Women, our voices are louder together

We may not have been able to hold every toxic male accountable, but have empowered future generations to call out misogyny

I was mesmerised by the final scene of the first episode of Working Moms. A new mother who's had a rough last few days is out running in a forest, her baby in tow in a pram. She suddenly confronts the bear that we'd been earlier told had escaped from its sanctuary. It's a tense moment. The bear notices her. She is briefly paralysed by fear. The bear faces her and growls aggressively. After a moment's hesitation, she postures herself protectively in front of her baby and growls back at the bear, who, sufficiently intimidated, retreats. The scene resonated with me because I'd been thinking recently about how we frame the narrative of empowerment as something aspirational. What if, as women, it entails an act as ostensibly simple as standing up for ourselves?

If I could identify one attribute about my personality that has changed most fundamentally over the last few months, particularly in the aftermath of the #MeTooIndia movement, it's been my evolving ability to confront and engage with men from a position of strength and not defensiveness. It's been the consequence of an active decision I made to identify within my behavioural patterns my tendencies to react defensively because I've felt as if something within my core was under attack. I found that I behaved like this because somewhere, I still sought validation from the person I felt was attacking me; usually a cisgender male. Cisgender denotes a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex. I am cisgender female, for example. What the movement did for me was help me find the vocabulary I'd been looking for all my life with which to call out certain abusive, racist and misogynist patterns of communication. For instance, I'd noticed years ago, that white men and women don't take kindly to any accusation you may make about their behaviour or speech being even mildly racist. The knee-jerk reaction is to tell you you're imagining the offence, which I now know is called 'gaslighting'. The other is for them to aggressively counter your arguments, which I know now is called 'weaponised defensiveness'. If you've shared a story with someone about a potential incident of sexual abuse you encountered first-hand, and if the person in question alleges you were somehow primarily at fault for either dressing or speaking provocatively, it is an example of 'victim blaming'.

One evening some weeks ago, when I was at Mona's place, we'd been talking about our frustrations with the movement. How it seemed like some men who were serial predators and sexual abusers had gotten away almost scot-free, while some, with weaker allegations made against them, were paying a heavy price and were being socially alienated. We were concerned with the question of accountability. How could we hold men to task for the toxicity they perpetuated? For how long should they be punished? Was it our responsibility to ensure they were rehabilitated into society if they seemed penitent enough? I was speaking specifically about an abuser against whom allegations had been made anonymously that I had then backed up publicly on social media, because I knew many of them to be true and wanted him to be held to task. Instead of introspecting into his patterns of abuse, he, of course, denied any culpability, audaciously claiming that he'd never behaved inappropriately with anyone ever in his life, which I knew to be categorically untrue, because I had myself been the victim of his uninvited advances. During the India Art Fair, he was present at almost every important private party, which immediately made those spaces unsafe for me. Mona suggested that we see this from another angle. While we may not be able to hold someone accountable, what our testimony had accomplished was a public assertion that certain behaviours were simply unacceptable. Maybe women younger than us now entering the workplace would feel more emboldened about calling out crass, inappropriate behaviour. Maybe what we've all been doing inadvertently, through the #MeToo revelations, was empowering each other as well as future generations to speak up against misogyny.

Writing this on the eve of International Women's Day, I find I have reservations about what this calendar occasion means for us in the light of the #MeTooIndia movement. Perhaps it could offer us an opportunity to introspect into our personal struggles with self-empowerment. For it has been nothing short of a struggle. Sometimes I'm convinced I've passed many trials, often barefoot over raging fires. Today, while there are memories of the calluses and the burns I was left with, I see not damaged but strong, wild, desiring feet capable of long-distance running and more; that bear the weight of my body and the burden of my dreams without giving way. I stand as an independent woman, but with the knowledge that it is not I alone that is sustaining my verticality. I am consciously interlinked in an infinitely expanding circle of similarly empowered, empowering feet. Together, we're holding up the new world order we've defiantly imagined.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx Send your feedback to
mailbag@mid-day.com

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!