The toxic grip of a Powerful Man
- In Current Affairs
- 09:55 AM, Oct 19, 2018
- Sunanda Vashisht
The ocean of emotions has swept away all pretenses and facades. Everyday there is a new ordeal, a new heart-breaking story of a woman who unknowingly found herself in the toxic grip of a powerful man. Who is this man? He is usually someone who either writes your paycheck or someone who facilitates it. He is someone whom you admired and looked up to. He is someone whose company you perhaps enjoyed and found stimulating. What would happen next is something you were not prepared for.
The blackest of all blackholes swept you in and you did not know how to get out. You needed the job, not always for money, sometimes for self-gratification too. You also needed to be independent at the age of 22. You had to prove a point to the world. You were a bundle of contradictions yourself and life was coming at you fast. At 22, we now know that your prefrontal cortex, or rational part of your brain isn’t even functional, but you did not know that. You wanted the job, you wanted the recognition even in small measure that the job brought you. You had not bargained for the dark side. The powerful man made sure that you knew what the dark side was. With the iron grip he controlled you, till you could no longer break free. It was a cult of sorts, except at that time you did not know who the other members of the cult were. The powerful man of course was the reigning deity of the cult. He made you work at ungodly hours. He expected you to be available at all times. He did not take no for an answer. He made you burn in shame if you made a mistake. He hijacked your ability to think and you became hypnotized with his power. That is when he showed himself as the predator. A powerful man who can destroy everything you ever had dreamt of.
Sexual harassment isn’t new, although talking about it definitely is. We did not even have the term ‘sexual harassment’ available to us for a long time. It was dismissed as that abhorrent term - ‘eve teasing’. Growing up we knew the look that disrobed us in public, the random hand that came from nowhere and brushed against our bodies in public transport, and the verbal sexual innuendoes that were whispered under the breath but loud enough for us to hear. All this has been happening to us for a long time, but the most debilitating form of harassment is one that happens at the work place.
The current Me Too movement has finally succeeded in highlighting this aspect of sexual harassment that has kept a disproportionate number of Indian women home unable to join the workforce. Those who did join the work force were constantly playing the balancing game. We wanted to do nothing that would ‘give ideas’ to anybody. So that meant completely desexualizing ourselves. We wore loose clothes, we made sure we covered ourselves from head to toe, we made sure we didn’t indulge in too much of loose banter with colleagues, we wore little or no makeup, and we tied our hair in a tight pony tail with no loose ends from anywhere. We were conditioned to believe that if anything went wrong, clearly, we had erred. It was our fault if we got harassed and it was our job to protect ourselves by diminishing ourselves and if need be making ourselves invisible.
Those of us who did venture out into careers in journalism, (TV was big in my time), advertising, film making, entertainment industry or any job that was not governed by the 9 a.m to 5 p.m dictates, then the stress of ‘protecting’ ourselves was even higher on us. The sophisticated powerful man was found here in his natural habitat. He was a suave, smooth talker who was socially liberal and spoke perfect English. He excelled in sarcasm and believed in gender equality. On every platform that was available to him he spoke about making the ground level for women. He had no interest in mundane issues. His time was fruitfully spent on imagining the new world order and how women would play an important part in shaping it. He spoke eloquently about how flawed our democracy was if we didn’t have enough opportunities for women. That was the public profile.
When we were hypnotized enough with the public profile, we were exposed to the dark side of the powerful man. He was petty, perverted and did not understand or care for consent. That he found us worthy of his attention meant that we should be eternally thankful to him. He did not understand the term harassment, we did not understand the term victim. There was a power differential that ensured that you were always silenced. Since it was always your fault, there was no question of reporting the powerful man, or confronting him. The only available option was to quit the job which the powerful man knew was not an easy option for us and he took advantage of it.
When I look back at my short-lived career in Indian Television Industry when it was booming in late 90’s, I am thankful that I worked in a small enough production house that was fairly safe, but I was exposed to horrific stories of harassment around me in the industry. I moved quickly enough to pursue academics, but the scars of what I saw my friends go through who wanted to stay back and do some substantial work remained. I have often wondered how deep was the conditioning of minds that everyone chose to remain silent or found a way to blame themselves or at worst agreed to become the pawn in the game. I am now back in news business. I work on my own terms, choose the people I want to work with, work at my own pace and determine my own trajectory. It took a lot of struggle and hard work to get here. Everyday however, I am acutely aware of my privileged existence. I hope more and more women besides outing the perpetrators will also do their bit to make the work environment safer for entry level employees.
The Me Too movement that started in the United States about a year ago which has now exploded in India, has exposed the powerful tyrant in the work places. It in no way encompasses the entire gamut of sexual harassment in all layers of the society but it has at least helped in exposing the God Editor, the feminist film maker, the socially conscious and foodie news man and sensitive editor of the influential newspaper. There are many more carefully created edifices that will fall soon. Their time is up but our battle has only begun.
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