‘A man must not flash his genitals at a woman in public, but shouldn’t women also dress modestly to avoid distracting men?’ – If I were to see this comment on social media, I would immediately think that the person who wrote it is a man. I would have no doubt about why it is essential to counter such apologists, and how they are systemically enabled by patriarchy. But what if this is written by a woman? I’d be stuck in my response for a moment, as I was yesterday, while sifting through Facebook responses to an incident of public masturbation in Kerala.
A man named Savad Sha was nabbed in Kerala for masturbating inside a KSRTC bus while being seated amidst two women. Nandita Sankara, one of the women, confronted Savad, complained to the bus conductor, and took a video of the whole incident as Savad ran out of the bus. He was then caught by the conductor KK Pradeep along with a few co-passengers and handed over to the police. Nandita later posted the video on social media, leading to many discussions on women's safety.
Several women shared similar ordeals from their own lives and congratulated Nandita for her courage to have reacted promptly. There were, of course, many who asked her why she waited until the man began masturbating, and why she made a “spectacle” of the incident, revealing the man’s face, and shaming him on social media. Unfortunately, none of them were shocking and I had ready responses to the men writing such comments in my head. But then, there were women who said similar things. Their comments did not enrage me any less, but when women reproduce the language of their oppressors, calling them out becomes a complex process.
This is not to absolve women of the oppression they dish out or to say that when women do it, it is passable. Oppression is not passable no matter who does it. But in a patriarchal world where systemic gender bias is normalised, women embody it sometimes to survive among men, and many times because they are unable to see through their own privilege and conditioning. We see this happening in families, workplaces, personal relationships, and so on. This is called internalised sexism, and women unquestioningly believe that their choices must align with patriarchy’s mandates, leading them to judge other women just like a patriarch would. When religion, caste, social capital, and other intersectional factors come into the picture, the biases only become more pronounced.
Many women emotionally come from a space of self-blame, believing that they are the cause of all their miseries. ‘I should have been more careful’, ‘I should have tried harder’, ‘maybe it was for my own good,’ ‘what if I had not worn that dress’, ‘I should not have drunk so much’ – are some thoughts, among others, that many of us would have had in different phases of life. It is only natural that women then project their own self-blame onto other women when they face sexual harassment. This earns them applause from men because they are the ‘real women’, and ‘ideal victims’ who deserve justice and respect. Every other woman is just a vamp who was asking for it. Not every woman has the resources both mental and social to swim against this tide.
But can the fact that women are themselves oppressed be a cover for them to not be called out?
For instance, sharing an image of Nandita from an earlier photoshoot, a woman wrote a Facebook post about the masturbation incident. While she applauded Nandita’s courage to respond to abuse, she also asked – “But aren’t these rules applicable to women as well? Should they exhibit themselves, wear revealing clothes with bright lipstick, sexually provoke men, and post pictures on social media?” The post also went on to equate a woman’s bodily agency with a man’s choice to masturbate in public, because “he is doing what he likes to his own body.”
A woman who slut shames someone like Nandita may be facing her own gender-based struggles, but nonetheless, when she decides to victim blame and enable a narrative that penalises other women’s bodies, and chastises their clothing choices, she becomes an oppressor herself, who must be called out.
Feminist solidarity is not an immunity against criticising fellow women, and all of us are often only a few steps away from slipping back into our patriarchal conditioning. What feminist awareness must rightly equip us with is the ability to reflect and be better than our own biases while maintaining the importance of solidarity amidst a system that sets us up for failure with the ‘women themselves are their worst enemies' rhetoric.
Many of us often refrain from criticising fellow women because each time a woman is called out for being misogynistic, it is the feminist movement that is given a blow. But at the end of the day, feminism is not a perfect movement, and even the thought that it should be perfect is a projection of patriarchy’s insistence that everything women-made must be perfect. Women are not allowed to falter, not at home, not at work, not even in the way they narrate their experiences of harassment.
We don’t need to be perfect feminists. But we must be honest enough to reflect, hold space, and attempt to see through the breadcrumbs of temporary validation that patriarchy throws our way in return for complacency and betrayal of our truths.