Mayawati Row: What’s So Hateful About Prostitutes?

Outrage over Dayashankar comparing Mayawati to a ‘prostitute’ may feel like a protest against sexism, but it’s not.

Dayashankar Singh, BJP UP’s chief, recently compared Mayawati to a prostitute in a media statement and everybody lost their sh*t.

Mayawati is breaking the dream of Kanshi Ram into pieces. Mayawati is selling tickets (sic)... Mayawati gives tickets for Rs 1 crore and if there is someone who can give Rs 2 crore, than she sells it for Rs 2 crore within an hour. If someone is ready to give Rs 3 crore by the evening, she gives the ticket to him. Today, her character is worse than that of a prostitute.

Dayashankar Singh

Dayashankar has been dismissed from the party, and has had an FIR filed against him by the BSP. Police have even said they’ll arrest him, driving him into hiding.

What’s with this sudden fevered reaction? Are we, at long last, waking up to the sexism deployed so casually against women?

Not really. Sadly, there’s something more insidious at work here – a sexism that too often goes unrecognised.

The bipartisan anger has less to do with battling sexism against female leaders, and more to do with our collective hatred of prostitutes.

Saying Mayawati has ‘worse character than a prostitute’ insults and demeans women who are very often forced by circumstance into this oldest of professions in order to feed their families and themselves. A majority of India’s 1.2 million prostitutes are forced into sex work by poverty. Climate change, for example, is forcing women in the Sundarbans increasingly into sex work to make a living.

Such crass remarks are a reflection of attitudes that degrade and marginalise prostitutes, who often enter the profession for a lack of other options. In this profession that sees horrifyingly high rates of abuse and rape at the hands of men, to  malign them as having ‘bad character’ is hideous in its callousness.

It is of course despicable to link criticism of a woman to her supposed sexual behaviour. After all, we don’t call men who engage in corruption gigolos, do we? The gendered attack on women and women’s sexuality is something that needs to be addressed and rooted out, there’s no doubt about it, and I shed no tears for Dayashankar’s ignominious exit.

But the protests against Singh’s comment have absolutely nothing to do with outrage about sexism. On the contrary, the outrage comes from the ingrained belief that a prostitute is so vile a creature, that simply comparing a political opponent to one is reason enough for dismissal and legal prosecution.

The uproar over comparing Mayawati to a prostitute is a shocking indictment of our attitudes towards sex workers, the vast majority of which are women.

Police have gotten involved, and the man faces imprisonment for his brazen display of sexism. Meanwhile, prostitutes are regularly raped and abused by the men who pay them, with not a single protest in sight. Police routinely dismiss them when they seek help, and participate in their abuse themselves when they try to file complaints against violent clients – precisely because of this belief that they are of ‘bad character’ and are, therefore, fair game for any manner of mistreatment.

While this is happening, the people who drive demand for the profession (such high demand that women and girls are kidnapped and sold to fulfil it) – male clients – escape blithely as the women whose services they happily avail of are reviled, demeaned, and treated as second-class citizens.

Women across the country are denied adequate education, discriminated against at work, married off in their youth and made financially dependent on men... and then we turn around and spit venom at them when they enter a profession that offers them the means to take care of themselves.

In a very real way, much of the sanctimonious condemnation of Singh’s comment contributes to a culture that sees prostitutes as undeserving of basic respect; a culture that turns a blind eye when these women are abused and exploited.

Mayawati, here is what you could have said:

“Being compared to a prostitute does not insult me, Singh ji. If you want to hurt my feelings, compare me to an entitled male politician.”