We were talking some weeks ago of women being flashed when a male friend declared with incredulity that he found it impossible to believe that any one girl or woman could have been a victim of flashing several times over a lifetime. ‘Once or twice maybe’, he said, ‘but surely not something that could happen serially.’ The implication was that these might be made-up stories, perhaps to gain attention, perhaps to shock.
Now here’s the thing. This is a man I respect deeply, whose credentials for gender fairness and sensitivity are unquestionable. Only one thing could explain his position and that would be total ignorance of the reality that women face as part of everyday living.
The divide between what men experience when they step out and encounter other men, whether in train stations, public transport or parking lots, and what women experience in these same places is so great that they might be living on two different planets. It’s an insidious difference, however, one not easily seen and which makes it easy for even thinking men to be incredulous of what are actually very real issues for women.
Thus, on a fairly crowded city main street at 10 p.m., a man will see nothing even faintly threatening but put a woman alone there and a certain kind of creature will crawl out of the sidewalk that men never encounter. The mild-mannered male colleague that a man drinks coffee with every evening can be a very different animal when he is alone with a female colleague. Because the male and female perspectives on these encounters will end up being so disparate, it is easy to dismiss one narrative as being over-dramatic and self-indulgent. Unfortunately, these stories are not dramatic or self-serving, they are just terribly common, sordid and all too true.
A college-going girl, on a very conservative average of once a week, will be either flashed, or have her breasts groped, or be rubbed against by a man on a crowded bus, or have her kurta slashed by a blade, or hear a lewd proposition, or be stalked. These are so common she often won’t bother reporting it to her parents. Or she might not report it because she will be scared that it will mean her being cloistered at home.
Or, and this is the worst, she will be disbelieved.
Disbelief is often the reaction from women as well. Women who take a chauffeured car to work or to send their children to college, or women who are financially strong and don’t fear a male boss – these women find it difficult to empathise with someone less strong or less privileged.
Just as all women are not automatically empathetic, so are all men not necessarily predators. In fact, most men are as horrified as we are. And that’s why the fight to reclaim public spaces for the woman must be a fight that’s fought by both genders. For that to happen, both have to learn to read the stories scripted during the business of daily living from slightly more evolved positions.
