Casual Misogyny

I was told by a new reader of my blog that my latest post was the one about the ways in which shame and shaming work in our culture. 

I winced. Wasn't that was nearly 2 years ago? To be really precise it was about 35 months ago.

What on earth! Did I not experience anything or watch anything that made me feel that urgent tug to write and publish in more than a year and a half! 

Well, no. I did. Many. Not for this forum though.

This space helps me in two ways: I get to articulate some new ideas or delve deeper into some older ones. And I get to share thoughts on which I would love feedback from readers who actually read my blog. So, here we go: A new one that pushes the envelope a little bit from the last one from 2023!

A version of the anger-inducing experiences I shared in August 2023 happened early last week. 

There I was-- happily driving to work early in the morning. Not much traffic. Good old Mohammed Rafi crooning from the sparkly new audio system fitted into my ageing automobile. And all those who are Rafi fans will know that he's not in the least speed-inducing or even the opposite-- sleep-inducing. Mostly, he is either gently coaxing a sweetheart into some minor indiscretion or mourning unrequited love. And all of this in a world before MTV and Channel V made words like yo, hip, and sexy casual among young people. And I was at that moment listening to one from that period when even the most radical feminist will have hummed "Mang ke saath tumhara..." with a very young Asha Bhonsale. All of which means that I am not even truly distracted by the lyrics or the familiar tune and music. It is helping me feel happy that I am driving to work early in the morning on a day that will turn drainingly humid soon.

I am probably at 25 Kmph (because I am still on the second gear). I know full well that unpredictable appearances can be made by any of the following on the road ahead:

• A young person dashing across to catch the attention of an e-rickshaw parked on the other side
• A middle-aged woman finding a gap in the road-divider to throw a polythene bag of trash on the dried-up riverbed which will soon turn into another landfill near my locality
• Cattle that are finding their way to their morning feed in these 'pastures'
• A pesky biker who wants to take advantage of the narrow gap between the two lanes of three or four wheelers to get ahead

One specimen from the last item in the list above starts moving alarmingly close to my car. I honk to let him know that I exist. Yes, sometimes, you need to scream or let your tool scream, when you are a woman driver on the roads. 

Ah! Wrong move. The biker is irritated as hell that a woman dared to honk at him. He stops in the middle lane of a road that is getting increasingly busy. And starts yelling and gesticulating at me. I roll down the window.

Second wrong move: I actually pushed that window down and said "sorry"! So that he will go away. (Will I never learn!!!)

His reaction: "Tujhe dikhta nahin hai kya?" Can't you see, you!

Now here comes the moment that makes me cringe when I recall the incident-- I go: "Bhaiya, maine horn bhi bajaya tha". Brother, I had honked to warn you that you are veering too close.

His verbal abuse begins: "You think your sorry will have helped if I had had an accident. Blah, blah, blah".

All of which I blanked out by sliding the window up and driving on.

One big change from two years ago-- other drivers just told him to stop with all of that and get going.

The second big change from that last time-- I gave a damn to that incident.

Until I walked into work and had another annoying experience within half an hour of that. This one is typical of my city. It is a version of this: in a public space and that too a work space, a co-worker can let another co-worker know that because she is a woman he can make unprofessional, subtly loaded remarks that seem like they are doing you a favour because you are from a different gender to which they have declared their attraction. All of this while they might actually be doing, or not-doing in this specific instance, a minor part of the work they ideally should be doing as part of their job profile on any given day at work. 

How do you deal with that? 

Being someone that knows my legal rights, I know that this sort of thing, if it becomes a recurring thing, is something I will have advised (and actually have, multiple times, as part of my job) to report, if it makes them uncomfortable, to institutional mechanisms of grievance redressal.

Having been someone who helped in some of those redressal mechanisms, I know how truly heart-wrenching many of those meetings can be-- for all concerned. And sometimes a wasted exercise too!

Because, you see, much of legal defence works with finding a flaw in the law. And in many such redressal meetings the blurry line between my legal rights and the social perception of my rights weakens my case; especially because the law can typically be enforced only when a case is proven with evidence.

Remember all those unsolved cases that all of us followed through 24 hour new channels when we weren't drowning in work and could actually watch TV? And in moments of puzzlement while skimming through the morning papers wondered-- well if someone was harrased or abused or grievously injured or died, how come they never managed to find out who did it and how?

Here's how: The same incident looks radically different from different perspectives -- of that of the victim; of the suffering parties; of the alleged vicitimiser; of the onlooker; of the casual passerby; of the concerned and not-really concerned person who hears a report of the event; of the prosecutor, and of the defender.

Lets' look at a few perspectives in the two instances share above:

The perspective of the staid-looking, middle-aged biker: Here's a younger woman driving to work in a car (wearing sunshades) when he is diffidently steering his way through narrow gaps, peering out of his spectacles. A travesty. Shouldn't he be driving to work in a car? And shouldn't she be sweating in a kitchen, packing her family's many lunchboxes at about 8.15 AM?

For my co-worker, the situation is somewhat like this: Isn't it too early for this woman to come over to remind me that I am not doing the work I should be doing? I know why I am not doing it and I can't tell her that. I feel bad already and she's making me feel worse. Won't I feel better by just making her feel good about herself? By suggesting subtly and in a non-threatening (for me) way that you look too well-prepared for the day ahead for me to spoil your mood with dry professionalism so, here, I will throw a little light-hearted pleasantry at you. I know you will not mind it because you know that I am not flirting with you. Come on, woman! Every man that talks to you pleasantly is not getting fresh. Get a life!  

Oh! None of them are thinking this consciously! In that very moment they are probably not even thinking of gender and sexuality.

Gender is a social construct. And socialisation begins when you are in the womb. At least in our culture-- remember the forever skewed sex-ratio, to begin with? And let's not go into all the related horrors in that realm. 

These people -- most of them middle-aged, educated, gentlemen are performing their gender. And I bet they truly believe that my culturally bestowed rights are to be loved, cared for and protected by the men in my life -- husband/ father/ brother(s). And they assume that all or at one of them are part of my life to be the knight in shining armour. Given my gender and the perceptions of it in my culture they have done nothing wrong. Au contraire. Therefore, they are not bad men. They have not broken any legal or even social rules that govern gendered interactions in our culture.

I agree that the biker was rude. But of course, he was! Everyone concerned for my health and happiness -- ranging from family to friends to colleagues and my students, of all genders and sexual identities -- tried to kindly explain to me in August 2023 that I should have noted that angry and abusive biker's nameplate number and/ or called the PCR van. Some of the above also let me know that I had hurt his ego by being gentle and civil with my unnecessary apology in the face of his boorish behaviour. And as is evident I didn't learn anything from their well-meaning advice. Not because I didn't appreciate their concern or wanted to reject their well-meaning suggestions. It's because I have gained that Pyrrhic victory of becoming a person who will be polite and non-confrontational if the matter can be quickly resolved that way. 

In the larger scheme of thinks that moment with the biker doesn't truly matter.

Those discomfiting moments with co-workers do matter. And I do nothing about it.

Why?

Because.

I truly understood, very recently, why and how the millenials use that word. Because of too many minor reasons that seem like non-reasons but become this big reason that sits so heavy on the chest that the lips and hyoid bone just about let out a sigh that sounds like because.

And that is how casual misogyny gets perpetuated. 

By everyone -- by me, by you, by all those who pat the back of the down-in-the mouth sufferer and utter that wonderfully light-hearted dakkhani phrase "dil pe mat le yaar" (don't take it to heart, dude) or some local variant of it, by those who don't see why many of those moments are misogynistic or sexist, by many who perceive them as flattering, and by the multitudes who really don't get why and how expressions of gender and sexuality should not find any space at all in any professional situation.

Because, you see, if we are to work on reducing the rampant misogyny in real and virtual spaces we need to start by acknowleding that casual misogyny is an actual social phenomenon. And that it should not and need not be tolerated by anyone. 

Typically, we react with rolling our eyes, or sigh, or shut down the few women who articulate -- through words or gestures -- the variants of: It's not my job to be pleasant to you at this moment out here; I don't see why I should keep smiling all the time; I will frown at the helpful stranger who will give directions to the man in the passenger/ backseat of my car and not to me the driver; I get super-pissed at the waiter who assumes the guy in the group will pick up the tab each time; and many more such.

Instead of letting it slide, if all of us took a moment to ask ourselves whether we are blurring the lines between the personal and the professional in our behaviour when we participate in gendered behaviour in our workspaces or curb our urge to let gendered behaviour pass by as an inconsequential occurence when we witness it or are subejcted to in public spaces we will have taken some baby steps to counter the casual perpetuation of misogyny.