Every Woman’s Right to Say ‘No’

COMMENTARY

Every Woman’s Right to Say ‘No’

This article is an attempt to understand the interrelated triad of love, masculinity and sexuality in the context of the recent “love crime” episode at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The naturalising of violence and masculinised love is not “exceptional” anymore, and the woman’s autonomy and right to say “no” have been subverted by their fear for safety.

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n 31 July 2013, a student at the School of Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), brutally attacked a woman classmate with an intent to murder. He subsequently killed himself publicly by drinking poison. This incident, as everyone knows by now, happened in broad daylight, in-between classes, within the space of a classroom. It appears that there were classmates and others who might have witnessed this brutal act, possibly partially. Needless to say it has thrown the University community into a state of shock, making many of us furious and sad, and, at least some young undergraduate women students, fearful. What has worsened the situation unfortunately is that the media is rife with unsubstantiated reports, adding to the already heightened state of tension. Clearly there are very urgent and grave issues facing JNU at the moment. Even as I write, discussions are under way amongst different groups – students, faculty, non-teaching staff and administration – on campus. Yet, like many others who have responded to this incident have observed, JNU is not an exceptional space. Like other parts of the city, and country, it is a microcosm, one that reflects – in relation to the issue of violence against women – all shades and forms of patriarchal excess, including brutality. Normalising Violence At a panel discussion in JNU on 14 February 2013 that brought together students, faculty and members of the administration, participants spoke eloquently about the need to break the culture of

G Arunima ([e-mail]) teaches at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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silence regarding violence against women on campus.1 The panel expressed deep concern about the manner in which sexual harassment on campus is normalised, and identified the myriad contexts (hostels and classrooms, amongst others) where such violence occurs. Students underscored the urgent need to expose and contest, amongst others, the continuing forms of intimate partner violence on campus. As panelist Pratiksha Baxi clearly stated in the course of this discussion, “When love was characterised as rape and rape is disguised as love by laws and policies, violence is normalised and sexual agency denied” (Eswaran and Ponniah 2013). Barely five months after this meeting, we are faced with a horrific act of public violence against a woman student. Even as many of us struggle to make sense of it, and engage with this in different ways – from discussions in classrooms, hostels, dhabas, and elsewhere, to written responses in print and electronic media – it is patently clear that, however brutal, this too is not “exceptional” violence. Even a quick glance at the news over just the last few months reveals the extraordinarily large instances countrywide of highly vicious attacks against women, in what are often reported as “love crimes”. These take all manner of forms, from acts of privatised violence to innumerable instances of public aggression, of which acid attacks appear to be the most common. Strangely, despite repeated queries by journalists and others in the wake of the recent campus attack – from whether JNU is “too free” (read, promiscuous women inviting violence) to whether it is “completely unsafe” (read, the need to increase security and police sexual behaviour) – very few appear to be commenting about the remarkable elements of continuity of this incident
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with so many recent instances of public violence.2 Battle of the (S)exes On a popular Facebook page, JNU Confessions (thousands of people “like” it; it is open, and therefore can be accessed by all), one of the “confessors” (#1072) speaks of how he has been repeatedly jilted by a series of girlfriends. In one case he “slapped” the girl, and the new boyfriend, and “moved on”, in another he “abused” and went on with his life. He ends by saying, so guys.. jo mere sath hua wahi “”akash”” k sath hua , galti uski ye thi ki wo ye sab bear nahi kar paya. shyad aisa girls k sath bhi hota ho, but ye sab mere sath ho chuka hai aur mene aise bahut kisse sune hai kisi ne sahi kaha h-BOYS WANTS COMMITMENT AND GIRLS JUST WANT FUN isliye fun karo jitna karna hai filmy pyar k chakkar me mat padho, na koi shudh hai na milega, har koi used milega.3 [So guys, what happened with me is what happened to “akash”, except he could not bear it. Maybe it happens with girls too, but I have heard of many such cases. Someone rightly said boys want commitment and girls just want fun. So have as much fun as you want, do not fall into this trap of filmy love. No one is pure, nor will you find anyone like that; everyone is used.]

Confessor #1072’s statement too is not “exceptional”; it is merely symptomatic. For me, only a couple of things are of significance in it. One, that he identifies so easily with “Akash’s” predicament, which he sees as similar to his own – of grappling helplessly with unrequited love. The second, though his answer to rejection rightly is to move on, that he also resorts to “slaps” and “abuse”, which is mentioned in an entirely casual, throwaway fashion. Resorting to violence, be it verbal or physical, seems to be completely normalised in the course of love, or when faced with its loss. In all the comments to this post, it is striking that despite labelling the writer as a “loser”, there seems to be little alarm about the fact that he had confessed to multiple acts of aggression against women. This is unsurprising given the large number of occurrences of intimate partner violence, across regional, caste, community or political party differences, one hears of on campus.
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Here, I wish to address some critical issues about the interrelated triad of love, masculinity and sexuality. Stalking, obsessive behaviour, and violence within relationships are all far more noticeable now, and seem to recur with alarming frequency. What is far more worrisome is the manner in which these are seamlessly encoded within a new language of love that legitimises such behaviour.4 Love, here, is both expressed as a right and a malady. It produces claims, and psychological dysfunction. Unsurprisingly, it is also a peculiarly heteronormative, hyper-masculine domain – a fact that becomes instantly apparent if one asks a few counterfactuals. For instance, why has there never been a feminine version of “Kolaveri Di”, the song that “went viral” celebrating masculine love as one of loss, rejection, and its eventual overcoming by vilifying the woman in question? Why do not women from metros, small towns or “rural areas”, regional language speakers or anglophone, from any caste or community background, routinely express their love by stalking, hitting and raping men? Why do they not, if thwarted in such loving efforts, resort to throwing acid, or indulge in similar forms of verbal or physical aggression? The answers to these counterfactuals, while patently self-evident, do not seem to be the conclusions that people are arriving at naturally. On the contrary, one is left hanging between two poles of general common sense. The older blames everything on permissiveness that feeds the excesses of contemporary consumer societies and creates women’s voracious sexual appetites. For this, they are then deservedly punished. The newer is the trope of a hyper-masculine erotic couched in the language of agonised aggression, which routinely claims – and blames – women. Somewhere inbetween, women’s justifiably heterogeneous forms of expressing desire, including hesitations regarding sexuality, are sidelined. In a climate of khap-type violence, and murders of young lovers, it becomes hard for most women to articulate positions of complexity that demand the right to love without being brutalised by their lovers. august 17, 2013

What is not only frightening, but also ultimately alienating about this cult of masculinised love is its naturalising violence as entirely justifiable. The “causes” may vary and are endless – men’s inability to adjust to “metro” modernity, having been abandoned as children by mothers, rejection at the hands of women, and jealousy amongst others – but the consequences appear to be extraordinarily homogeneous. In a profoundly serious response to the Delhi gang rape (16 December 2012), Rahul Roy (2013) argues powerfully for understanding masculinity as an induction of boys and men into a complex experience of power through quotidian practices of entitlement.
However, as male children grow up they also realise that it is not a natural state of being but a set of achievement targets that they have to constantly strive towards and measure themselves against; and the fear of failure is always breathing down their necks. This fear of failure is also a fear of the feminine because failure represents the danger of slipping into a category that you have never respected and held as inferior to your kind. From fear to hatred is a very short journey and violence a logical corollary. The tragedy is that most of this violence is so everyday, so mundane, so regular, so beyond the legal pale that the impunity of masculinity remains unquestioned and unchallenged.

Security vs Autonomy How does one raise the question of safety for women then? Apropos the 16 December event in which its role was deplorable, the Delhi Police, to bolster its own image, has started an unintentionally farcical ad campaign about its “antiobscene helpline”. Yet, this campaign to my mind raises some very serious questions. Women’s movements, and feminists of different hues, have over decades reiterated the complex nature of violence against women. Both domestic and intimate partner violence underscore the fact that horrific or mundane acts of aggression do not simply happen “out there”. The brutal attack of the JNU student on 31 July 2013 testifies to the fact that aggressors are often known, in this case a classmate who claimed he was “close” to her. Yet, it is also worth remembering, as many who know the young woman well have attested, that vol xlviiI no 33
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she had privately, over a year, shared her fear of being stalked by her classmateattacker. To make our homes, hostels, classrooms and streets safe, it is imperative that we defend every woman’s right to say “no”. To my mind, as indeed to many others, the supposed emotional relationship, or its absence, between the two students is utterly irrelevant. Girls and women school themselves into silence because of a very real fear of reprisal. That is the complex functioning of patriarchal power. Real safety exists – to live, love, work, or enjoy life – only if women feel comfortable and safe in saying “no”, and resisting the pressure to

conform and comply. This right to refusal, of staking difference, and not increased security, is what may ultimately lead to freer and more equitable forms of living and loving.
Notes
1 The panel discussion was organised to begin a series of open discussions on campus violence. One of the contexts was the rape on JNU campus in October 2012, which barring a cursory protest has disappeared from the public eye. For a cogent report, see, Eswaran and Ponniah (2013). In this regard, the JNU vice chancellor’s statement that the university will not respond to this attack by increasing security and surveillance is salutary (S N 2013). “JNU Confessions”, 1 August, https://www.facebook.com/JnuConfessions/ posts/661357817227300

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For a complex unpacking of the politics of contemporary “love”, read Baxi (2013).

References
Baxi, Pratiksha (2013): “The Affective Claims of Violence: Reflections on the JNU Campus Tragedy” (originally published as FB status), Kafila, 4 August, http://kafila.org/2013/08/04/the-affective-claims-of-violence-reflections-on-the-jnucampus-tragedy-guest-post-by-pratiksha-baxi/ Eswaran, Aparna and Ujithra Ponniah (2013): “Panel Discussion on ‘Sexual Violence’”, Economic & Political Weekly, 48(10), http://www. epw.in/web-exclusives/panel-discussion-% E2%80%98sexual-violence%E2%80%99.html Roy, Rahul (2013): “Men and Their Lakshman Rekha”, Economic & Political Weekly, 48(8), http://www.epw.in/commentary/men-andtheir-lakshman-rekha.html Vijetha, S N (2013): “JNU Will Be the Same as Ever, Assures V-C”, The Hindu, 2 August, http://www. thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/jnu-will-bethe-same-as-ever-assures-vc/article4981201.ece

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References: Baxi, Pratiksha (2013): “The Affective Claims of Violence: Reflections on the JNU Campus Tragedy” (originally published as FB status), Kafila, 4 August, http://kafila.org/2013/08/04/the-affective-claims-of-violence-reflections-on-the-jnucampus-tragedy-guest-post-by-pratiksha-baxi/ Eswaran, Aparna and Ujithra Ponniah (2013): “Panel Discussion on ‘Sexual Violence’”, Economic & Political Weekly, 48(10), http://www. epw.in/web-exclusives/panel-discussion-% E2%80%98sexual-violence%E2%80%99.html Roy, Rahul (2013): “Men and Their Lakshman Rekha”, Economic & Political Weekly, 48(8), http://www.epw.in/commentary/men-andtheir-lakshman-rekha.html Vijetha, S N (2013): “JNU Will Be the Same as Ever, Assures V-C”, The Hindu, 2 August, http://www. thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/jnu-will-bethe-same-as-ever-assures-vc/article4981201.ece 2 3 Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 17, 2013 vol xlviiI no 33 15