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#MeToo: When oppressed speak

By Mohammed Sardar Bhatti. Dated: 10/20/2018 2:14:23 PM

Sexual violence and Gender based oppression is a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women (including transgender, LGBT) which has led to domination over women by men and to the prevention of women's full advancement. Violence against women and exercising control over their bodies is crucial social mechanism by which women are forced into a subordinate position. This #MeToo movement has taken the question of this oppression a step further by questioning the institutions of our society and gender oppression inherent in them. The question of what and how this movement will change will take some time to answer. In this article I will restrict myself to few questions that are continuously being raised regarding this #MeToo Movement.
This movement is limited to certain class of women and it will not trickle down to women of lower class?
To understand this we need to understand the power and the way it is exercised in our society. To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power takes. In this case whatever power these men exercise over the body and psychology of the women is external to the body of women which she became the victim of and which she is opposing now. Power (or privilege) is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are. The first form of power in this society makes us a subject and second form of power (or privilege) gives us the agency. The women who came out and stood against the power and their oppression in the form of harassment and sexual violence are the women who possess some sort of power (or privilege) to exercise their agency. They are women who have achieved some sort of economic independence and have their own control over their life to a certain extent.
It's an achievement for women as a whole in this patriarchal society to poses this kind of power and to exercise their agency and speak against the power of the oppressor i.e. male in this patriarchal society.
Women from different economic and social strata of our society face different kind of gender oppression and sexual violence which may vary in degree but the common among all is that they are facing it because they are oppressed and are victim gender violence in this patriarchal society. When we are creating binaries between the gender violence committed against women of one class with women of other class we are doing damage to their struggle against the patriarchal oppression and exploitation on the whole.
#MeToo is just media frenzy and it is controlled by media and will soon wither away because it has nothing on ground as organized resistance?
Those who are worried that this movement will soon wither away from the front pages of the newspaper or primetime news hour debates. They are right but we need to understand that these front pages or the prime time didn't made this movement, a movement. But this movement is in our society, it's in the mind and on the body of the oppressed genders of our society and its quite certain that this will wither away from the media but this will stay in our minds unless the power relations between different genders of the society is altered. If we see the case of Nirbhaya there were organized protest throughout India for a month or two but it also went away but this created a space and the way we see the gender and sexual violence in the society and what this #MeToo movement is doing it is changing the way we see and think about gender violence in our society.
If we analyze the image of Nirbhaya's rapist that is in our mind we will find that those rapists were not us. They were working class, uneducated, 'uncivilized' men. So, they should be hanged. But what about the persons whose names are coming out in this #MeToo movement, they are the persons we look up to, they are educated, they are 'civilized', they are 'cultured', they are persons from among us. It means this gender oppression and sexual violence is not an outcome of some uneducated and so-called uncivilized men but this is an outcome of male mindset in this patriarchal society. We need to question the way we exercise male privileges and control over the body and psychology of other genders. If this question is coming to our mind and we are questioning our actions with other genders, it means #MeToo movement is working on ground and it will sustain till these questios will remain in our mind.
What role men can play in this movement?
The oppressor speaks and sometimes speaks on behalf of the oppressed and mostly oppressor speaks efficiently that's because oppressor knows how to speak and is speaking since human race learnt to speak. But the story of the oppressed is very different, either they don't know how to speak or if they know how to speak they cannot speak as the price they have to pay is too much. But in this case women have gathered the courage and are speaking against the gender oppression and sexual violence they have faced.
Now comes the turn of men, what can they do about it? We all know gender oppression and sexual violence is prevalent in our patriarchal society and we also know oppressor in almost every case is man. We are also men and we need to show courage and start another #MeToo movement in which we should share our part of the story, apologize and take pledge to make this society better and equal place where person of every gender can live and develop freely.
(The author is Ph. D Scholar Department of Political Science, University of Jammu)