In a free and frank gender debate,
men must be allowed to air their views – no matter how offensive we find them
First off, a confession. I find myself
increasingly discomfited by the newly-minted feminist narrative in which a
woman is always considered to be right and the man is always seen as being
wrong. In which a woman’s word is regarded as being more reliable than a man’s,
simply because she is a woman. In which a man is assumed to be guilty until he
is proved innocent, turning the principles of natural justice on their head, if
a woman were to level a rape or dowry charge against him. And in which men and
women are depicted as antagonistic entities, engaged in pitched battles across
the gender divide.
It really doesn’t have to be like that.
Women’s rights are not just a feminist issue. They are a humanist issue. And we
do the feminist cause a disservice when we try and shut men out of the
discourse, or treat them as enemies of the movement. This is the good fight
which all right-thinking human beings must fight; not just those with an extra
X chromosome.
Because of our visceral reaction to such
events as the Delhi gang rape last December, the gang rape of a
photo-journalist in Mumbai, and more recently, the allegations of sexual
assault leveled against Tarun Tejpal, we are finally talking about a woman’s
right to a safe environment, at home, at the office, and on the streets. But
because our rage and anger is so overwhelming, the pitch of the debate has been
raised to such shrill levels that we are in danger of drowning out good sense.
The first sign of this is our absolute
refusal to listen to what men are trying to say, if it doesn’t fit in with our
narrative of woman=victim and man=predator. While there is no disputing that
women are more at risk when it comes to sexual violence or harassment, we
cannot dismiss out of hand the notion that some men may be victims too. Cases
of the dowry and rape laws being misused may be rare, but they do exist. And we
ignore them at our peril.
But what is also worrying is the new
fashion of shouting down men who express opinions that we regard as sexist. Take
Farooq Abdullah, for instance, who confessed that he was now scared of talking
to women for fear of what would happen (“I don’t even want to keep a woman
secretary. God forbid, there is a complaint against me and I end up in jail”). Or
Naresh Aggarwal, who said that men would no longer hire women as personal
assistants for fear of being accused of sexual harassment.
Whatever we may think about the mind-set
that generated such sentiments, there is no denying that these sentiments do
exist. These two men were just brave/foolish/foolhardy (take your pick) to say
in public which many men were feeling (and expressing) in private. But given
the viciousness with which they were greeted, I wouldn’t be surprised if men
now run scared of even speaking out on gender issues, for fear of being shouted
down, sneered at, abused, or dismissed as chauvinistic Neanderthals.
And, if you ask me, that is a real shame.
If we want to change people’s minds on
issues such as women’s empowerment, sexual harassment, or even sexual assault,
then it is important to engage with them in a meaningful way which facilitates
dialogue and a free and frank exchange of ideas. Men may well have views that
we regard as sexist but just screaming ‘pigs’ at them will not make them
rethink their attitudes. It will just make them disengage from the debate and
keep their views to themselves in the future. And those views will never
change.
It is simply self-defeating to create an
environment in which no man can express his true opinions on gender – however
sexist we may find them – without being torn to bits by a lynch mob motivated
by political correctness. Jumping down the throats of people who say things we
don’t like will not result in their views being asphyxiated out of existence.
These attitudes will continue to flourish in the dark, all the more potent for
being unspoken and hence unchallenged.
Also, I can’t help but feel that it is
time that we injected some shades of grey into a discourse that has become too
black and white to allow for a nuanced approach. The feminist movement will
only benefit from acknowledging that all women don’t fit into one easy category
of ‘downtrodden victim’ who must be protected at all costs. Women are human
beings, and as such they have the same strengths and weaknesses, the same
virtues and flaws as men. Some women are truthful; some are not. Some women are
weak; some are strong. Some women are victims; some are oppressors.
To lump them all into a one-size-fits-all
category smacks of intellectual laziness and a complete misunderstanding of how
the real world operates. This kind of thinking doesn’t empower women; it
belittles them by reducing them to easy stereotypes. True equality exists in
having the same standards applied to women as they would to men, without
conceding any special privilege or concession simply because they are women.
And it also means conceding the point
that men have a right to their own views on the gender debate currently raging
in the country – never mind how strongly we disagree with him. Feminists cannot
become the Thought Police, no matter how grave the provocation.
