Feminism and the Misappropriated Tool of Free Speech
This post is in light of the recent events of attacks on Lean In (a female safe space on campus) and the feminist movement as a whole, by various students on social media.
We would like to first talk about Lean In and clarify the basic accusations on it and would simultaneously try to lay down the necessities of a safe space on campus.
Then, we would like to talk about the recent surge of social media in terms of shaping public opinion and the impacts of it — both positive and negative.
Lastly, we would try our best to engage with certain common call-outs on Feminism, centered around our experience during campus life.
Lean In is a global organisation established by Sheryl Sandberg working towards ensuring equality for women at the workplace. While the organisation at a larger scale has supported various campaigns on the wage pay gap, gender discrimination at workplaces, etc., its biggest contribution has been popularising the concept of Lean In Circles — a local support circle consisting of women, for women from different walks of life. In these small groups, women get and give peer mentorship, sharpen their skills, and have a place to be unapologetically ambitious to build up the confidence required in the real world. One such chapter is, Lean In, IIT Kharagpur, coordinated by some of the most wonderful and talented people.
Lean In at IIT Kharagpur was started two years ago and has since grown to a community of more than 100 women — current students and alumni. Weekly circle meetings, skill based workshops and interviews of femle alumni are some of the initiatives undertaken to help combat the adverse effects of living in a campus with extremely skewed sex raito and rampant casual sexism. If you’re more interested to know about what we do, you can read here. It is important to understand that it is a safe space for women on campus, so that the ones who are more vulnerable can be extended help in terms of mentorship and a basic support circle.
The recent post calling out extremely unobjectionable and misogynistic behaviour was a wake-up call for us and highlighted the need to bring out systemic changes for tackling the same. The incident prompted us to start a conversation on the need of gender sensitisation with several alumni of all genders who have had similar experiences at IIT Kharagpur.
That being said, we believe it is crucial to address the allegations against Lean In upfront, specifically that “Lean In is a propaganda agency which lures in young girls to brainwash them.”
We believe, calling something propaganda inherently means you assume the problems to be artificial. Sexism on campus exists in various ways and this need not be highlighted again and again. The choice then exists in two ways — Either to ignore its existence and disengage or become more aware of issues. The answer here is quite simple — the latter helps the campus in becoming a more inclusive space and has an overall positive impact, while denial causes no change in the status quo and in fact also delegitimizes someone’s concerns.
Secondly, the assumption of luring in women is again an extremely ignorant view on issues. While we believe, passing judgement on whether a community requires a safe space without understanding their concerns is morally questionable, it is also crucial to understand what safe spaces are. In the context of Lean In, these mean a place where you have constructive engagement on problems. Which is to say, you identify a difficulty X and try to cooperate with each other to solve it — a problem on campus which impacts its main stakeholders — i.e., women. Since these problems won’t go away in a day or two, a systematic effort by a collective community in making people more aware and women more confident, in the absence of any costs or force, is what makes this safe space beautiful. That is what makes it different from any other community which is centered around only problem identification or venting out and not problem-solving. And that makes it different from any “man-hating” group, a baseless assumption made by some.
And finally, the idea of brainwashing again exposes an implicit resentment towards this organization to not make people aware of “both” sides of the scenario. An example would be people asking why we don’t talk about men’s problems or women who have misused their gender identity. It is important to understand here that this safe space is for women and is concerned more with problems that impact them. The onus of talking about men’s problems simply does not fall on our shoulders. However, that does not mean that if we talk about problem X (women not being able to speak up), we don’t care about problem Y (other world problems) or want to cause problem Z (men’s problems). Now to answer why we had no posts highlighting Girls Locker Room. Even if people say that it is counterproductive to our aims that some women doing so and consequently tarnishing the image that others have — the people who believe in the principles of this group aren’t the ones who will be engaged in any of that and hence, being concerned about others is not the responsibility of this safe space. In addition to that, we are against the usage of isolated incidents to attack the very foundation of a larger movement which was borne out of necessity. You don’t set fire to the entire orchard after finding one bad apple in the carton. But more importantly, explicitly supporting this narrative from any women’s rights perspective is problematic because in most cases, it is the same society that dictates who “misused” their gender identity, that is biased against them in the first place. This means it ends up legitimizing the culture of victim-blaming even when we have to be against it, which as a risk we are not willing to take. The prioritization of problems is also contingent on which is more rampant and widespread among the two and our preferences here are very clear.
Lean In is always open for constructive engagements but despises all these baseless attacks for their intentions and ignorance and insensitivity.
As with the advent of social media, the barrier to entry in any discourse has decreased. It has its benefits because people have more agency to become socially aware but it also has a lot of downsides as it comes with a lack of accountability to your actions which can impact other people. Social media has evolved into a public opinion building platform rather than only being restricted to opinion sharing. And that is exactly where we are required to act more responsibly. The problem is further amplified because of inadequate guidelines on what is considered as an attack or not. Here is where listening to people who are impacted becomes important even if one is not aware. However, it is always good to engage with the trade offs.
The moment you sign in to FB, you agree to its community guidelines which have evolved over a lot of cases in the past 3–4 years, most of which already talk about the restrictions to a consumer. But still, an ability to freely express views at the cost of fueling a detrimental narrative (against any minority) is not okay because it further pushes away the vulnerable and reinforces societal misconceptions. It is important to engage with the utility that one derives from some expression and the scope of other less harmful alternatives that may exist when the former comes at the cost of somebody else. As an educated group of people, we should look into these. When people do come up to talk about issues of the minority, the echo chamber creation through false messages and seemingly popular opinions (without any check on legitimacy) makes for an asymmetric warfare and the group fighting against injustices bear the cost of it.
With respect to people who were targeting individuals and Lean In, through fake accounts — the right to freedom of expression in any scenario doesn’t extend to people without an identity who are essentially classified as “bots”. And hence, in the light of the law, it is only an act of online harassment which we, as a community should condemn.
Lastly, the broader problem between the genders exists even in an academic institution precisely because of a general lack of empathy and the retributive ways of responses by the majority of people on both sides. Building up empathy and understanding the problems of others is not a one day change but is a more gradual change which can only be initiated by the willingness in people to do so.
Our advice would be to start asking questions to yourself before you accuse somebody else and search for answers through your friends, internet, etc. An important step would be to make yourself aware of the current scenario around #MeToo in India and abroad as many have accused it to be against men.
Associate values of right and wrong with actions and messages of people instead of the people themselves. This means, calling each other hypocrites is only accusing the bearer of information but in most cases, the message and the action itself is masked and the engagement ceases to have any value and rather becomes a targeted hate content.
We hope the campus becomes more gender sensitized and overall inclusive. We encourage people to do their bit in it, which forms a part of our social responsibility.
Additional references:
Sexism on campus: https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/after-you-start/sexism-on-campus
https://medium.com/lean-in-iit-kharagpur/rishita-das-lean-in-interview-series-8-9ec1ca6f08e7
Consequences of hate speech on campus (the impacts were studied in the context of racism): https://publichealth.nyu.edu/events-news/news/2019/08/09/consequences-hate-speech
Academia invested in understanding the impact of hate speech/opinions on social media: https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/professors-work-on-ways-to-monitor-hate-speech-on-social-media
A very good debate on both sides of free speech : https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/constitutional-free-speech-principles-can-save-social-media-companies-themselves
Analysis of MeToo (India is far behind), both positive and negative: https://hrexecutive.com/employees-see-positive-changes-in-the-wake-of-metoo/
