The #MeToo movement started in Hollywood when two The New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey wrote a story explaining the three decades of Weinstein’s atrocities against women in the film industry in the form of rapes, sexual harassment, misbehavior and much, much more. Weinstein had to rape for and harass women for thirty-fucking-years to get caught. It took 80+ allegations for the media to finally stop calling women “attention-seekers”, “out to tarnish the man’s reputation” and to turn the story around and to nebulously call men out for their abhorrent acts of reducing women to mere bodies. The movement gained velocity and many women, all over the world, came out to voice their stories, to be heard, to finally get this big brick made of ignored sleazy touches, dismissed drunken abusive calls, being trussed in a room and raped and dumped, off. Ironically (or let’s be honest, not so ironically because, in this penis-ruled world, everything becomes about the men), this worldwide effect of #MeToo is often called “Weintein effect”.
It took a year for this movement to travel 13,595 kilometers even in the age of nanosecond internet services. But, of course, when it comes to the struggles of women, everything becomes rather slow in the chaos of protecting men from proven allegations and turning the blame to the woman. Oh yes, the witch-hunting of women has continued and is still very alive, except, now it’s insidious. Now, the women who dare to voice their opinions, their problems, their experiences are labeled as “troublemakers” and are ostracized. In India, the fire of #MeToo movement first ignited in 2017 in the academia circle when Raya Savarkar and some DBA feminists shared LoSha publically. It went on to oust more than 72 influential, powerful, incumbent men. The personal accounts of the victims involved rape, molestations, harassment, etc. I wasn’t shocked. Why? 106 women are raped in India every fucking day. 106 women. Raped. In India. Every. Day. Slowly, the news becomes “regular Monday”. Gradually, as a woman, I have accepted that one day I could be raped, too; that I’d be somewhere at the wrong time and there’d be men around me; they’ll stare at me the way every man stares at me on metro, on roads, in the malls, in the movie theatre (even though it is dark, what the fuck are you staring, dude? Do you have night vision in your eyes?), in buses, in temples, in the market, at home; they’ll stare at my breasts, they’ll stare at my thighs, they’ll ogle and leer at my body; and then they’ll strike me just like lightning strikes trees and turns it into ash. I’ll become a statistic. Regular Monday.
Don’t forget, this doesn’t shock me. What shocked me was Utsav Chakraborty being revealed as a sexual predator. What shocked me was AIB knew (after all, they heard “whispers” of it for many years) that he is a sexual predator and continued to work with him. What shocked me was their redundant, asinine apology which was titled as “statement”. They admitted that whatever they could say are just excuses, and of course it was, because it has been made clear through these rolling “allegations”* that AIB was too busy using feminism as a token to create, promote and propagate their videos and to portray themselves as “woke feminists”, to actually work and solve a sexual harassment case in their own circle. The cherry on the cake? The very co-founder of AIB, the very co-king of “woke male feminists” circle, our beloved “Khamba” (Gursimran Khamba) has been alleged to have harassed women for years in the past. His apology? Let’s not even talk about it.
The sacred “brotherhood” of men in such a crisis when the truth about them is finally revealed and their asses are on immutable, forever-burning fire is obnoxious. To my great disappointment, some women join them, too. The comments on Khamba’s “apology” (which was more of a defense with his “categorical” refusal to accept that he is an abuser) lamented over his image has been shattered by attention seeking, lying, deceitful women. Clearly, the women are at fault here. How dare they speak against the kings of the comedy circle?
In AIB’s second “apology”, they disguise their self-victimization under the garb of apology. Yes, I call it self-victimization when instead of showing public disdain for Tanmay Bhatt’s role in the sexual harassment case and Khamba being an abuser, you talk about how they’ll be on a “temporary leave” and lament over what will happen to AIB now. While the victims suffer for their whole lives, Bhatt and Khamba take the privileged road (the road most traveled by men) to take an “extended, temporary leave until further notice.” It enables them to disappear while the “ruckus” is at its peak, and return blithely when things are muffled to make their “bros” laugh.
As an AIB fan, I did try to find excuses for them. But, there are none. When you have used feminism tokenistically since 2012, when you have been trying to educate the masses about it, when you make as nuanced a video as “Harassment Through the Ages”, when you are constantly surrounded with friends like Harnidh Kaur, Rega Jha, Srishti Dixit, Mallika Dua, etc. and you write about toxic masculinity all the time, we know that you have the cognizance. You have no reason, no excuse to save yourself.
No. This #MeToo movement is not neoteric. Tanushree Dutta came out with her story about Nana Patekar in 2008. These stories have always existed, women have faced “harassment through the ages”. Constantly, relentlessly. Even now, she’s out there shouting at the top of her lungs and how many come out to support her in an industry which has lakhs of people in it? 10, 20? Her bravery was rewarded with dubiousness from masses, peremptory comments of entitled men. Fact is, the struggles of women do not amount even to a picayune in a world which revolves around the penises of men unless every woman comes together and break the Penis System.
*I personally do not like to call the experiences of the victims which they courageously shared publically as ‘allegations’, because I believe them to be true. I know how difficult it is to come out and talk about these horrifying, traumatic experiences on the risk of getting publically ridiculed in a myriad of forms.