#MeToo: Challenging boundaries between online and offline

In the wake of the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault against American film producer Harvey Weinstein, millions of posts tagged #MeToo have been shared by women across the globe, describing the sexual harassment and assault they have faced. The adoption of social media as a platform for feminist activism and social justice has allowed #MeToo to travel outside the United States, and become a transnational protest and solidarity movement. In India, in addition to the thousands of women using the #MeToo hashtag, the campaign has also led to the creation of a list of academics accused of sexual harassment and assault. The crowdsourced list, posted by Raya Sarkar on her Facebook timeline on October 24, names the accused and their institutional affiliations, without disclosing the details of the accusations or identities of those who have made the accusations. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Sarkar, a 24-year-old law student, states that the list was compiled on the basis of first-person accounts and survivors who had messaged her screenshots of chats, emails, messages and call recordings in order to corroborate their testimonies.

Sarkar’s list has prompted widely polarised responses. The list has been shared over a thousand times on Facebook and Twitter, and has met with both widespread support as well as anger, surprise and disbelief. Sarkar states in her interview with BuzzFeed, “The list is primarily for students to be wary of their professors because in my opinion, knowing how college administrations function, harassers will continue to hold their positions of power.”

However, questions have been raised about the anonymity of the list, its credibility and the potential for the damage that it holds. A group of Indian writers, activists and academics have published a statement on Kafila, urging the withdrawal of the list and a recourse to due process.

However, in assessing the list, it is necessary to recognise that it has enabled an understanding of sexual violence as entrenched even within presumably progressive spaces, such as those of universities.

The list has also enabled the critique of institutional mechanisms or due processes for addressing sexual harassment and assault at workplaces and universities. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 mandates that workplaces with more than 10 employees, whether in the public or private sectors, set up Internal Complaints Committee to address all complaints of sexual harassment.

Following the publishing of Sarkar’s list, a number of survivors of sexual assault and harassment came forward with stories of their experiences with committees against sexual harassment, especially the difficulties involved in lodging a complaint amidst efforts to silence survivors.

These stories have been shared on multiple platforms. A Facebook post comprising a dialogue with a professor from Delhi University regarding the functioning of committees against sexual harassment is one such instance. The widely shared post includes a discussion on how such committees are constituted, how disputes are resolved, and the limitations of these committees. A few lawyers have also come forward, offering to provide financial and legal assistance to survivors, who have not been able to access institutional mechanisms.

The above instances raise the question of whether the #MeToo campaign and Sarkar’s list have also opened up new possibilities of activism and working towards social justice. Unarguably, using social media platforms owned by private corporations comes with its challenges. Sarkar was briefly banned from Facebook after she published the list of sexual harassers. It is evident that unlike traditional spaces of publishing, social media has allowed the conversation around sexual violence to evolve in ways that are dynamic and wide-ranging. The #MeToo campaign, by uncovering the scale of sexual violence, has allowed the conversation to shift from stigma and shame to empathy and solidarity. Sarkar’s list has enabled dialogue between students and professors, survivors and non-survivors, and between different feminist and activist groups, challenging authoritative and monologic understandings of institutional mechanisms. The stories of students who have faced sexual harassment and violence at the hands of teachers and mentors have challenged assumptions of sexual violence being committed only by unknown, working-class men who occupy dark, unlit streets. Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi students have come forward to highlight how they are particularly disadvantaged.

How do we ethically respond to these narratives of sexual violence that social media has brought forward? I believe the first step is in challenging any rigid boundaries between online and offline spaces. Only then can we work towards making institutional mechanisms answerable to those who have used social media as a platform for speaking out against the violence they have faced. As online and offline increasingly intersect in how we live our lives, it is essential that our ideas of justice too reflect these intersections.

The author is a PhD scholar at Ohio State University