In a long post-dinner discussion
with a very close friend about the boy’s locker room, I wanted to understand
more about his inhibitions with the issue and as I heard him speak, I learnt a
lot about other dimensions about the issue that I feel require a voice.
He thinks that many of us posting
about the boys locker room should be guilty of having been actively or silently
involved in similar situations that we call out today as the root cause of such
behavior. I understood his inhibitions.
We all must have been a part of
such jokes or discussion at some point or the other. ‘A casual Google search
for Whatsapp wife jokes is an indication of how popular these are, throwing up
about 34,40,000 search results of all variants. Jokes in English, Hindi, other
Indian languages, image jokes, ‘veg’ jokes, ‘non veg’ jokes, all available to
pick and choose from’.
Calling out anyone is not easy.
Calling out might involve breaking relations, breaking families, legal
hardships, economic burden and most importantly might add to the already
existing mental burden deteriorating the mental and physical well-being of a
person. Many of us have probably gulped down many such similar situations and have
probably not called out in the same situations that we mention today. The
message behind many of us posting about the locker room is not to say we are
right and you are wrong, it is to say that we are very familiar to this
situation as we have been or are still involved in many of these misogynist
groups and conversations- although that means that we have been the quiet
member too. However, the first step is to acknowledge that this is the problem
and that we are a part of it as well.
The reason why this issue ‘trended’
in social media and was taken up and discussed in so many platforms was because
the discomfort we felt or feel and the anger within are striking chords with
many others and therefore there is the uproar. However, that does not mean that
we have not been a part of the narrative that has led to the increase in
violence against women and girls.
Many of my girlfriends jumped the
gun to say we never discuss boys and their private parts in girls group. However,
girls do discuss girls and objectify their figures. This is because we live in
a patriarchal society where both men and women objectify women’s body more than
men, where both men and women use slangs which mostly de-value women.
I remember talking about
beautiful girls with my friends who are boys, helping my cousin brother flirt,
secretly giving/ getting lanline numbers of others without consent, when SMS
packs became the in-thing we exchanged so many jokes (most jokes must have had
some or the other misogynist connotation) and dancing to so many item numbers-
the meaning of most of which is deeply problematic. I did what I did because
that was the environment I lived in and I grew up in. I thought my actions to
be ‘harmless’.
Just like 60% men who were
surveyed by Oxfam India in the states of northern India thinks stalking is
harmless. They must have grown up in environment where they have seen other men
and boys do it, Bollywood movies promote and glorify it, there could be peer
pressure as well. All of these make actions like ‘stalking’ look normal and
harmless and we often fail to see the long term consequences of such behavior.
But there are many other
situations where we still keep quiet- maybe we still keep quiet in our family
groups where misogynist jokes are shared in the fear of breaking relations,
maybe many of us were reminded of that colleague, friend, teacher who made us
feel uncomfortable but we did not speak
up during the me too movement. Maybe many of us still live with such people in
the family who remind us of childhood horror but we are yet to speak up.
Unfortunately, while building the narrative we cannot blame these people who
have not or are yet to speak up or blame someone who has just spoken about
issues of long past.
When, where and how one would be
comfortable to speak and call out depends upon the individual but what we can
however do is make an environment where it is easy to speak up. When there is
an uproar like this, many people who have been quiet finds the space to say- me
too. If you discuss these issues in the family it is more likely that anyone in
a similar uncomfortable situation will speak up and that is how and where we
can bring long-term changes.
Therefore, the need of the hour
right now is to engage in dialogue and discussion. The need is for each of us
to reflect on how we have contributed to this narrative. The need is to have an
enabling environment where anyone feeling uncomfortable can speak up and is assured
to be heard. The need is to understand how such locked up anger might come out
in various forms- the quickest being social media uproar.
However, the focus should not be
on the punishment. This is because there is a difference when I understand
something with reason and develop my own reasons to do or not do something as
compared to not doing something in the fear of punishment. The latter often has
no value to add. It is similar to doing Maths out of your own interest or
pretending to do Maths in the fear of your parents stick. Research shows that fear
does not go a long way. Fear might even escalate the problem like fear might
create anger and anger might do more harm than good. Fear of legal punishment might also prevent many close relatives from speaking up. In other words, Nirbhaya’s
rapists were hanged but that did not have any effect on the number of rapes
reported in the country post that.
This is especially important for
parents to understand as many might choose the route to be stern and strict
however, what is really recommended with all genders, with all age groups is
dialogue and discussion. And I would like to start this discussion by admitting to
my friend and others that I have been part of building this narrative too.
In the Me too movement, the survivors called out Me-too, I feel now it is time for all of us to acknowledge that we are contributors to the increase in violence against women as well.
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