Some years ago, when I read Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man, I was very disturbed by a particular part. I don't remember the details very well, but a bunch of men lined up outside the home of people of another religious community and bared themselves to the women of the house. The intent was to humiliate and shame them, and I remember the mental turmoil it gave rise to, at the realisation that a man could inflict an act of violence by merely baring himself.
Why? Why should the women have given a damn, why shouldn't they have laughed and shamed them for their nudity? It was the ease that bothered me. The easy knowledge on the part of the men that they had such power from such a distance. And oddly, it made me angrier that they didn't even bother to physically hurt the women, that they thought the genital show was enough. The assumption that the sight of genitals makes a woman turn in on herself and die of shame. It's like 'look Ma, no hands', all-I-have-to-do-is-pull-out-my-gear-and-the-woman-does-all-the-work.
It was the disbalance of the power of the male body versus the female body that left me so mentally disturbed. It didn't matter how many times I had realised this in the past; a new instance would invariably manage to sneak up on me and shake me up.
I'm not particularly interested in weapons of any kind , body or otherwise, but I am ofcourse deeply interested in power imabalances. And so I find it oddly heartening to read in the newspaper today morning of the semi-nude protest by women in the POSCO agitation. The Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti spokesperson was quoted by The Hindu as saying that none of their women 'had resorted to such an act'. But the 'facts', are irrelevant. By which I mean that irrespective of whether the topless protest happened or not, what did happen is the reaction to it- of the Police, the newspaper and even the PPSS ("such an act").
It's heartening to note that women can deploy their naked bodies too to shock and shame from a distance, that the naked protest at Manipur against AFSPA and the Indian Army was not a one off case.
Why? Why should the women have given a damn, why shouldn't they have laughed and shamed them for their nudity? It was the ease that bothered me. The easy knowledge on the part of the men that they had such power from such a distance. And oddly, it made me angrier that they didn't even bother to physically hurt the women, that they thought the genital show was enough. The assumption that the sight of genitals makes a woman turn in on herself and die of shame. It's like 'look Ma, no hands', all-I-have-to-do-is-pull-out-my-gear-and-the-woman-does-all-the-work.
It was the disbalance of the power of the male body versus the female body that left me so mentally disturbed. It didn't matter how many times I had realised this in the past; a new instance would invariably manage to sneak up on me and shake me up.
I'm not particularly interested in weapons of any kind , body or otherwise, but I am ofcourse deeply interested in power imabalances. And so I find it oddly heartening to read in the newspaper today morning of the semi-nude protest by women in the POSCO agitation. The Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti spokesperson was quoted by The Hindu as saying that none of their women 'had resorted to such an act'. But the 'facts', are irrelevant. By which I mean that irrespective of whether the topless protest happened or not, what did happen is the reaction to it- of the Police, the newspaper and even the PPSS ("such an act").
It's heartening to note that women can deploy their naked bodies too to shock and shame from a distance, that the naked protest at Manipur against AFSPA and the Indian Army was not a one off case.
