Over the past few weeks, as many women opposed the #MeToo movement, which scalped a powerful minister in the Union government, and during which another minister made a highly distasteful remark about menstrual blood, I have been reminded of the truism of an old adage that says women could be their own worst enemies.
That truism is being reinforced every evening on India’s soap operas, on which Smriti Irani made her name and from where she carved a pathway to the government at the Centre. But the Union minister seems to have taken the saas-bahu serials she has worked in too seriously and has chosen to be less feminist than the heroines she played in those dramas.
Despite the everyday unrealism of those soap operas, there was an expectation that Irani, a modern educated woman, would be as assertive and committed to women’s rights and female equality as the characters she has played on these shows. So it comes as a shock that Irani could be as misogynistic as many men and, worse, be unable to guard her tongue in public. You would not go to a friend’s house to offer a sanitary napkin soaked in menstrual blood (yuck!), she said. So why should you desecrate a temple with a similar act, the minister queried.
The imagery of that is so gross—such a thought would never occur to any ordinary woman. And, yes, women visiting temples of other bachelor Gods like Lord Hanuman and Lord Ganesha (or even of Goddesses) do not place sanitary pads as offerings. Indeed, they do not enter any temple at all during menstruation and one presumes all women now, given the right by the Supreme Court to enter Sabarimala, will follow the same convention while seeking the blessings of Lord Ayyappa.
But while one can somehow understand Irani’s lack of good sense and her inability to break free of a male-dominated system, given she is no feminist and hails from the unequal world of entertainment, where women are mostly ornamental, the same cannot be said of women journalists who have been railing against other women who have stared down their male tormentors and sexual predators. I am particularly horrified by columnist Tavleen Singh, faced with the story of M J Akbar greeting a young female colleague in his underwear, tweeting, “What kind of woman goes into a hotel room when a man greets her in his underwear?”
That question defies all logic—how would any woman know in what attire any man would greet her? I do not think even Singh would expect something like that of any decent man, let alone an editor with a formidable reputation to safeguard. I was surprised by Singh’s unsympathetic attitude and the attempt at shaming a faultless woman and her inability to understand the pain and humiliation of the women who had been subjected to sexual harassment by powerful men with the ability to destroy their lives and careers.
I had remarked on this kind of misogyny among women during the case of another editor, Tarun Tejpal, who allegedly molested his friend’s daughter. Another senior and reputed woman journalist, Seema Mustafa, said at the time that the girl, coming out of the lift in which she is said to have been manhandled, did not look too disturbed by what happened.
These women, including Irani in a different context, have been called out by other senior women journalists, including Mrinal Pande and Barkha Dutt. It is heartening to note that despite such misogyny among some women, there are enough of us who are not obliged to kowtow to powerful men and let down our own gender.
And contrary to what Singh insists, the #MeToo movement is not a new urban, upper class movement by privileged women on social media. As a journalist from the city, she ought to know the #MeToo movement actually began in the slums of Mumbai years ago when the Shiv Sena—an all-male party until then—first set up its Mahila Aghadi (women’s front) in the wake of the 33 per cent reservation for women in local self governing bodies.
The women were meant to serve a limited purpose—that of standing in for their menfolk as contestants from constituencies reserved for women. But they went beyond that role of docile facilitators set out for them by men. They set up their own version of #MeToo when they discovered that many of their members who worked as domestic help across cities were sexually harassed by male employers. It was primitive naming and shaming—the women would gather outside the homes of these employers and let loose a volley of abuses, detailing their crimes against the women and threatening them with dire consequences, like blackening their faces and parading them in just their underwear. Soon they moved from homes to factories and offices and this kind of public shaming became the norm until all men, including some top-level government officers, learned not to mess with their female staff.
They created a safe environment for women everywhere on the lower rungs of society. And though many men, including their stunned husbands, were upset by their militancy there was not a single woman among them who doubted the exploited women or opposed the movement to bring exploitative men to justice. They have served their gender better than most of us who consider ourselves more educated. They can teach us a thing or two about female solidarity.