I am sure many of you must have guessed what I’m talking about. For those who don’t, this article is about an ‘aunty’ saying some very very bad (and shameful and disgusting) things about women in general. I do not want to go into details, because that would be counterproductive. A lot has already been covered. I am here to give you yet another perspective (for every perspective counts).
There is a very fine line between ‘someone who perpetrates an untoward system’ and ‘the system’. But there IS a difference. Someone who perpetrates the system is also sometimes its victim. That’s how the system flourishes. Making its victims its perpetrators and then voila: it continues to go on.
But do we need to become a MOB, and pointedly strike out that ‘victim’ and publicly shame her?
Or we need to sit with her, calmly… when she is not hyperactive (because she is being publicly attacked)… and point out where she might be wrong?
The struggle of feminists is against patriarchy. Not those who are victims of the same. (I preclude rapists and molesters from the category of victims. They are not victims of patriarchy. Patriarchy helps them though. They are only ‘products’ of patriarchy).
So, a collective of feminists should not convert itself into a MOB and give rise to a new cult. Feminism is not a cult. It is an ongoing movement. Every feminist needs to understand that if there were NO people like the aunty, there won’t be any need for feminism. We have people like her, that is why we need the ‘movement’ of feminism. Feminism should aim for its OWN end, when it is not needed.
NO. I do not stand with the aunty. What she (did) said was untoward. Just as what Hester Prynne did in “The Scarlet Letter” in the eyes of the New England puritan inhabitants. (Yes, I am taking a novel as reference, but when has fiction not represented the reality?) She conceived a daughter from an affair in a time when safe abortion was unknown (1642-49).
We are all from a generation of liberals (not as liberals as Neo-liberals, but that is a different point altogether) who feel the need to assert ourselves by wearing clothes that are in fashion, which is an industry and we are totally free. Because we have chosen something we wear, from the choices given to us, by a market which wants to exploit us. So we can stand up for ourselves and say anything we want. This is all very well.
But history has always been cruel to ‘fashion’, today’s conservative is tomorrow’s liberal. Our great great great grand children may look back at the fashion magazines of today and ‘retch’. In that age, ‘covering your body’ might turn out to be the all consuming ‘liberal’ idea. We can never know. History will always surprise us. My point being: nothing is absolute. Self assertion using fashion is a kind of myth. In simpler words: “our clothes do not define us.” And hence WE CANNOT publicly shame anyone for having unusual ideas, even if they express them in vulgar words like ‘rape’.
Now, if we are absolutely sure that we are right, we should not really feel the need to use the method of public shaming. Yes, I do believe that rape is not a result of short clothes. Men have known to rape women in burqa. But I would not publicly shame an aunty, who belongs to that age where patriarchy had stronger hold on us. I would go to her, maybe meet her over tea, listen to her shameful words calmly, and give her documented data. That: see, look at these figures. Look at these cases of rapes. You can clearly see a woman’s clothes have nothing to do with crimes against women.
(Do you think she goes through the data like we all do? Do you think WE HAVE gone through that data ourselves? Or our own beliefs are formed by sentimental quotes on feminism fermenting in the images of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter?)
And I am sure she would listen to my kindness. Somewhere she might also have been ashamed of what she did. But the girls (mob) only provoked her. They did not give her a chance to calmly reflect upon her words. It is a bad instance of feminism in practice. She was trying to protect women from ‘rape’ in her own way. Just that in her misguided opinion, she felt that wearing short clothes lead to rape, a common perception of people of her age.
Having said all this, I have to admit, I am writing it all from a distant room. God knows what I would have done if I were a part of the mob. I am nowhere judging the girls of the mob. I am just against the mob-mentality.