When ‘good men’ are silent on rape, every Indian woman suffers. So we say ‘yes all men’

In India, victims or survivors of rape have to be truly exceptional to first, get men's attention; and second, be worthy of their outrage.

For representation only | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint

Dear Good Indian Men,

I, an Indian woman, address you, because you have shamed yourselves, your families, and your nation yet again. You, good sirs, are responsible for the horrific rape and murder of a young trainee doctor in a prominent Kolkata hospital. I won’t bother to recount the macabre details of that incident, even though they have been seared into my brain.

A few months down the line, when another such case will “shake the conscience” of India for the nth time, I – and many Indian women like me – will be able to recall the post-mortem report of “Doctor Di”. Just the way I can remember the extent of the injuries visited upon “Nirbhaya’s” body, 12 years later. Or what drugs were administered to the child victim in the Kathua case. Or what time in the night the Hathras victim – left paralysed by the assault by multiple ‘upper’ caste men – was cremated by the police, without the presence of her own family. Or how many men surrounded and paraded naked two Kuki-Zo women in Manipur.

You will forget, but we will remember everything. The next time such a heinous crime takes place, it will be a fresh opportunity for good Indian men to outrage on a brand new day. For Indian women, however, it will be just another day in the continuum of sexual violence.

You’ve failed us

Online or offline, when we express our valid, justifiable rage, a bunch of very good men will tell us: “Not all men” are rapists and sexual offenders. We’ll be told that murderous and abusive men are a very different breed, and that we – women who can’t dream of taking a nap after 36 hours being on their feet – should be careful not to hurt good men. Because presumably, your fragile feelings of adequacy and well-being are more important than my actual safety.

So I want to use this opportunity to talk to you, good men – who don’t rape or harm women in any obvious ways – about how you have failed us.

You have failed us because you, along with the women of this country, have accepted that sexual violence is a part and parcel of life. But only we are the ones paying the price for your resignation. In this country, victims or survivors have to be truly exceptional to first, get your attention, and second, be worthy of your outrage. They have to be too small, too young, too old, too good, too accomplished, too foreign, too “people like us”. The rest of the women and children of this country, the ones who are poor or “lower caste” are meant to lump it.

But we’re not going to just lump it. If the victims are women, children, other men, and animals, while the perpetrators are men, sexual violence no longer remains a women’s issue – it is a men’s issue. And until good men like you realise that, it’s “yes all men”.

In the wake of every such incident, another group of well-intentioned good men will tell us how to handle ourselves in the face of assault. They will issue guidelines on what women ought to wear and when they should leave their safe spaces. They will give us advisories on how many people we should inform about our whereabouts and whether mace is better than pepper spray to defend ourselves against potential assaulters – as if women don’t already have a safety calculus running like a background app in their minds. Some of you will hang your heads and tell us we’re much better off living abroad, where they respect women a lot more.

But not one of you good men will ever bother to ask: Where are the guidelines or advisories for men? Where are the handbooks directing men not to rape and abuse and assault others? Why aren’t there rape prevention centres full of men at risk of becoming perpetrators? Until good men like you can learn to make these demands, we’re going to keep saying, “yes all men”.

Some good men remember that they are great allies to women when social media algorithms make it advantageous for them, like at a time like this. You fine sirs love the outrage cycle because it offers you an opportunity to compose poems or lengthy videos about our distress, where you cast us as goddesses or fragile beings that need protection. Good men call for the death penalty for sexual violence – even though research suggests that it actually endangers women further – or at least a good mob lynching or encounter killing for the perpetrators.

These good men want us to believe they’re on our side, and maybe they really are. But instead of listening to women’s voices and amplifying their opinions, good men like you are eager that we hear yours. When the outrage cycle reaches its penumbra, good men absolve themselves, pat themselves on the back for being such great allies. But women don’t want allies that drown out our voices or talk at us. Until you can stop talking and learn – really learn – to listen to the experiences of women, it’s a “yes all men” from all of us.

No use for your high-minded virtue

Women, by virtue of simply talking about their experiences of sexual and gender-based violence, are defaming India, worry a lot of self-proclaimed “good men” (though that truly stretches that definition.) These good men en masse occupy the mentions of anyone who suggests that Indian women are particularly unsafe. You’ll probably find them in the comments on this post. Not only have these men foisted the responsibility of a country’s honour on our sagging shoulders, they also go on to school us with cherry-picked news reports on rape in the United States or United Kingdom or Narnia. To these good men, we say, thank you for making our point for us. But also, you’re especially the men we mean when we say “yes all men”.

Not one of you fine specimens will ever question the status quo that upholds your power, for fear of losing that privilege. You know you’ve witnessed it in your circles – the man you’d never introduce to your sister, or the one who doesn’t get boundaries when he’s drunk, or the one you’ve just classified as an all-purpose shady. These are versions of men whose supposedly benign behaviour you excuse, which, in turn, validates them. Deep down, you know this, therefore you tell yourselves little white lies to escape culpability. Maybe you think calling them out won’t make a difference. Maybe you think it’s just not that serious and that’s him just horsing around and after all, boys will be boys. Maybe you think you can balance things out by being your virtuous self and being good to women.

But we have no use for your high-minded virtue. Showing solidarity with the “fun kind of feminism”, as posited by author Andrea Dworkin, doesn’t cost you anything. Unless you’re willing to feel and partake of a little bit of the discomfort that women have internalised, no actual change is possible. Unless you’re willing to suffer jibes from other men (“simp!” or “wimp!”) and have your own masculinity examined, your empathy is of no use to us. And if good men like you continue to believe that only serious issues like sexual assault are worthy of your attention, but not everyday experiences of women of minor harassment, verbal aggression, gender-based workplace discrimination, maybe you should reexamine your goodness.

Everyone suffers from the conformist silence of a vast majority of good men. Your refusal to question your peer groups, or checking unsettling, misogynistic or outright predatory behaviour can mean only two things: That either men are afraid of other men, or they’re unwilling to give up their social currency.

As many feminist theorists have pointed out in the past, all men – but especially good ones – benefit from the terrible behaviour of bad men. It keeps women in check; it helps them accept the barest possible minimum from the men they are close to, and be grateful for it.

Even when we know it’s not all men, the reticence of good men has forced our hand to say, “yes all men”. You’re, of course, welcome to change our minds.

Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)