Opinion It’s as if MeToo never happened

Leher Kala writes: Bail order in Kerala court that cited complainant’s ‘sexually provocative’ clothes is dispiriting

Leher Kala writes: Even the men presiding over courtrooms, ostensibly dedicated to justice, believe women should just dress differently to avoid harassment. (Representational image)

Leher Kala

August 25, 2022 08:31 AM IST First published on: Aug 23, 2022 at 08:18 PM IST

Recently, I was trying to make evening plans with a friend who said she couldn’t because she had to pick up her daughter from the airport. Just tell her to take an Uber or Ola right outside, I suggested. We have a rule she said, no cabs at night, adding that if she allowed it once it would lead to endless arguments with her teenager, who considers the no-public-transport-post-11 rule frustratingly disruptive to her nightlife. This is a mighty inconvenient arrangement, to be a driver for one’s child on weekends I told my friend, to which she replied matter-of-factly: That’s life. I see this play out everyday in Delhi and Gurgaon. My 19-year-old son and his male friends spend half their lives in Ubers; not only are the girls not allowed cabs, they have to keep the Live 360 App on at all times so anxious parents can track their whereabouts.

Also Read | Her guilty dress and other lies men tell themselves about sexual assault

That even us city-dwelling, educated and privileged parents are justified in our paranoia was made painfully clear in the last fortnight, when social activist-writer-poet Civic Chandran, 74, accused in two sexual harassment cases, was granted bail in one of them on a ridiculous premise. In a Kerala court, Judge S Krishnakumar ruled the victim’s complaint “will not prima facie stand when woman was wearing sexually provocative dress”. The other case is not the focus of this article but bears mentioning: Chandran was accused by a Dalit author of groping and trying to kiss her forcibly in April this year. In that case too Judge S Krishnakumar, quoting Chandran’s long history of agitating against the caste system, granted him bail: His opinion being Chandran didn’t know the woman was Dalit and he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the alleged victim was attempting to “tarnish the status of the accused”. Critically, in both cases, the orders put the burden of responsibility of sexual harassment squarely on the women.

Also from Express Opinion | Kerala judge’s comments: Putting the victim on trial

Being female in India these days is akin to being a character in a Franz Kafka novel. In The Trial, a man is arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him, nor the reader. In the year 2022, the process by which a judge so casually arrived at the conclusion that a “sexually provocative” outfit could pardon a man’s lusty intent, is chillingly Kafkaesque. Consider, Chandran’s legal team produces photographs of the victim from her Facebook account, that, as her lawyer argued, have “no connection with Chandran or the event where the incident happened”. Like any 20-something youngster, she’s posing with her best friend, to be clear, in perfectly decent attire. Bizarrely, these totally unrelated images became the evidence to establish her “sexually provocative” dress sense — that apparently made the perpetrator so frenzied with sexual need, of course, he couldn’t be expected to control his baser impulses.

What do we women make of this terrifying order? Ladies, be wise and delete those Goa images where you had the temerity to wear shorts on the beach; because even the men presiding over courtrooms, ostensibly dedicated to justice, believe women should just dress differently to avoid harassment.

As though this ordeal hasn’t been humiliating enough for the victim and insulting to our collective intellects, the bail order expressed disbelief that a man aged 74 and “physically disabled” could have “forcefully put the de facto complainant on his lap and sexually pressed her breast”. The last charge lodged against disgraced American comedian Bill Cosby, accused by over 60 women of rape over five decades, was in 2008, when Cosby was approximately 71 years old. A 2019 report from the National Database on Sexual Offenders (NDSO) in India reveals that there are around 37,000 sexual assault cases perpetrated by men over the age of 60. The stats speak for themselves: There are young perverts and there are old perverts. A timely reminder, too, there’s nothing so special about old people. They’re just people who got old and when they behave badly, they’re certainly no more deserving of leniency.

Remember #MeToo? So much for that all-too-brief spark of hope, that so brightly promised to change how we perceive violence against women. Right now it feels like the movement never happened, we’re back to the same old exhausting conversations questioning a woman’s role in her own assault. Will this ever end? I doubt it. Perhaps, there’s something to learn from the government’s highly successful campaign for Independence Day, #HarGharTiranga. Every woman, girl child, grandmother, transwoman, all of whom have faced sexually derisive comments at some stage of their lives should stubbornly wear “sexually provocative” clothes on their display pictures. Hashtag: No, we’re not asking for it.

The writer is director, Hutkay Films