#MeToo has flooded our social media feeds. In support of women’s issues, it is supposed to give us an idea of the magnitude of sexual harassment women face—except, sexual harassment is not a women’s problem. I don’t say this because men and transgender people also face harassment, I say this because language has power. The way we communicate, shapes our perceptions. And one of the things that I, as a Liberal Arts professor try to teach, is a different way of looking at things. The act of re-visioning, as Feminist poet Adrienne Rich would say, is crucial to bringing about social change.
The use of the passive voice in the way we address problems often leads to the way these problems become suppressed. We often ask of a woman who stays in an abusive marriage or continues to work in a sexist environment, ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’ instead of saying, ‘So-and-so beats his wife or is sexist in the workplace, why doesn’t he get fired or be jailed or given treatment?’ Untill we shift our focus and change the questions, the answers are going to be the same. Domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment will continue. People will be allowed to get away, not by the silence of the sufferers, but by the silence of those around them.
It isn’t just women’s but also men’s silence that needs to be broken—and not for the sake of our daughters as the media has been highlighting of late, but for our sons. For where does this culture of hyper-masculinity come from? Men are perhaps the worst victims of patriarchy for they are taught not to emote, not to feel, to dominate and control. A lot of sexual harassment is about control rather than sex. Non-consensual sex or rape has been used for centuries to dominate women as a show of power and the fact that more rape cases have taken place during wars, and the 1971 war is a horrific example of this, shows that rape is a tool of dominance to degrade and humiliate. And here too language comes into play.
When rape takes place, the headline often reads ‘Woman raped in Vehari’ (or any other place). Not only does the passive voice paint the woman as a victim, it lays the burden of the horrendous crime on her. Why don’t we say, a man raped a woman, instead of, a woman got raped? Jackson Katz, who writes on gender, says, ‘We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenager girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.’ So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. It shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term ‘violence against women’ is problematic. It’s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term ‘violence against women’, nobody is doing it to them. It just happens to them. Men aren’t even a part of it. And in doing so, we absolve men of all responsibility.
Taking the Harry Weinstein example, I came across headlines which read, ‘30 women were sexually harassed by Harry Weinstein’ as if they were sheep who managed to lose their way. We are making them look like lesser beings who got themselves into an awkward situation. We are creating an identity for these women as ‘abused women’. What if the headline read, ‘Harry Weinstein sexually assaulted 30 women’? Does the onus not fall on the predator rather than the prey now?
By using passive language we are in an indirect way blaming the woman for having the act enforced upon her, blaming the person to whom something was done rather than the person who did it. We create a culture of guilt and shame and then we wonder why these women didn’t come forward earlier. And those who did, were silenced by other powerful men who had a vested interest in Weinstein’s career.
As Clementine Ford said, ‘Women don’t need men to protect us. We need men to stop protecting each other.’ I have grown up hearing this adage that women need men to protect them. But now I feel this saying is incorrect, not because women don’t need security but because the real issue here is that men need to stop covering for other men. It is not the silence of women that matters, in the end it is the silence of men that is frightening. Martin Luther King’s quote, ‘In the end it is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends that will hurt us’, is apt here. Untill and unless men break this silence, until they stop protecting their fellow males, until they stop calling sexual harassment a women’s issue and take charge of shifting the paradigms of male thinking, the power dynamics of women as bitches and men as masters, until they treat sexist jokes on par with racial slurs or disability awareness or class disparity, the culture of harassment will continue. This all-boys club where men conspire to hide each others flaws, as the involvement of Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and half of Hollywood shows, will continue to flourish.
It is up to us to change this macho culture that lets criminals get away with sexism and harassment, whether sexual or verbal. And to this we must address this as a men’s issue. Sexual harassment is a real problem that men should acknowledge. One only needs to glance at this month’s headlines to see proof. Harry Weinstein engaged in sexual abuse of women for decades without being brought to trial. Republican Rep Tim Murphy was caught urging his mistress to get an abortion against her will. Trump’s triumphant exploits of sexual harassment have been applauded rather than condemned. One hears of locker room talk, which is full of sexist jokes. Untill men stop tolerating this kind of behavior amongst themselves, sexual harassment will continue.
I’m aware that men too suffer harassment and that there have also been cases of false accusations but by addressing this problem as a women’s issue alongside the right to abortion and safe-childbirth, we are absolving men of this culture of toxic masculinity and fraternity which protects the perpetrators. This is not to ignore the trauma of harassment and the pain, physical and emotional, that sufferers face. This is to stress that solutions often come from a place of empowerment and perhaps one of the reasons we are afraid to speak up is because we think of ourselves as powerless, as victims. Women who face harassment are often shamed into silence by the fear of society, of ill publicity, of being called initiators and provocateurs. Where does this shame come from? Perhaps from the fact that we address serious crimes like sexual harassment and rape as a woman’s problem. Well here is a problem: men are allowed to get away with sexual harassment and that is why it is a men’s issue. And our choice of language should reflect it.
I am not a big fan of hashtag activism though I do admire the way it has initiated a momentum about harassment awareness. However I feel by ripping open trauma wounds to hit home a problem that we know already exists we are once again making it seem like a problem with women. I agree with Matilda Dixon-Smith, who writes, ‘I’m much more ambivalent about the origins and possibilities of #MeToo…, because to me it feels like women and other survivors doing men’s jobs for them… again… Call me when there’s a #MeToo for the men who have harassed, assaulted or raped; or for the men who have laughed at an off-colour joke about sexual violence, or looked the other way when their friends behave badly. Call me when there’s a #MeToo for the people who are really responsible.’
(News editor’s note: The hashtag #IDid used in this headline was first tweeted by Elise Bauman.)
Dr Sabyn Javeri-Jillani is a Liberal Arts Professor at Habib University, and the author of the bestselling novel Nobody Killed Her (Harpercollins)
The use of the passive voice in the way we address problems often leads to the way these problems become suppressed. We often ask of a woman who stays in an abusive marriage or continues to work in a sexist environment, ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’ instead of saying, ‘So-and-so beats his wife or is sexist in the workplace, why doesn’t he get fired or be jailed or given treatment?’ Untill we shift our focus and change the questions, the answers are going to be the same. Domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment will continue. People will be allowed to get away, not by the silence of the sufferers, but by the silence of those around them.
It isn’t just women’s but also men’s silence that needs to be broken—and not for the sake of our daughters as the media has been highlighting of late, but for our sons. For where does this culture of hyper-masculinity come from? Men are perhaps the worst victims of patriarchy for they are taught not to emote, not to feel, to dominate and control. A lot of sexual harassment is about control rather than sex. Non-consensual sex or rape has been used for centuries to dominate women as a show of power and the fact that more rape cases have taken place during wars, and the 1971 war is a horrific example of this, shows that rape is a tool of dominance to degrade and humiliate. And here too language comes into play.
When rape takes place, the headline often reads ‘Woman raped in Vehari’ (or any other place). Not only does the passive voice paint the woman as a victim, it lays the burden of the horrendous crime on her. Why don’t we say, a man raped a woman, instead of, a woman got raped? Jackson Katz, who writes on gender, says, ‘We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenager girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.’ So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. It shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term ‘violence against women’ is problematic. It’s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term ‘violence against women’, nobody is doing it to them. It just happens to them. Men aren’t even a part of it. And in doing so, we absolve men of all responsibility.
We often ask of a woman who stays in an abusive marriage or continues to work in a sexist environment, 'Why doesn't she leave?' instead of saying, so-and-so beats his wife or is sexist in the workplace, why doesn't he get fired or be jailed or given treatment?
Taking the Harry Weinstein example, I came across headlines which read, ‘30 women were sexually harassed by Harry Weinstein’ as if they were sheep who managed to lose their way. We are making them look like lesser beings who got themselves into an awkward situation. We are creating an identity for these women as ‘abused women’. What if the headline read, ‘Harry Weinstein sexually assaulted 30 women’? Does the onus not fall on the predator rather than the prey now?
By using passive language we are in an indirect way blaming the woman for having the act enforced upon her, blaming the person to whom something was done rather than the person who did it. We create a culture of guilt and shame and then we wonder why these women didn’t come forward earlier. And those who did, were silenced by other powerful men who had a vested interest in Weinstein’s career.
As Clementine Ford said, ‘Women don’t need men to protect us. We need men to stop protecting each other.’ I have grown up hearing this adage that women need men to protect them. But now I feel this saying is incorrect, not because women don’t need security but because the real issue here is that men need to stop covering for other men. It is not the silence of women that matters, in the end it is the silence of men that is frightening. Martin Luther King’s quote, ‘In the end it is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends that will hurt us’, is apt here. Untill and unless men break this silence, until they stop protecting their fellow males, until they stop calling sexual harassment a women’s issue and take charge of shifting the paradigms of male thinking, the power dynamics of women as bitches and men as masters, until they treat sexist jokes on par with racial slurs or disability awareness or class disparity, the culture of harassment will continue. This all-boys club where men conspire to hide each others flaws, as the involvement of Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and half of Hollywood shows, will continue to flourish.
It is up to us to change this macho culture that lets criminals get away with sexism and harassment, whether sexual or verbal. And to this we must address this as a men’s issue. Sexual harassment is a real problem that men should acknowledge. One only needs to glance at this month’s headlines to see proof. Harry Weinstein engaged in sexual abuse of women for decades without being brought to trial. Republican Rep Tim Murphy was caught urging his mistress to get an abortion against her will. Trump’s triumphant exploits of sexual harassment have been applauded rather than condemned. One hears of locker room talk, which is full of sexist jokes. Untill men stop tolerating this kind of behavior amongst themselves, sexual harassment will continue.
I’m aware that men too suffer harassment and that there have also been cases of false accusations but by addressing this problem as a women’s issue alongside the right to abortion and safe-childbirth, we are absolving men of this culture of toxic masculinity and fraternity which protects the perpetrators. This is not to ignore the trauma of harassment and the pain, physical and emotional, that sufferers face. This is to stress that solutions often come from a place of empowerment and perhaps one of the reasons we are afraid to speak up is because we think of ourselves as powerless, as victims. Women who face harassment are often shamed into silence by the fear of society, of ill publicity, of being called initiators and provocateurs. Where does this shame come from? Perhaps from the fact that we address serious crimes like sexual harassment and rape as a woman’s problem. Well here is a problem: men are allowed to get away with sexual harassment and that is why it is a men’s issue. And our choice of language should reflect it.
I am not a big fan of hashtag activism though I do admire the way it has initiated a momentum about harassment awareness. However I feel by ripping open trauma wounds to hit home a problem that we know already exists we are once again making it seem like a problem with women. I agree with Matilda Dixon-Smith, who writes, ‘I’m much more ambivalent about the origins and possibilities of #MeToo…, because to me it feels like women and other survivors doing men’s jobs for them… again… Call me when there’s a #MeToo for the men who have harassed, assaulted or raped; or for the men who have laughed at an off-colour joke about sexual violence, or looked the other way when their friends behave badly. Call me when there’s a #MeToo for the people who are really responsible.’
(News editor’s note: The hashtag #IDid used in this headline was first tweeted by Elise Bauman.)
Dr Sabyn Javeri-Jillani is a Liberal Arts Professor at Habib University, and the author of the bestselling novel Nobody Killed Her (Harpercollins)