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 21^st 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.