After rape allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein broke last week, veteran actor Alyssa Milano posted a screenshot on Twitter with the words “If all women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem”. Suffice to say #metoo has since snowballed into a social media sensation with thousands of women around the world sharing it on their profiles — some just the two words, some narrating their stories.
All women were certainly aware of the magnitude of the problem before a hashtag was created. But it is still shocking to see from my own Facebook feed that not one woman has been spared, and each scarred by an experience that’s hers. What #metoo has done effectively is to show everyone that the problem is real, and that harassment is a huge part of our global culture. There are men who are defending themselves with #notallmen as women are challenging it with #justenoughmen. Some are ‘disappointed in women for wallowing in self pity’, while a few others are angry that their bro-codes, locker room banter, and an obscure idea of ‘fun’ is being ousted and challenged.
Well, these men and even some think-alike women could use a few lessons, but that is another matter altogether. Having said that, when the men on social media are genuinely shocked that this happens, and it has happened to women they know, at places they have been at, perpetuated by other men they know/know off, I understand where they’re coming from.
I understand, I really do, for I know the ‘Whisper Network’ to be real. The ‘Whisper Network’ for the uninitiated, is that women send out warnings in whispers. When a woman has been harassed, and when and if she is every ready to, she tells other women the who, where and what to alert them. It’s a means of keeping other women safe.
Why women don’t go public with the information is obvious — victim shaming, mud-slinging, character assassination, and being tagged a lier, attention seeker, crazy, etc are real possibilities. If it’s a powerful man, say like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, it’s difficult to garner solidarity and make the world believe your experience. Needless to say, advice follows, and so do questions like “But what was she wearing?”
So women tell other women. Beware of him, don’t go to that place, don’t get friendly with him, don’t walk that street alone, avoid so and so person/place goes the advice. That is the whisper network, a secret sisterhood of-sorts that’s looking out for others. And this is why it is not at all surprising that when a powerful, privileged man is accused of sexual harassment, the women already know, and the men may not.
What can the whisper network do? Keep women safe of course. But it too can grow into something bigger. In Chennai, a bunch of women began talking about being drugged at a bar in the city. Except for one German national, none of the women were willing to talk about it openly. But as words don’t stay within walls, people started hearing, stopped going to the pub with their friends, and eventually the place shut down for ‘other’ reasons. No one was pulled up, no was was taken to court, but an unsafe place was shut down, thanks to the whisper network.
After The New York Times broke the Weinstein story, closer home, it took one blogger to call out sexism at Pune’s popular High Spirits bar and harassment at the hands of its owner Khodu Irani, to have scores of similar stories pouring in. The Whisper Network is mighty important as it creates a secret safety net of sorts, but it takes one person ready to tell the world her story to serve justice.
We need more #metoo campaigns to keep talking about sexual harassment, to keep people from looking away, and also for the world to really see the magnitude of this problem. We need #metoo and #youtoo to make the space for the silent #hertoo to speak about what happened to her. When we have this, we will be ready for a more potent avatar of the whisper network — the scream network that will be about both safety from and slaying the villains.
(The writer is a city-based activist, in-your-face feminist and a media glutton)