Thoughts on #MeToo
Over the past year, the #MeToo movement had taken some of the world by storm. Now, over the past two weeks, it has finally taken India by storm. Reluctant as I have been to write about it, I must succumb to the catharsis that arrives when the writer finally throws off his inhibitions.
Women have been, arguably, the most dispossessed “minorities” in the world, since ancient times. I use quote marks here because they constitute roughly 50% of the global population. Apart from the tremendous progress made by women’s rights movements over the last 150 years in moving them closer to equality with the male, much remains to be done. While legally, women in India and many other countries now face little or no discrimination, in the social sphere, and by extension in the personal, they are treated as second-class citizens, or worse. One of the rarely talked about, but perhaps the most important aspects of this apartheid is the phenomenon of sexual harassment/assault. So terrible and so widespread is this phenomenon that it has been deeply ingrained into the psyche as something normal — not just in the male psyche but even the female psyche and by extension the social psyche. The consequence of this is that sexual harassment is both one of the most evil realities of present-day societies, and one of the most hidden.
There is a fair consensus, even among conservatives, that legal equality and egalitarianism have failed to sufficiently redress the problem of sexual harassment and assault, because society remains patriarchal — in deed, and in thought. Glass ceilings are not just present in the workplace, but even in law enforcement institutions, in familial situations and in social situations. A woman who complains of sexual harassment or rape is not only mostly disbelieved, but is blamed even if she is empathised with. In this situation legal equality alone does not ensure justice.
It is due to this reality, in my view, that the #MeToo movement has been born. Since the law is unable to guarantee justice, women have taken to social media to make allegations of sexual misconduct. This act itself involves incredible bravery, especially in a conservative society such as India’s. This is worthy of praise, and, seen by itself, must thus be supported.
If you are skeptical about this, perhaps a bit of empathy will help: How would you feel if your steps were watched every time you were outdoors, if you had to avoid certain roads, certain public places, certain times of the day, and simply react to events out of your control for the most part of not just your social, but even your personal lives? This last part is important — one of the things I have realised as this #MeToo movement has gathered steam is that for the first time I, as a man, have no control whatsoever over the course of events. Sure, men do not control every event, but they do control, and seek to continue to control, parts of every event. But if you are a woman, often, though not always, you simply react to the realities of a world around you.
This loss of control is most frightening; amazingly, it has been so for me too, though I am much more in sympathy with these women than many men I know. As a man, I have simply not been raised to accept total loss of control.
Now let me come to the more controversial part: There is a difference, in my view, between absolute belief and empathy tending towards belief. Absolute belief implies that you accept the account of a person about a specific event as true ab initio. Empathy means you understand what the person is saying and see it as likely given the social circumstances, but are bound to suspend judgement until her assertion is proved, or at least backed by credible evidence.
It is no doubt that we need to empathise with women who make allegations of sexual harassment, but belief is a slightly different beast. We need to accept these allegations as plausible, but not as an incontrovertible truth. In accepting it as truth ab initio we commit two mistakes — one, we assert that we know, when in fact we can only consider the allegation as plausible in the absence of evidence. Second, we invert the very basis of liberalism, and of modern legal theory — we place the onus of providing evidence primarily on the accused, not the accuser.
Let me however, take half a step back and assert that this apparent inversion of the burden of proof is not as problematic as it would be if the allegation were not of sexual harassment or rape. Sexual harassment, or assault (as I understand it), involves a very personal and disturbing experience which creates, among other things, deep trauma in many cases. The emotional and psychological scars it leaves for years are of a severity considerably greater than the anger or grief felt if one were to be robbed, for example. Add to this the taboo against speaking out, or the tendency to blame the victim. Justice in this case cannot merely grant the accused the cover of “innocent until proven guilty” in quite the same way as in the case of a robbery, given the extremely personal nature of the accuser’s (alleged) experience and the rarity of justice.
Nevertheless, one also cannot simply accept the complainant’s version of events as gospel truth. The accused must be given a chance to respond, and empathy for the complainant tending towards belief must replace near-certainty. Where the accused simply accepts the charge, it is proved without the need for evidence from the accuser.
Moreover, in some obvious situations (such as employing physical force for the purpose of “sex” — which means, rape; molestation, and other such unwanted physical acts) — there can be no ambiguity that it constitutes sexual assault. Where words are spoken which may constitute sexual harassment, the matter becomes slightly more open to interpretation. The thumb rule I would apply, as a man, would be that anything which sexualises the identity of the other for no particular reason, without their consent, is harassment. Addressing somebody as “darling” or telling someone that they look “sexy” without theirs being in an intimate relation with you, or in a unrelated setting such as the workplace, could be sexual harassment. Incidentally, during the IT boom of the 2000s this kind of speech had become fairly commonplace in workplaces, and most men did not even realise it constituted misconduct.
There are however, other scenarios. The first one arises when the woman does not tell the man that she is uncomfortable with his speech. Silence is taken as assent — for which we must blame the speaker, but we must also wonder why a “no” is so hard to come by. Perhaps the reluctance to decline is the result of the woman’s fear that the man may harm her as a result. Personally, I have always tried to overcome this by telling women I have been on dates with, explicitly, that they can reject me freely and honestly without any threat of repercussions. However, sometimes even this does not elicit a rejection. Then I have had to arrive at this conclusion myself, by observing that the woman has become progressively disinterested in talking to me.
The second scenario is that of relationships gone sour. Abusive relationships imply long periods of either sexual or emotional assault, or both. Proceeding to have sexual intercourse (for example) when consent has been given merely for “making out”, is clearly sexual assault. But there is a small area of ambiguity where the dynamics of sexual interaction may confuse the man as to the consent of the woman (or vice versa, indeed)— for very particular sexual acts. Is consent for a deep, intense kiss (for example) in a very private moment also consent for “making out” — especially if the woman does not resist the latter? Is an allegation of sexual assault, later made, justifiable in these cases? I do not know the answer.
It is in these ambiguous situations that allegations of sexual assault can damage the accused’s life. An answer ought to be available, perhaps from women only. Sadly, what I have seen is women (and some men) mocking men who say they are at a loss about how to interact with women given the rapid (and justified) change in our thinking about the meaning of sexual misconduct. Perhaps we have to realise that patriarchy has been ingrained so deeply in our societies, that even feminist men may have doubts about whether this or that particular conduct constitutes sexual harassment — because try as they might, they have no frame of reference apart from the one created by patriarchal views of sex. In my view, we ought to address these concerns rather than deride those who express them.
There is also the question of whether behaviour believed to be acceptable in a previous era — even by those who believed in gender equality — is to be reclassified as sexual misconduct today. The examples of “darling” and “sexy” come handy here. If a man said these to a woman in another era, should he be accused of sexual harassment in 2018?
Lastly, should the perpetrator face social ostracism or penalty in adulthood for acts he committed while a minor (especially, someone who is in his preteens or lower teens), given that he may not have repeated them as an adult?
Other than this, I would hope that accusations through anonymous accounts be verified as thoroughly as possible by those who share these accusations on social media. Not doing so, or accepting all accusations with an air of certainty without even marginal doubt, is a descent into tribalism, not an ascent into a more just society.
