When authority fears a society, history shows that it often turns its violence towards women. Patriarchy teaches communities to tie their honour to women’s bodies, and patriarchal power exploits this belief to terrorise the collective. Yet the deepest wounds are borne by women themselves. With technology, this violence has become more immediate, accessible, and calculated. In Fieldwork as a Sex Object, Meena Kandasamy confronts the brutal realities of sexist cyber abuse and online harassment, revealing how they invade a woman’s psyche by policing her body, her sexual agency, and even her freedom, until fear itself becomes a condition of existence.
Kandasamy builds the novel around Amrita Chaturvedi, or Amy, a committed communist whose deepfake sex video is made to go viral. Conscious of her upper-caste and upper-class privilege, Amy nevertheless speaks against the government and its policies. The state responds in a familiar way where her body becomes the site of punishment. The fabricated video hides the man’s face while exposing hers, underlining a patriarchal truth that when men and women are implicated together, public shame almost always settles completely on the woman. The novel’s politics is direct, but its real power lies in its portrayal of Amy’s psychological collapse, helplessness, and subdued rage as she realises that her body has been turned into a battlefield by the people in power.
While the novel is anchored in the violence of a deepfake video, it also examines society’s unease with female sexuality. Women who express their desires openly are branded with slurs, while their autonomy is dismissed as a product of ‘Western influence’. Through Amy’s mother, Kandasamy captures this moral policing by writing “Your attention-seeking, your Western individualism, it is because I was not emotionally available for you. In order to punish me for it, you have chosen to become super sexual.” For Amy’s family, the question is not what was done to her, but what she has supposedly done. This reversal of blame exposes the logic of patriarchy, where a woman’s freedom is treated as a threat and her sexuality as a transgression.
Kandasamy also celebrates the strength of women’s friendship through Amy and Nimmi. Amy, a Brahmin, and Nimmi, a Dalit, begin as ideological opponents, yet their bond grows through disagreement, empathy, and mutual respect. Amy’s remorse when she unknowingly makes Nimmi feel the weight of her upper-caste privilege reflects Kandasamy’s belief that acknowledging difference is the first step towards genuine solidarity. Their friendship suggests that shared resistance can transcend inherited hierarchies without denying their existence.
Both Kandasamy and Amy are deeply critical of an India governed by the language of tradition and morality... The novel exposes the complacency of privileged Indians
The novel is equally critical of a media eager to sensationalise a woman who challenges the government while neglecting more urgent public concerns. As Kandasamy writes, “Nimmi breaks the bad news: traditional media—TV, weeklies, glossies, tabloids—they are also milking this (the deepfake video) mercilessly.” The observation extends beyond media ethics to expose how patriarchy has adapted to the digital age. Through technology, it enters the most intimate corners of a woman’s life, turning her privacy into spectacle and using public humiliation to discipline the liberal and dissenting voices to keep power alive.
Kandasamy sharply exposes how power humiliates and disciplines women. As Amy contemplates a radical response to those behind her deepfake pornographic video, she also realises the futility of resisting oppression with its own methods. Echoing Audre Lorde, Kandasamy reminds us that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Violence, the novel suggests, cannot dismantle violence. The novel also shows how patriarchy weaponises a woman’s digital past. Through Amy, Kandasamy writes, “A detailed list is floating around on the internet tabulating the chronology of my lovers, how long the fling lasted, which of them were married.” Her private life is transformed into a public instrument of shame. Yet Kandasamy counters this cruelty with irony. Amy’s remark “When I first see the list, I laugh. Finally, Microsoft Excel has been put to good use” becomes a silent act of defiance, proving that humour can outlive humiliation.
Both Kandasamy and Amy are deeply critical of an India governed by the language of tradition and morality. At the same time, they challenge a Western gaze that often treats fascism as an exclusively European phenomenon while overlooking its rise elsewhere. The novel exposes the complacency of privileged Indians who fail to recognise the violence growing before their eyes. Amy’s frustration is captured in Kandasamy’s sharp observation by writing, “What I hate most is how closely he guards the domain of fascism, like it is something that can only happen to white people.
Somehow, some suffering is exquisitely, pristinely exclusive.” The novel argues that authoritarianism is neither geographically confined nor culturally exclusive; it must be confronted wherever it takes root.
Fieldwork as a Sex Object is a bold and uncompromising novel that confronts sexism and cyber abuse with objectivity and clarity. With precision and wit, Meena Kandasamy crafts a narrative that cuts deep, exposing the violence of patriarchal power and the machinery that sustains it. Long after the novel ends, it leaves readers with a profound understanding of the pain, humiliation, and resilience of a woman whose very existence is made a site of political control.