically.

Despite me being active on the political education platform & volunteering for women’s reservation and the success of women in politics, I feel sadness, hurt & fear that there are my friends who support an idea that can potentially decimate me and my family and others like me without a thought. And if this is indeed the people’s voice (as I have experienced in my own ‘family’), trust me, this is going to be a very unsafe period, except for those in privilege who are today celebrating the Modi Wave Phase 2. Phase 1 was amped with all promises whose progress no one stopped to question during the first term and Phase 2 has been welcomed with all the bang & gusto of Hindutva and the need to be culturally strong. What will be the course to execute this all? I have no idea… but it does not spell safety…

So, while right wing supporters celebrate this win, my request would be to truly open to the fear that this win raises in others who are just as Indian as yourselves and just as Hindu by geography, but subscribe to other faiths. What we speak about in terms of colonization and white privilege of the West is the truth of the country today as Hindu privilege – albeit presenting itself as Vikas.

So time will tell, I suppose, and I hope I am proven wrong, I really do. But for today, it doesn’t sit very well with me. I hope the choice indicates that the people want development and economic growth and that this will be shown in the work ahead. But if we will keep trumpeting ‘Hindu’ over everything without really engaging as Hindu philosophers, then I believe we’re on the brink of a lot of pain. I will hope that these people will still be there to lift us up and stand up against it.

The hope remains for a better India, and that this fear never materializes into reality.