Who is the Sleaziest of Them All?

Shilpa Phadke, Anjali Monteiro and K P Jayasankar ask why the reportage of the recent sexual assault of a young woman plumbs new depths in insensitive, unethical and sleazy journalism.

The print media has, on many occasions, been a good friend to the women’s movement. By giving space to gender issues, specifically those related to violence against women, it has played a role in the popularizing of a feminist politics. Many sections of the media continue to be at least liberal and sympathetic to the cause of gender equality. What then permits the kind of sensationalist reporting that not just undermines all those progressive values but actually violates, in spirit if not in letter, the law? Does the logic of the market and the imperative to titillate override all ethical and professional norms?

The Mumbai Mirror has been particularly reprehensible and unethical in making public the contents of the entire FIR in the case of the rape of an international student of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai this month violating her right to anonymity and dignity. Such reportage is clearly counterproductive and sends a strong negative message to the survivors of sexual assault. In the future, many would hesitate to come out and complain, for fear of being torn to shreds by the media and in some ways facing a second assault at the hands of the sensation seeking media. Nor despite demands from women’s groups has The Mumbai Mirror adequately apologized for their irresponsible journalism. Apart from a token and wholly inadequate apology for offending their readers’ sentiments, the paper has failed to even acknowledge that it has erred terribly.

Nor have most other papers been very careful in whom they quote or the facts they print without verification. The Times of India, on the first day, chose to put in its headlines, on page 1, “US student raped by batchmates in Mumbai”, despite the fact that later in its report it mentions the police said that they were Tata Institute of Social Sciences students but this was denied by TISS. Interestingly, none of the other English language papers seem to have had access to this police source, as all of them reported that they were students of other colleges. While the TOI corrected its statement the next day, many people still believe that the criminals were students of TISS. This irresponsible, if not malicious reporting has attempted to tarnish the reputation of not just an institution, but also of hundreds of students who study there.

The press has not balked at giving prominent space to the comments made by the accused who seek to slander the survivor or to the parents of the accused who can only moan that their ‘golden boys’ can do no wrong. Oddly enough one of the first comments made by the papers about the accused were that they were all from “good families”, whatever that means, demonstrating not just a lack of ethics but also a lack of journalistic accuracy. The mud slinging has begun and the press shows no signs of exercising restraint in their printing of slanderous comments by the accused questioning the morality of the young woman. ‘Blaming the victim’ is a common social response to violence against women, and the media on its part is doing little to prevent this from happening. If the media continues to report in this vein it could well bias the trial against the young woman seeking justice.

Meanwhile women’s hostels in the city are seeking to tighten rules for their residents and restrict them further. The International Students Hostel, where many of the accused resided, has closed their mess to women without offering any explanations. Some hostels have informed women students that they will have to leave immediately after exams. These repercussions of assault then are already being felt by women whose access to the city is further restricted. Yet one has not seen a single journalistic piece of reporting that focuses on this. In their reportage thus far the media have shown not just a lack of responsibility but also a lack of insight.

What we need now is a reportage that will focus on the larger picture, one that will be able to contextualise this one woman’s quest for justice within the larger question of women’s right to have fun with being constantly threatened with violence and then blamed for it.

Protests and debates on the issue:

Women’s groups and students have protested and demonstrated outside the Mumbai Mirror offices.

Only one newspaper, The Hindu, saw fit to cover this. There has also been some comment generated on the subject and a debate on the loss of ethics of the media is ongoing.

And a blog has been started to debate the issue.

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Shilpa Phadke is a sociologist, researcher and pedagogue. Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar are documentary film makers and academics; they teach and research in the area of media and cultural studies.

PUCL-K Report: Cultural Policing in Dakshin Kannada

THE PEOPLE’S Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka (PUCL-K), has put together a very comprehensive report on Cultural Policing in Dakshin Kannada. The fact-finding team (which included our contributor Usha BN) traveled to Mangalore and conducted extensive interviews with key groups, activists, academics and the police. The report provides interesting background information on Dakshin Kannada as a region, looks at the current climate of fear and lawlessness, and examines the multiple factors involved in this. It points out some very interesting things — the intersection of communalisation and criminalisation, cultural policing as ‘social apartheid’ and the role of the media, police, civil society. Read / download the entire report for free. Please spread the word widely as well by pasting extracts on your blogs or websites if possible.

Excerpts:

As one observer, who has been covering the events in Dakshina Kannada, put it, “Today saffron is the colour of power. You just walk around with a big red tilak and see how people treat you. Right from the shop keeper to the bus conductor to the policeman, everybody gives you respect. Without the tilak you are nothing, with the tilak you become a power structure.” Munir Kattipalya of the DYFI echoes this sentiment when he says, “This district is not only communalized but also progressively criminalized.”

What is indicated by such statements is that there is a strong link between communalization and criminalization. It is precisely because the state has chosen not to act when criminal activities are perpetrated under the garb of religion that criminal elements now feel that they have the sanction to perpetrate violence and Cultural Policing in Dakshina Kannada other forms of intimidation by using the garb of religion. This possibly explains the proliferation of vigilante groups in Dakshina Kannada.

And:

Cultural policing in turn leads to forms of ‘social apartheid.’ By ‘social apartheid,’ what we mean is a policing of community boundaries through laying down what manners of dress and what manners of expression are appropriate for each selfenclosed community. The conventional understanding of apartheid as it was practiced in South Africa refers to a structure of segregation of the people of South Africa through law. By social apartheid, we mean a practice of segregating communities on the basis of religion and gender by self-styled vigilante groups as well as prescribing appropriate behaviour and conduct for the separate communities. Social apartheid is successful only because it has the implicit support of the state, and hence enjoys immunity for its patently lawless actions. It is important to stress that social apartheid is not just about segregating communities but it is equally concerned about the culture, dress, and deportment of individuals within the community.

Poster Colours

SOME OF YOU have asked how you can help in the campaign against the attacks on women in Mangalore and Bangalore. Running a poster campaign in your neighborhood, college or office is a quick and easy way.  Here are some posters I’ve received from different organizations. Click on the download link to get a large-size version which you can print out. Make copies and put them up wherever you can.

Evil As She Does

By Amrita Rajan

Pity the female villain.

Male villains can look forward to world domination, tons of moolah and all the power they can handle; females, on the other hand, spend all their time scheming to sabotage various weddings when they’re not forcing their daughters-in-law to mop floors while dressed in rags or nagging their husbands to death. And if somehow they manage to stumble onto a bitchin’ gig, they might just find themselves laboring under gallons of body paint and CGI because God forbid they show an actual live woman having the sort of fun men having been having for ages now (before getting blown up or dissolved in a vat of acid, naturally).

Male villains get cool names, all the chicks they can bang, and fly around the world like the billionaires they frequently are; female villains are typically the mom or the wife from hell, nobody loves them much less wants to bang them, and all their plotting and planning usually leaves them with a wrinkly face.

Chee. Who’d want to be a female villain?

What Lies Beneath?

IT’S BEEN AMUSING to see the uproar around the Pink Chaddi Campaign over the last few days, with some of the ‘finest journalistic minds in the country’ pitching in with their opinions. This piece, ironically called ‘What Lies Beneath’, by Sagarika Ghose in Hindustan Times was particularly baffling, shallow as a frying pan and about as full of noise. I wish one could ignore such vapidity, but the piece was also disturbing at many levels. Some of us sent a rejoinder to HT. Unsurprisingly, they neither acknowledged it, nor responded. 

Many Kinds of Silence

A WHILE BACK, we started talking about cyber stalking at UV and over at GenderIT, I came across this article on cyber crime which got me thinking again. One of the things that writer Weiting Xu talks about is how women in cyberspace are particularly vulnerable in much the same way as they are offline:

On the one hand, ICT have created opportunities to combat inequality through movements and communities against issues that were once deemed ‘private’, such as domestic violence and sex trafficking. On the other hand, ICT exacerbate existing structures of inequality by enabling cyber criminals to access and misuse private information to target vulnerable groups.

Self-expression and social networking websites

HOW DO I WRITE an article that does not sound like a celebrity too much crying paparazzi, an article where I want to discuss issues that are political but have arisen out of experiences in my personal life?  How do I write an article about the dangers that women writing on gender and caste have to be well-prepared for, without sounding like somebody who wants undue publicity about unpleasant things happening to her? How do I sound genuine and serious when I discuss something that might appear as trivia(l)?

Where do I begin after all?

Indian Feminism 101

By Shilpa Phadke

Mistaking one work of fiction to represent all women in a country is rather blinkered and when it’s a country of the diversity and complexity of India, it borders on the ridiculous. Compounding this by attempting to pontificate on a subject about which you clearly know nothing and circulating this in an international newspaper should be a libelous act. I refer to Anand Giridharadas’s recent piece ‘A feminist revolution skips the liberation’ in the column ‘Letter from India’ in the International Herald Tribune. The writer begins innocuously enough by reviewing Meenakshi Madhavan Reddy’s book ‘You are Here’. The trouble begins when Madhavan Reddy’s fictional protagonist Arshi, drawn from her blog, begins to represent all Indian women–or at least all Indian urban women and what he calls ‘Indian feminism’.

Deepa Mehta and ‘Bell Bajao’

DEEPA MEHTA’S new film on domestic violence premiered at the Toronto film festival. There were two reasons the trailers caught my eye. Firstly, because the abusive man is played by Vansh Bharadwaj who I’ve seen in Neelam Mansingh’s terrific play, The Suit, which played here in Bangalore twice in the last year. I loved his rendition of the cuckolded husband turned manic. The second reason is because it reminded me so much of Provoked, the last Indian film on domestic violence. The context seems very similar. Simple, sheltered Pujabi girl is married off to NRI abusive husband and then finds her escape.

The Fair and the Lovely

THE STEREOTYPES: homemaker, femme fatale, bold and beautiful, supermom, sex bomb. The creators: television, cinema, advertisements, magazines. All depict women who can be beautiful only if they are white-skinned, reed-thin and look like Barbie dolls. Take mainstream Indian cinema. What is common across most of it is the depiction of women, who can never look disheveled, untidy or even a wee bit like their real life counterparts. When there is the portrayal of a woman, who cannot pass off as stereotypically beautiful by media standards, her transformation into the ‘normative beautiful’ becomes necessary.

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence

THE DAY FOR THE Elimination of Violence against Women passed yesterday and kicked off 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence, an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991. Sponsored by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, the 16 Days Campaign has been used as an organizing strategy by individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women by:

Women in the Media, Listen Up!

By Nithya

Maybe there will be a shift some day between the power held by blogs versus mainstream media. For now, no matter how you slice it, the media still rules with its ability to reach critical mass, stir up discussion and engage with citizens in dialogue. While blogs like Ultra Violet are doing a bang-up job of articulating what it means to be a feminist in our society, it’s mainstream media that’s still lagging in using its powers to shatter stereotypes. And often, their retrograde attitudes spill over onto new media platforms as well. Today, I read a blog post by ‘journalist’ Sumita Chatterjee on NDTV.com. Sumita tackles a topic that might have been a strong debate for the feminist movement but quickly waters it down with her gutless and facile stance.