Actor Dhyan Sreenivasan's movie Udal released recently, and the actor did a series of interviews to promote the film, as actors do. A bunch of film journalists interviewed him, and it looks tiring for sure to answer question after question. But you know what's more tiring? Watching a man hold forth on how sexual frustration is the root cause of sexual violence, like his life's work is in the subject. We doubt whether Dhyan has even opened a book about sexual violence — or even a Wikipedia page.
Let's recap: During one of the many film promotion interviews that Dhyan gave last week, he was asked quite an unnecessary question by an anchor from Filmibeat Malayalam: "Enikku oru katta ‘theppu' kittiyiyindu," which translates to 'I have been dumped badly'. 'Theppu' is a term used largely by men to derogate women who choose other men over them, or ‘friendzone’ them, or dump them for reasons the said men consider superficial. Dhyan's very macho response to the question was to assert he's a Thepp-er, not a Thepp-ed. "I have dumped many women," Dhyan said, and followed it up with a comment really no one asked for.
"If there was MeToo earlier, I would have been caught in it and no one would have been able to see me for 14, 15 years," a laughing Dhyan said. He was of course referring to the movement where survivors of sexual violence spoke up about their experiences on social media platforms. Either Dhyan thinks it's funny that women would speak about their experiences of violence, forcing a very small number of men to not be publicly visible following the allegations; or…ok, we don't know what the other reason could be. "MeToo came only now, right. My MeToo was 10-12 years ago," he said. Still laughing, yes.
This statement caused some anger on social media, and journalist Anupriya Raj of The Cue decided to question Dhyan about it in an interview on May 19. Dhyan decided to take what could have been an opportunity to apologise for a distasteful joke, or clarify his comments, and make it worse.
To be fair, he started out well enough. "It was basically a substandard question,” Dhyan told Anupriya, "I don’t understand why this question was asked to me. So I said I have dumped many people. If I had said many have ditched me, then the next question might have been, 'who all ditched you?' So I said I have ditched many people. I made this MeToo statement in this context. And I smiled while saying that. It was not a smile to offend anyone or insult survivors, I just smiled recalling my own life. I am extremely sorry for it, I didn’t mean it that way."
"The things I did were around a decade ago, during my adolescence. And I realised two or three such things were wrong — I had realised this much before the MeToo movement came. One main thing I used to do was to crack a lot of sex jokes inside my social circles,” he said.
“I also used to stare at women in such a way that it made them uncomfortable. I did that when I was 18-21 years old. I have gone behind girls and stared at them in Bengaluru. It was definitely harassment,” he confessed.
If he had stopped there, we could have just sent him some Mango Bites for self reflection and moved on. But no, Dhyan decided at this point that he's an expert on #MeToo, women's lived experiences, and the causes of sexual violence — all drawing from his own experiences as a self-confessed stalker.
“All those who were staring at girls in Bengaluru'e Brigade Road once upon a time were Malayalis," he said, and went to what he believes is the root cause of this. "Because everything is suppressed here [in Kerala] and what we did was out of curiosity. We stare at women wearing mini skirts. There is a lot of sexual frustration here," he said.
Talent, right there. In one statement, Dhyan managed to declare that sexual violence is a mere reaction to male 'curiosity' and sexual frustration, and that the real problem is 'supression' in Kerala. We believe 'suppression' refers to conservative social mores.
The rest of the interview is all about Dhyan making broad generalisations about Malayali men of all ages and girls who grow up in big cities. He also embarks on a detailed explanation as to why he cheated a few girls and how they deserved it.
Then he moves on to sex drives. “Adolescent teenage boys have a high sex drive. There is even a word for it. Libido. But women who are aged between 27 and 45 have high sex drive. Maybe that is why extramarital affairs are happening,” he said with a smirk. Who asked? No one, that’s who.
But it isn’t just teenage boys and middle-aged women, there are other demographics too with a high sex drive, according to Dhyan. This includes middle-aged Malayali men and Malayali men above 50 years of age. According to him, most #MeToo allegations in Kerala are against this category of men. Anupriya rightly countered it saying there is no such statistic, but does Dhyan care?
Dhyan also delved into how “the older generation of men” have no respect for women, that they don’t understand friendships with women, that they are used to peeping into women's bathrooms when they were younger, and that many continue with such inappropriate behaviour.
Dhyan tried to present himself as a man throwing a few truth bombs at the interviewer — and we see many people on the internet bought this act. However none of the generalisations he made have any backing in research that scholars have dedicated themselves to over lifetimes. No, Dhyan, sexual frustration doesn’t ‘cause’ harassment — it’s the harasser who causes the harassment, and the society that enables it by brushing it off with ridiculous excuses. A man belonging to a film industry which is seeing a movement against predatory men, where a top woman actor was sexually assaulted allegedly because a top male actor wanted to take revenge on her, should try to think before he speaks — especially if he wants to come across as some kind of ‘woke’ expert on sexual harassment. If you don’t understand things — read, learn from your own colleagues whose movement against sexual violence is older than Hollywood’s #MeToo.
What’s worse is the victim blaming. When the interviewer goes back to why he claimed he has dumped many women and whether that was an anti-women statement, he promptly generalised girls who grew up in cities as ‘not kulastrees’ — not living up to some random ideal set by someone.
“I only cheated women who tried to cheat me,” Dhyan declared. “Not all women in the world are good. There are good and bad ones. I studied and lived in cities like Chennai. Girls there look at a guy’s profile, whether he has money, they won’t love a man without money. The girls there saw my money and background and were with me only for my money. Not all women in the world are ‘kulastrees’,” he said. Kulastree is a term used to describe women who live as per family and societal conditions.
"Also, those that I dumped were neither of ‘high quality’ nor genuine,” he said, like he was describing used car parts. “These are girls who understand a man's weak points, make them emotionally dependent and use them," he added. And then of course, he had to throw out what he thought was appeasement of Malayali women. "You have to note it. None of the girls I am talking about were Malayalis. I studied and grew up in Chennai. Most women I know are from there (Chennai) and from north India and they stayed with me for my money. They were with me only because of my money and because my father was a film actor.” he declared.
Perhaps Dhyan has been in bad relationships, like all of us have at some point or the other — romantic or otherwise. But we wish men would stop generalising all women, and be done with this stereotype of a woman as a ‘gold digger’ already.
We leave this here, mainly for Dhyan.
ഞങ്ങളിതു പണ്ടേ പറഞ്ഞതാ pic.twitter.com/8bwSaZIZwd
— ദ അനോണി മൗസ് (@anony_m_s) May 20, 2022