The Dystopic World of Men
Murder of live-in partners
The morning newspaper a few days
ago had the grisly news of how young man from Delhi killed his live-in partner
with a mobile charging cable and then stuffed her body into a fridge! This
incident was eerily similar to another incident reported about three months
ago, also from Delhi where another young man had murdered his live-in girlfriend,
chopped her body into 35 pieces, and over the next 16 days disposed the pieces.
He did this in May last year and had managed to keep it secret till November!
Before one could say “Goodness, what is with these young men from Delhi!”,
there was a news in the next morning’s newspaper about a young man from Mumbai
this time, who had killed his live-in girlfriend and then stuffed her body into
a box bed. Apparently he had murdered her a few days ago and decamped from the
flat where they lived. It was only after the foul smell drew people’s attention
that the foul deed was discovered. If this were a detective serial one would be
tempted to think of copy-cat murders, and not serial murders because the
clearly the murderers are all different men and have been apprehended.
Andrew Tate
Earlier this week I was asked by an
associate whether I had seen any of Andrew Tate’s podcasts or videos. I had no
clue about the person and asked why I should be watching his videos any way. She
informed me that he talked about men and masculinity and was very popular on social
media. He was an influencer and his posts had millions of views. She felt that I
needed to know about him because he talked about the imperatives and pressures
of masculinity. And then she showed me one of his videos on YouTube. On a
cursory 30 second glance he seemed to be spouting the standard ‘real man’ mantras
to be brave, to face up to the world, to protect and provide. I didn’t give him
much thought and we continued the conversation on different lines. Two days
later I was browsing the BBC app and the headline ‘Inside
the War Room of Andrew Tate’, caught my eye. The article was sketchy but I
learnt that Andrew Tate was a social media phenomenon like no other. A person
who wanted to ‘free the modern man from socially induced incarceration’, he was
currently detained in Romania on charges of rape, human trafficking and
exploitation of women. The title of a BBC documentary that was to be released
on 21st February was provocative ‘The Dangerous rise of Andrew Tate’.
Intrigued by this controversial
personality of whom I knew nothing earlier, I did some more digging and I
learnt that he was 35 years old, a kickboxer and after appearing on the reality
show Big Brother had become an internet phenomenon in a matter of months. His
USP was a plethora of offensive, misogynist and sexually charged opinions and
advice . What was astounding was that his misogynistic views had earned him
over eleven billion views on TikTok in the matter of months. That is more than
the whole world’s population. Clearly he was very popular and people viewed him
repeatedly. Some call him the ‘King of
Toxic Masculinity’. I learnt he is
popular among young men and boys of the US and UK and has many schools worried
about his influence, including increase in cases of sexual harassment . He also
started an online academy called ‘Hustler’s University’. The very threadbare Hustler’s
University website said its ‘teaching philosophy’ was ‘making money while
learning to make money’ and that winning makes winning easier. The courses were
simple like E-commerce, Copywriting and Freelancing and moving on to crypto
currencies and stock. This simple win-win formula for learning claimed over
100,000 students worldwide! My Google search drew several videos titled
‘Inspirational videos’, since much of his content had been removed. Despite his
immense popularity he was finally been banned by Youtube, Tik Tok and Instagram
for ‘misogyny’, ‘hate speech’ and violating community norms. He then had to
shut down Hustler’s University. Twitter however reinstated his account in
November and his podcasts are still available on Tate Speech. And the
phenomenon continues to wield tremendous influence.
Arrests over Child Marriage
Far from the world of Andrew Tate
is the state of Assam which has been in the news recently because of a hard
crackdown on child-marriage. India has had a law for preventing child marriage
since 1929 but child marriage continues to be prevalent nearly a century later.
Over the years the minimum age of marriage has risen and in recent years the law has been made more
stringent and from a law advising restraint it is now prohibited. Assam has
been in the news because in the last month or so over
3000 persons have been arrested on the count of child marriage. These pertain
to cases of child marriage that have taken place in the past, and includes,
Qazis, who solemnised the marriage, fathers of the bride and groom as well in
some cases the mother and of course the man who is ‘guilty’ of child marriage.
Some of these people have been lodged in the detention centres which had been
prepared earlier to house detainees who would not be able to prove their
citizenship under the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The Chief Minister of Assam
Himanta Biswa Sarma has been in the news for many years now. I had first learnt
of him as the Health Minister of the earlier Congress government when the
National Rural Health Mission had started more than 15 years ago. He was
considered an able administrator who was willing to try new ideas. Later he
changed over to the opposing BJP and soon had managed to become the Chief
Minister. Child marriage is known as a politically fraught issue and in states
like Rajasthan, where it is probably the most prevalent, child marriage is said
to enjoy political patronage and often political leaders grace the occasion.
Considering this background, the Chief Minister of Assam seems to have taken a
very bold step to tackle an entrenched social problem.
What seemed a little out of place
when I first read the news of these arrests was the reference to Qazis, and
that the few names of arrested men which came out in the first dispatches were from
the minority community. While arrests have been made in many districts, many of
these districts have a high minority populations. The question that came to my
mind was whether this was more a measure to get to the minority population in
the state, than to improve the situation of the girl child? Earlier the state
had passed a two-child norm restricting development benefits to those having
more than two children, and the chief minister had clearly mentioned that it
was a problem with one community. Perhaps this was another way of targeting
masculine honour?
A common thread
These three stories are very
disparate but to me they probably tell a story which we cannot ignore. Yes
murder, no matter what the conditions, is a crime and needs to be punished
after investigation and according to law. And misogyny has no place in a
society that is predicated on equality and dignity for all humans. Similarly
forcing young girls into marriage, tying them more often than not into a
lifetime of productive and reproductive servitude into another family cannot be
condoned by any society. Each story highlights continuing gender discrimination
and persistent violence against women, across the world, but that is not all.
The first three stories have
another common thread, they were all in live-in relationships. After the first
murder came to light, there was a plethora of press about the lack of family
support for women who choose their own partners. Women too were encouraged to
stay within the bounds of caste and religion when choosing their own partners. But
what the stories also highlight is that women from ‘everyday’ families are now
living-in with partners of their choice and they are able to get rented accommodation,
which I will also consider a social
acceptance from a similar ‘everyday’ society. This is a radical departure from
fifteen of twenty years ago. Yes marriages have become more ostentatious and
religious and caste boundaries continue to dictate the majority, but women are
also stepping outside these boundaries and larger society is accepting them.
This is a huge blow to patriarchy, at least in our part of the world where
women’s honour, often marked by a control over their sexuality and
reproduction, is its defining feature. The murder of women by their partners
and their families has been an age old phenomenon here, we just need to recall
dowry murders and honour killings. So, this shouldn’t surprise us.
For me the importance of Andrew
Tate does not lie in the man himself, but the immense popularity that has generated
within months. Even stars from entertainment industry or sports do not enjoy
such a meteoric rise. The frenzy around Elvis and the Beatles probably pales
into insignificance. And politicians and demagogues rarely enjoy such a global
popularity. A similar phenomenon happened here in India a couple of years ago. The film Kabir Singh,
prepared with a budget of sixty crores, collected more than 375 crores at the
box office. Unlike Pathaan where overseas box office contributed a
considerable portion of the collections, in the case of Kabir Singh it was
overwhelmingly domestic. The film was panned for glorifying toxic masculinity!
Why is misogyny so popular? What
makes statements and acts that demeans women so catchy? Why do young men and
boys find it cool to consume opinions around rape and violence? Clearly
somethings have changed in the minds of boys. Somethings must have changed in
the lives of men and what they see around them that has radically altered their
perceptions and aspirations.
The world of men has changed
radically in the last twenty-five or thirty years. Little boys continue to be
brought up by their families to feel special. When I say families, this
includes mothers and grandmothers because patriarchy is sustained by all of us,
not just the men. But in the larger world outside many things have changed. The
formal, legal mechanisms can no longer support male superiority or patriarchy because
it is a form of inequality and inequality received a very bad name through
Hitler! In a collective expiation of ‘male’ guilt, the world acknowledged equality
and human rights. In India, as a result of the continuous exhortations against
caste of Ambedkar and his stern guidance in the Constituent Assembly India
adopted secularism and equality. However in their heart of hearts many men across
the world, especially those from privileged social groups, continued to crave
their entitlements.
In the intervening years, much
has changed. Racism and apartheid were challenged, feminists called for a new
consciousness among women. Dalit consciousness in created new political and
social movements in India. New subnational movements in several countries and OBC
assertions in India created new political alignments. Neo-liberal globalisation
and changes in the labour market and mass migrations created other social
disruptions. There was rise of the rich, of the middle class as well as new
kinds of deprivation.
In my understanding women have
been better able to cope with these challenges, because at one level, despite
the many adversities there have been more opportunities for them than earlier.
The home and hearth, perennial servitude to men and coercion and violence are no
longer the only possibilities. This is not to say women could not have a ‘good
space’ within classical patriarchy. There was a space for the obedient woman,
the ideal wife, the good mother but they existed within strictly defined
boundaries. Women now can aspire beyond these boundaries. At a very simplistic
level slogans like ‘beti bachao, beti padhao’ ( raise your daughters educate
your daughters) or ‘mahila sashaktikaran’ (women’s empowerment) provide a conceptual
broadening of horizons for women. It is not surprising therefore that there are
many more girls going to school and continuing their education. The glass
ceiling remains a barrier but many more women are in formal workspaces.
What is the situation of men and
boys in similar situations? Brought with a sense of being special they find
that the world no longer is theirs to preside over. In all spaces traditional
hierarchies have been disrupted. Economic opportunities have changed. Older and
often attitudes have fewer resonances. Men’s position in their own world, is no
longer what they had imagined it would be! It is a strange insecurity that
Andrew Tate and his ilk are feeding on. Their immense popularity shows the how
many young men and older boys are insecure. It is not only their failing, its
ours as well, as we fail to bring them to anticipate a new world and cope with
change and adversity.
Personal insecurities are also
creating new forms of collective standards and of defining the ‘new normal’.
This is where the story of child marriage fits into this puzzle. How girls
should be married is often a defining norm of a ‘society’ because it is central
to sexuality and to reproduction, key elements of how a society reproduces
itself. Traditional societies often have strict boundary rules of who, when,
how, and then defining success or failure in terms of numbers and sex of the offspring.
When discussions around child marriage emerged in India over a century ago, one
of the issues discussed was ‘identity’. Who were the British to tell the Indians
when to marry their girls. The Mohamedans (as Muslims were formally known then)
had actually declined to get into this argument because in Islam girls were
usually married after attaining puberty. This was far older than when girls
were married among Hindu, well before puberty. It may well be surmised that
child marriage was one of the issues around which Hindu identity coalesced as a
national identity.
If we fast forward to present
times, we find similar conflation of backwardness with identity. In Assam
having more than two children had first attracted penalty. Now with the arrests
around child marriage the state has indicated a new hard boundary. Transgressing
this boundary is now a culpable criminal act. It is quite possible that a
particular community, who are in a minority, have more children and have more
girls who are married before the legal age. It is also quite possible that the
same community is socially and economically more vulnerable. Instead of
creating enabling and supportive conditions, the state policy of discipline and
punishment probably creates a new criminal category. Such policy makes some
people more insecure, but at the same time assuages the insecurities of many. And the seeds of hierarchy, conflict, and
violence on which traditional masculinity feeds, will receive further
nourishment.
Thought provoking! Well analyzed.
ReplyDelete