First Weinstein, then Kevin Spacey, and now British MPs. As the names of powerful men come tumbling out of the closet, there is a sense that perhaps, finally, the discussion around sexual harassment is coming to a head. In India, for instance, the uproar resulted in a massive participation in the #MeToo campaign and, subsequently, in a list of academics that was posted online.
So much has been said about the infamous list that one is chary of adding to the verbiage, but let me add my two bits. As important as the struggle for women’s empowerment is, the means employed to get justice cannot be unjust. I deeply distrust any philosophy that allows the sacrifice of a few to save the world. And as cathartic as it might be to make public a laundry list of names, it also insidiously harms the arduous battle for credibility that feminism has only now slowly begun to win.
There’s been one brilliant upshot, though. For generations, women have been told what to wear and how to behave, but now finally men are worrying about appropriate conduct in workplaces and campuses. There are the first signs of introspection about inappropriate jokes and lewd remarks. And if that means fewer potbellied men drooling and dribbling over female subordinates half their age, it cannot be anything but good. Not just for womankind but for aesthetics in general.
About #MeToo, I am not so sure. It seems like one of those facile online fads that achieves little. It carries all the superficial appearance of a grave fight, but it’s really not much more than a feel-good sensation you can soak in just as easily by playing Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I will survive’ on loop. Don’t get me wrong — I am all for being awash in feel-good, but let’s not kid ourselves that adding cutesy hashtags gets us anywhere we really want to go.
And that’s really the major problem now that we have migrated our entire lives online. Clicktivism and hashtag hollers bestow a deceptive sense of power, satisfaction that your tiny voice has joined the global multitude. I totally get the intoxication of knowing you and Lady Gaga both tweeted #MeToo — but what now?
Hashtag activism is as much an addiction as selfies, when the need to post a picture of the steak or of the mountain-top view becomes vastly more important than the real act of enjoying the food or the moment. It fetishizes protest as an act for public consumption, and feeds the need for constant public display and affirmation of one’s indignations. It makes it okay to no longer actually do anything as long as you colour your photo with rainbow hues or post a Je Suis Outrage-of-the-Day on your Facebook wall.
Post-hashtag, do you feel emboldened to complain to authorities about an unpleasant episode? Or demand that a sexual harassment committee be set up (or strengthened) on campus? Have you tried starting a process where girls share stories so that multiple complaints force the hands of authorities? Will you now record chats with a sleazy professor so that you can slam him with proof?
How about Women’s Day programmes that go beyond kolam competitions to frank discussions about understanding sexual harassment. A friend once complained to me that a senior colleague had called her ‘fat’. Is that harassment or just rudeness? Is the mere offer of a dinner date harassment or the persistent refusal to take no for an answer? When does flirting become stalking? And let’s not pretend we need flirting and sexuality eliminated in order for women to be respected. That’s bullshit, pardon my French.
Lecturers, managers, film producers — these are powerful men used to enjoying droit du seigneur privileges over generations. It’s naïve to imagine they will give this up willingly, hashtags be damned. Women have to kick over the traces, and how. That, unfortunately, is harder than hashtags. Women have been indoctrinated over millennia to please — we needed it once as a survival tactic — and the vestiges continue. It’s much harder for us to say no, to oppose, deny or demand than it is for men. The challenge will be to find that strength. To demand he backs off, demand an enquiry, demand redress. And to establish the structures that let us do it without being fired or failed.
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark.
