CHENNAI: About a year and a half ago, I wrote in this space about a Colombian helpline called Línea Calma that was set up to provide support for men who want to dismantle the toxic masculinity within them that makes them violent toward women. It addresses the needs of those who are self-aware enough to reach out and to choose growth over destructive behaviour.
The helpline was established by Henry Murrain, a civil servant in Bogota, who subsequently created Hombres al Cuidado, a school that helps men proactively unlearn negative concepts about childcare, domestic work and interpersonal relationships. In that column, I speculated on what a similar helpline in an Indian context could be like.
I pointed out that while equality-oriented organisations don’t exist, misogynistic ones that call themselves men’s rights activists do, and provide helplines too. I did not name any organisations that do this, yet members of the biggest one found my column anyway and took umbrage to it. I received several messages and replies, all of which I summarily ignored.
What was clear to me was that the existence of work like Línea Calma’s threatened them, probably more so than the existence of feminist women. They must have been angry with me for highlighting how feminist change spearheaded by other men is happening elsewhere in the world, in another very patriarchal culture. It is the evolving, healing men they’re truly disturbed by, and I wonder if they know this. What anti-feminists lack in self-awareness they do make up for in self-importance.
They-who-will-still-not-benamed recently held a ceremony at a park in Bengaluru during which they worshipped images of Twitter CEO Elon Musk and chanted slogans like “Feminist Destroyer Namaha”, in praise of his work in making the social media platform less civil-natured, by no longer shadow-banning or blocking users like them. Some of their own members sit around laughing as they do this, in videos they themselves shared online.
This is a publicity-craving exercise, one that is deliberately absurd so as to attract attention, which of course it did (and yes, I’m giving it some now too). Many of us will laugh at it. But there are people out there who feel somewhere on the spectrum between vindicated about seeing their private thoughts on public display, and radicalised into modern misogyny. They’re who the spectacle was for.
Those who put on the spectacle may not have other forms of self-awareness, but here, they knew what they were doing. I’m thinking about the laughter in that video, what it gives away. I’m thinking about how the sound of women’s laughter itself is such a trigger to those who believe women should keep their mouths closed. And not so tangentially, I’m thinking about that Margaret Atwood quote: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.
Women are afraid that men will kill them”. Misogynists who co-opt women’s legitimate, statistically proven fears may be absurd. But they are also dangerous, no less so in practice or in influence than those who are ostentatious and openly assured in their bigotry. They may’ve made public spectacles of themselves; privately, what they no doubt do is far from funny.
Sharanya Manivannan
@she_of_the_sea
The columnist is a writer and illustrator