Welcome the cleansing act

Contrary to popular perception, the #MeToo movement didn’t start with American actress Alyssa Milano. Tarana Burke had coined the phrase back in 2006 when she created the non-profit ‘Just Be Inc.’ to help young coloured women.

The phrase “Me too” was tweeted by Milano around noon on October 15, 2017, and tweeted more than 500,000 times in the next 24 hours. On Facebook, the hashtag was used by more than 4.7 million people in 12 million posts during the first 24 hours.

India is contributing its bit in the #MeToo movement with recognition being given to Tanushree Dutta. Similar allegations were made by upcoming singer Alisha Chinai against film music director Anu Malik back in 1996. The two then seemed to have reconciled and went on to work together. Besides others in the film industry, Anu Malik is facing fresh allegations from a new set of alleged victims. 

The #MeToo movement in the US appears to have a dual mandate. The first job is to help survivors, to try to facilitate opportunities for healing and for honesty. The second daunting task is to try to change the norms of social and professional conduct, to ensure that this violence becomes less socially acceptable and commonplace.  

Unfortunately, however, the focus and the force behind the #MeToo movement in India so far appears to have been limited to media-moments rather than real issues. The blame lies less with the accused and the victim, and more with the society.

In most cases, the victim, an adult woman, has come forward alleging misconduct by a man of stature in the profession, one who has wielded some power over her future career. 

In a number of situations, misdemeanors like this could have been consensual in some sense, but would constitute a textbook sexual harassment case of a subordinate, the kind which would get any CEO fired. The road that leads to such relationships is often littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, situation and privilege. 

It will not do to discredit women making allegations, as if they are doing it just for the attention, fame and fortune. Neither is it right to pronounce those assaulted, as guilty until proven innocent.

Victims making the accusations are often in an unenviable position: as someone who come forward publicly with sexual assault allegations against a powerful man, they become famous for something they supposedly never wanted to talk about thus far. 

With increasing time gap between the accusation and the incident, some of the anger and fear fades, and the victim oscillates between the denial of such an experience and her lasting psychological pain.

It’s not just her — while many have focused on what happens to high-profile men after they’re accused, less attention has been paid to the futures of women who have traded their privacy, and in some cases their safety, for the chance to speak openly about what they endured.

Notwithstanding the fact that all women claiming #MeToo may not really be victims, a lot of them are speaking up after living with a feeling of powerlessness, a feeling that official and legally sanctioned avenues serve to discredit and further victimize the survivors. 

While some may not believe or even want the victim to press charges, there are others who simultaneously wish to believe that the accused is in fact guilty. Once accused, there is always the threat that the man would lose his respectability and high social rank.  

The accused are taken for being guilty of using their power against women in some sexually predatory way. Without waiting to look clearly at credible evidence, there is reassessment of decades of male misbehaviour, turning open secrets into exposes and pronouncing the accused as guilty, creating another set of media-moments through Kangaroo courts. 

Since most accused are males, in positions of authority and stature, their spouses and family are expectedly siding with them, despite charges of hypocrisy and double-speak. It would not even be an exaggeration to say that only those who are famous are being called. 

Let us not forget the Clinton-Lewinsky affair — after a now-famous denial — “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” — he admitted to the relationship in 1998. Such revelation that he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky while in office has made Hillary Clinton’s stand on the matter quite discouraging. At least in public, Hillary mostly kept quiet about the allegations. In general, Bill Clinton’s history has put Hillary in a difficult position. She can either call him to account publicly — and possibly leave him — or she can keep silent or defend him, knowing that in doing so, she discounts the experience of women who say he harmed them.

#MeToo as a movement is an opportunity to strike a conversation about sexual violence, assault, gender and power imbalances, which have existed in a feminist and populist context for a very long time. 

There has to be a lot of real soul-searching and thinking about how gender sensitivity, discrimination and sex education works, and how we want interpersonal and work relationships to function with utmost respect and mutual care.

— The writer is a former director, MDI Gurgaon