The Men I Know:
A ‘young feminist’ from the third world speaks from inside the #MeToo moment(s)
Subha Wijesiriwardena
Preface
In October 2017, I said ‘#MeToo.’ I did it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These were my words: ‘Me too. As a child. As an adult. By men I know and men I don't know. More than once. More than twice.’
This piece is not about the everyday sexual harassment we face; not about every time a strange man masturbated on me on a bus or groped me as I walked through a crowded street. No, this is, at least figuratively, about the men I know. And therefore it is primarily about myself.
Yes, me too
Around the global #MeToo moment, I was also one of those women who publicly declared that men — even queer men — should stay out of #MeToo unless they were there to fess up as perpetrators of violence against women. I said then: ‘Yes, we know sexual violence happens to men too, especially to queer men, but stay out; try and understand, it's still different when it happens to women, because women are inherently, structurally, necessarily invested with less power. This is for women. Stay out.’
And then, mostly from afar, with you, I watched #MeToo take hold in different parts of the world.
In India, in particular, many of us followed breathlessly as Raya Sarkar's list of predators in Indian academia went viral. When a statement ‘by feminists’ (note the use of the term ‘feminists’ authoritatively) was published in response, things practically went up in flames. What resulted was a debate that almost cracked open the Indian feminist movements — or perhaps did — and revealed a conversation that badly needed to be had. Who are the guardians of feminism? Who do we consider our own?¹
It was painful even to watch from afar, because it meant we had to reflect, too. I had to reflect.
In my heart, I wanted to hold Raya Sarkar close. I wanted to protect them. I wanted us to defend them. I wanted to believe that the debate was about 'age' — that older feminists didn't understand us younger feminists; that their time was up.
Even as there were aspects of the ‘naming and shaming strategy’ with which I was uncomfortable, didn't these younger women deserve our protection? Didn't they deserve for us to stand with them?
But — what were the real dangers of this culture of naming and shaming we were supporting? In my heart, I also knew there were some very real dangers. Not for men — for us.
In my mind, I write this specifically for us ‘women’, but also especially for feminists (of all kinds) and so that I can put the topic of age on the table. I believe the debate about Raya Sarkar’s list is about justice, and it is both about and not about age.
First, some situations call for accusations and some don't. Some call for confusion and doubt and self-reflection. We need both not to be pushed to feel shame when we make accusations, nor should we be pushed to make accusations when we don't want to. Second— I am not saying our responses to violence are absolutely and necessarily shaped by our age, I am saying age plays a role. I know it has for me.
I feel that as younger women, sometimes it is easier to have less complicated responses to the violence we face at the hands of people we trust (and I am glad for this). Some may argue the exact opposite! I feel that as we get older, sometimes, the lines are more blurred as we engage with more knowledge and agency in encounters of attraction and desire. We also — many of us — acquire more ‘power’ too, as we get older: in our careers and through certain forms of social recognition. This complicates things.
On the flip side, it is also getting older that reveals to me some of the problems with the ways in which I allowed myself to be treated when I was younger. I hope it is true for most of us that we raise the bar as we get older and demand respect with more courage, from simple to complex interactions.
I began writing this piece in the weeks after I first said #MeToo, almost exactly a year ago. Now, I find myself re-writing in the present moment, after Dr Ford's testimony, after Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed to the USA Supreme Court; after India's 'second' wave of #MeToo has taken hold, ostensibly propelled forward by women in media², when many people have outed their sexual assaulters publicly online.
This moment: it makes me weep and it makes me dance.
This is not a list of accusations
I am around eight years old; I lie in bed at night. There are hands on my chest, where there aren’t yet any breasts.
These hands are under my pyjama top and they are on my chest. Moving, touching, rubbing.
I am taut, terrified, on my side. I do nothing. I am frozen.
I am around ten years old. Pages of an old pornography magazine, probably a classic like Playboy, are being peeled back before my eyes. There's an adult opening it up with me, this magazine belongs to them. In fact, I came looking: I came looking for this person, for this magazine. I am wide awake. There are electric currents of excitement in my toes. Something unnamed forming at the pit of my stomach.
I am about 12. I accidentally catch my first glimpse of pornography on the internet. We're still using dial-up connections. I find myself so intrigued and aroused that I can feel new feelings in strange places at night.
I am about 16. There's a large group of people sitting on a rooftop; friends. Most are about seven years older than I am, my brother’s age. They are his friends. I can, in my mind, even now, see my older brother sitting almost directly in front of me, holding court. From behind me, a pair of hands slip under the seam of my top. They start caressing my lower back. I seize up. They casually slide over the straps and hooks of my bra and then make their way to the front. I am frozen. I do nothing. No one else notices anything at all. I don't tell my brother about this, ever: about his trusted friend molesting me.
I am about 17. We are in a bar. There is a much older man, someone I know and until this point, trust, who is talking to me. We are standing close, because of the loud music. He is sitting on a bar stool, his legs wide open. I am trying not to place myself in the space between his legs. I am uncomfortable. He pulls me closer to him with a hand to my waist. He holds me there forcefully, with that one hand on my waist and keeps talking. I am thrust against his groin. No one around me intervenes.
Later, I hear from someone I love that they assumed I was enjoying this. This is, after all, ‘how I am.’ I was being forced up against the groin of a much older man in a public place and no one thought to ask me if I was OK. This is a common thing: even good people can assume that women who are flirtatious and sexually expressive are always just happy with any situation.
I am 18. I kiss a practically unknown boy for the first time in full view of many other people, because I want to. I end up loving that boy for the rest of my life. Weeks before, I had kissed a girl and let her kiss me back in the bathroom of a place we liked to go to; I fumblingly half make-love to this girl, one night, in her bed, long before I ever make love to a boy. Weeks before that, I had kissed an older woman in the boot of a friend's SUV.
I am about 23. I have fallen asleep in a bed which I am sharing with a male friend— someone I have known possibly for more than a decade at this point. We have fallen asleep after a night of partying. In my sleep, I realise there are hands on my body. I wake up. There are hands in my hair, hands on my thighs. I fake having to wake up to go to the bathroom and I leave and go into the living room and fall asleep while seated in one of the chairs.
I am 30 years old. I go on a date which I am enjoying to a great extent but it ends badly. He is stupidly drunk; he keeps insisting on coming to my house 'for one last drink' and I don't want him to. I say, no, no. The whole way home, in a shared cab, I say, no. But when we get to my house and he gets out of the car (when I specifically ask him not to) I panic. No, no, I say. NO NO NO. In the end I shout, raising my voice in the hope that my housemate may hear. I have to push him back into the car and go inside. I put my hand on the gate latch from the inside and I wait with my eyes squeezed shut until I hear the car has driven away. When I finally enter my home and shut the door behind me, I cry.
Just a week before, I had a man in my bed who I was really in a sense encountering for the very first time that night and I was so excited by him at so many different levels I was ready to make love to him then and there.
I consider myself luckier than most. Throughout my life, my explicit wishes have been, broadly at least, respected.
But I also read over this again and I see a list of times my wishes, sometimes unspoken, were violated. I see a list of norms which forced me to hold back. I see a list of moments in which I was behaving through my own patriarchal conditioning, where I did not centre my own agency. I see a number of ways in which my whole humanity was not really seen.
But how do we expect to see each other as full human beings if we aren't taught to talk about desire?
What I am trying to say is: I have had pleasure and I have had violence. It has taken me years to understand — in the moment — what the difference is. At the same time, I feel I always knew. It has taken me time to learn to say ‘no’ and it has taken even longer to learn to say ‘yes.’
Life as a dangerous fuck-up
From childhood, into my teenage years, I went through life feeling like I had an unnatural scope for desire. At best, there were raised eyebrows around me and tension enough to say, ‘OK this is not good. You should stop.’ At worst: the pain of feeling like people who love you are ashamed of you.
In my family, and extended family, the reaction was often veiled and confused with other things, like real love and genuine open-mindedness. What was clear: I was a danger to myself.
The potential for danger was great and always imminent: Pregnancy. Abortion. Expulsion from school. Ruined future. There were uncomfortable interventions and quiet lectures, full of concern, full of assumptions, mostly about danger. Although most of it was intended to be helpful and open-minded, not judgmental, the subtle effects were long-lasting. I went through those years feeling that eventually I would just fuck up my life. My sexuality would lead me to disaster. I waited for this to happen.
Outside the home, in school, for example, the attacks on my personality were more direct. They were not fettered by love. They could say outright — you are dirty and unnatural and dangerous. You are not worth anything. You have no virtue, you have no future. No one will love you, in the end.
Even in my immediate family and extended family (largely a community of feminists), the truth is there was so rarely a moment in which anyone was talking to me about my body and my sexuality in a way that didn't directly correlate it to danger.
The Mighty fall
So, with you, I watched many, many men be accused of sexual harassment by women who had been in effectively subordinate positions to those men at the time. A few of those men, from Aziz Ansari, Junot Díaz to Sadanand Menon, are men I admire and respect. I don't want to put those words in past tense just yet.
I recoiled from the cynicism that suggested that Junot Díaz published his own personal history of rape as a child as a PR stunt, in preparation for several women coming forward to publicly accuse him of sexual harassment. I started to feel wary of a world in which we couldn’t seem to hold space for both: the rape of Díaz as a child, and his harassment of women throughout his life.
It has made me think carefully about what is being said here. It made me think very carefully about my relationships with my own teachers at university; my own relationships with older men and women who could be considered my 'superiors', and my intimate relationships with younger men and women. It made me relive my encounters with harassment and exploitation, and also made me think again about my own encounters with curiosity, attraction and pleasure.
Do I believe that power necessarily travels only in one direction, between men and women? That all men have power necessarily in a way that all women just don't? That in relationships between men and women, no matter what they are, that women are necessarily subordinate in power? That heterosexual intimate relationships are necessarily oppressive to women?
Do I believe that older people necessarily wield all the power in an intimate relationship? Do I believe that someone in a position of authority has no right to pursue intimacy with someone their subordinate — that anything of this nature (even if mutually consensual) would be necessarily exploitative? Do I believe that the age at which one can really consent to pleasurable, informed sexual encounters, lines up directly with the state-stipulated ‘age of consent’?
We know that women can be predatory as much as preyed on; we know that men can be victims of violence; we know that even in same-sex relationships, there can be intimate partner violence. We know privilege comes in all forms: class, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, able-ness, ethnicity, and that many of these things intersect for many of us.³
We know that a ‘woman’ could have more privilege than a ‘man’ and therefore wield more power structurally in society. We know that gender non-conforming folks experience violence at the hands of ‘men’ and ‘women.’ We know that people younger than the state-stipulated 18 years can say yes to sex, while fully aware and conscious of what they are saying yes to.
We know there are no absolutes, only because this is how we experience life.
Pleasure and Danger (thank you, Carole Vance⁴)
Many people will say they are uncomfortable about putting sex and violence in the same conversation and yet, inadvertently, we do it every time we fail to talk about sex outside of talking about sexual violence.
Not only are pleasure and danger therefore connected, but creating cultures and societies in which sexual violence does not exist is almost directly contingent on creating cultures and societies where we can talk about pleasure openly.
How can we talk about what we don't like if we aren't taught to explore what we do like? How do we learn to ask someone else what they like if we have never been asked ourselves? And how is it that we try to teach the concept of consent as a way of saying ‘no’ — when, at its heart, consent is a way of saying ‘yes’?
There are many things I want to say to you. I want to say that pleasure and danger exist on the same spectrum (I am not the first woman to say this; many much better than I have said it before), sometimes in a very visceral way, particularly for those of us who aren't cis-gender straight men.
I want to say, I worry about our histories of dismissing or altogether erasing stories about the exercise of agency, about encounters of pleasure; our great traditions of dismissing the people who tell these stories as ‘frivolous’, ‘attention-seeking’ (‘sluts’), somehow less important in the world, not-so-normal. We have a habit of ensuring that they are taken less seriously, and that their politics are taken less seriously, that their narratives of agency are altogether subverted to suit narratives of oppression and violence. Why is it we struggle to see sex workers as participating in the economy and in the pursuance of pleasure? Why is it we do not wish to acknowledge women willingly partaking in the production and consumption of pornography?
I want to say that we don't give survivors of violence enough space to have conflicts and doubts. We sideline them when they have questions, when they aren't willing to draw clear lines in the sand. I worry that we don't sit patiently with them enough and listen while they unpack complex emotions about complex situations, that we tell them that it’s ‘un-feminist’ to have these conflicts.
I want to say that we don't really listen to survivors of violence or place them in the centre of the processes and mechanisms. We don't really ask survivors what they want. We don't ask ourselves what we can give them. We still pick and choose who ideal survivors are; we alienate some and embrace others.
I want to say we don’t really listen to perpetrators, either; we don't see them as being a part of ourselves — but they are, in the same way that survivors of violence are. We both produce the problem and bear the costs collectively. As ‘women’ we often don’t want to accept that perpetrators are not outside our lives but very much inside them, as fathers, brothers, lovers, colleagues, friends.
We do not allow ourselves the space to imagine justice beyond the punitive framework, to imagine a world beyond criminalisation. We are afraid to look beyond incarceration — a system sustained by the frequent breaking of vulnerable bodies⁵; a system which, by design, disproportionately persecutes the poor, the mentally unwell, the already marginalised; which treats the ills produced by our cultures and societies as though they are embodied, individual evils, for which we bear individual culpability, rather than produced by and within deeply embedded structures of inequality.
Sometimes, it may seem like the pursuance of our sexual pleasure just opens us up to danger. It may seem like expanding our conversations about sex to really, radically include all people and all variants of sexuality could feel like we’re saying that everything––even violence––is OK. Stretching the boundaries of our own sexual lives and imaginations to really challenge where our own sexualities come from can seem invasive. It is frightening to have to sift through centuries of the conditioning of heteronormativity, shame, fear and holding back. It is frightening to have to undo that core reasoning that seems to say, quite simply, ‘Sex is dangerous.’
But we have to. We have to make space for our different ways of thinking and coping, of loving and fucking. This is the most important of all, and the most frightening of all.
Because if we don't, then we are already in danger.
Endnotes
¹ I only suggest you read this by Ponni Arasu, this by Nidhi Kinhal and this by Paromita Vohra.
² Network of Women in Media, India Statement on #MeToo in Indian Media
³ In Lambevski’s ethnographic study of gay men in Macedonian city Skopje (Suck My Nation), he documents that ethnicity and class intersect with gender and sexuality in this group. One of his questions is about power and sex; for example, he documents that the ethnically Macedonian men (the majority, privileged group) are almost always ‘bottoms’ (the penetrated) during sexual encounters while the ethnically Albanian man (who are often working class and form the ethnic minority), are the ‘tops’ (the penetrator). This also raises questions about why we invest certain sexual modes with more power than others and where we locate power during sex.
⁴ Carole S Vance’s landmark essay Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality unpacks this idea beautifully; her opening lines are: ‘The tension between sexual danger and sexual pleasure is a powerful one in women’s lives. Sexuality is simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression, and danger as well as a domain of exploration, pleasure, and agency. To focus only on pleasure and gratification ignores the patriarchal structure in which women act, yet to speak only of sexual violence and oppression ignores women’s experience with sexual agency and choice and unwittingly increases the sexual terror and despair in which women live.’
⁵ Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham writes, of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, ‘As suggested by Foucault, the prison itself maybe a new way of ordering society, of disciplining it and creating new forms of docile bodies constituted in such a way as to make the power of the state and certain groups more effective.’
Bibliography
[i] Hollibaugh, Amber. “Desire for the future: radical hope in passion and pleasure” (University of Edinburgh Press, 1996)
[ii] Arasu, Ponni. “#whatnow?” (Blog: kafila.org, 2017)
[iii] Kinhal, Nidhi. “All the Things I Wish I Said At The ‘Sexual Harassment In Academia’ Open House, But I Didn’t” (Blog: The Edict, 2017)
[iv] Vohra, Paromita. “A new language of engagement” (Mumbai Mirror, 2017)
[v] Network of Women in Media, India: Statement on #MeToo in Indian Media (niwmindia.org, 2018)
[vi] Lambevski, Sasho A. “Suck My Nation — Masculinity, Ethnicity and the Politics of (Homo)sex” (SAGE Publications, 1999)
[vii] Vance, Carole S. “Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality” (Routledge & K Paul, 1984)
[viii] Perera-Rajasingham, Nimanthi. “Violence Against Women and the Death Penalty: Appropriating the Feminist Agenda” (LINES Magazine, 2006)
[ix] Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” (Pantheon Books, 1977)
[x] Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” (Routledge & K Paul, 1984)
