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Decentering and Recentering the Discussion on Street Harassment

5/12/2012

5 Comments

 
Picture
Tags: discourse/language, gender, inequality, media, prejudice/discrimination, decentering, eve teasing, india, sexual harassment, sexism, street harassment, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 3:32
Access: YouTube

Summary: It is often the case that when incisive critiques are leveled against an oppressive system, such as patriarchy, there will be efforts to derail or decenter that conversation. For example, one might critique patriarchy in India by pointing out that there is a marked tendency to blame the victim in cases of harassment. Defying all probability, time and again the original critique of power slips from the conversation, and those who were instrumental in exposing the problem suddenly find themselves defending whether their critique is in fact proof of their own prejudice against men. Or, even more befuddling, the focus of the conversation shifts from the problem of sexual harassment to the hurt feelings of a few men who claim they have never harassed women. As explored elsewhere on The Sociological Cinema, YouTube videos can be understood as social activism, and in that context, any single clip can be seen as a discrete contribution to an unfolding public conversation about a particular social issue. In the above video, one finds a young man catching a ride on a not-so-crowded Delhi bus. In the course of the ride the driver abruptly presses on the brake, and the young man accidentally falls on the woman standing next to him. On the mistaken assumption that the man was attempting to physically harass her, the woman slaps him across the face (a perfect Indian response!), and the woman's friend chides the man for “not having any manners.” Later in the ride, the driver again abruptly presses the brake, but in this instance, it is the woman who falls on the man, and it is now his turn to slap her. The video encourages the viewer to see the man's response as entirely valid and even legally justified (The video's caption references Article 15 of the Indian constitution, which prohibits gender based discrimination). It is a cautionary tale, which promotes the absurd idea that men must frequently bear the burden of being unjustly accused of street harassment, or what is euphemistically referred to as eve teasing in India. The conversation no longer contemplates the tendency to blame the victim, and it no longer dwells on why violence against women is now the fastest-growing crime in India. Instead, this video and others like it attempt to reorient the discussion so that people must now contemplate the indignity suffered by a minority of men who have been unjustly accused.

Submitted By: Manjistha Banerji

Image by Blank Noise

5 Comments
Bily K
7/10/2012 11:02:01 am

Reading this article was such a beautiful and enlightening experience to me. I will definitely used these arguments in the future when dealing with that kind of men.
I have experienced this re orientation of the discussion many times in life but I never had the word to graps what it was that was happening, I just felt very angry. This article has made me found the words.
Thanks.

Reply
blank noise link
7/11/2012 04:28:58 pm

Hello. This image is sourced from Blank Noise. We created a twitter and Facebook event based on this image. Would be delighted if you could kindly link the image to http://blog.blanknoise.org/2010/02/tweet-now-feb-17-27.html
Thank you! Team BN

Reply
The Sociological Cinema
7/16/2012 12:19:01 am

First of all, great job on the images on your site! Thank you for reaching out to us. We have credited you and linked to you in the post. Keep up the good work!

Reply
Mejor
12/14/2012 08:26:35 am

I am confused. This post seems to celebrate the woman slapping the man but not the man slapping the woman. That seems like the double-standard-sexism that tends to permeate the left (e.g., it is celebrated in "The Technology of Orgasm"). Even better: don't slap people. I'm all about women's physical autonomy, but don't get slap happy on people who don't deserve it.

Reply
Gwendolyn Claflin
4/4/2013 07:10:13 am

It's not about the woman slapping the man or vice versa. It's about critiquing the video for not focusing on the larger social issue.

No one is celebrating either scenario. I think that you must have got that from "(A perfect Indian response!)", which I perceive to be an evaluation of the cultural acceptability of the action, as opposed to an endorsement by the author.

Additionally in response to "don't slap people", are you telling someone who believes they have just been/ are being assaulted to quietly explain why it is not ok to touch them like that?

Reply



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