Sexual Harassment Through the Lens of Caste, Class, Colour, Race

What is sexual harassment? How do you define it? Where do you draw a line and where does it stem from?

A Twitter account @genderlogindia, which crowdsources content around gender, consent and sexual harassment, started a tweet thread on Sunday, to decode sexual harassment.

Today, we want to start our discussion on the issue of #sexualharassment and the issues around #sexualbehaviour and #consent. The most basic description of sexual harassment is a range of unwanted behaviours and actions directed at a person due to his/her sex.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Identifying Sexual Harassment

These include any unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favours, verbal teasing or taunting of a sexual nature, unwelcome touch or physical gestures, coercion or bullying. #SexualHarassment is always an act of exercising patriarchal power over the victim.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Patriarchy’s Role in Sexual Harassment

But what exactly do we mean by patriarchal privilege? #Patriarchy by its most simple definition means a system of power that works towards enabling men and subjugating women.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Gloria Anzaldua in La Frontera/The Borderlands writes that culture “is made by those in power – men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them.” Hence, #patriarchy is enforced by the cultural system(s) that decides men are superior and women are inferior.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

When System Tells You Males Are Superior

In bell hooks’ (2004) ‘The Will to Change,’ she writes that #patriarchy is a “political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females”

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

However, feminists caution us to note that patriarchy is not monolithic; it cuts across race, caste, class, sexualities and cultures. Resulting in different axes of power and privilege that give rise to complex structures of oppression.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Factors That Define Behaviour Across Sections

Therefore, women depending on their race, caste, religion, class and/or sexuality are forced to negotiate with different systems of oppression; all of which can be ultimately linked back to patriarchy and notions of male superiority. 1/2

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Because the structures of the world, the system of the powerful and the powerless, the elite and minority, the oppressor and the oppressed, were developed by men with greater access of social, political, cultural and economic power. 2/2

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

The patriarchal binaries of masculine and feminine, make all women vulnerable to #sexualviolence. But, women who find themselves at the lower end of this complex power play due to their sexual orientation, class, race or caste, are more vulnerable to #sexualviolence.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Decoding Complex Issue of Sexual Harassment

Hence, sexual harassment is a complex problem that cannot be understood through simple binaries of male and female but have to be addressed through the inherent complexities of one’s social, political, economic and cultural worlds.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

But as a WoC living in the UK, I have lesser agency than white women when fighting against #sexualharassment and #sexualviolence. Hence, when fighting sexual harassment, we must address issues not of gender but also race, class, caste, sexual orientation and culture.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Tied to the question of agency, is also a greater question of the spectrum of sexually harassing behaviours and actions. And the issue of which stories of sexual harassment are included in the narrative and which ones are excluded. https://t.co/jkAQeo9blX

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

In the Indian context, Raya Sarkar's List of Sexual Harassers in Academia was met with polarising debate from all feminist quarters. Her feminist ethics and methodologies were questioned, and she had to face severe backlash and death and rape threats.

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018

Need More Conversation Around Sexual Harassment

What is needed is diverse conversations about #sexualharassment and #sexualabuse. Diverse stories and narratives of people to realise that #sexualharassment cuts across all genders, castes, classes, sexualities and cultures. As @TaranaBurke rightly states. pic.twitter.com/wMn00pEAmG

— Genderlog (@genderlogindia) June 10, 2018