By Sushil Kutty
Okay, it’s happening. ‘Whisper networks’ on Whatsapp have come alive. Prominent bylines are suddenly sexual predators. Name and shame, says the woman journalist victim/survivor of alleged sexual misconduct dating back years when the senior journalist was a decade younger. Nobody accusing is saying he was full of oats then but “he had that glint in the eye”, and “you know what, he laid a hand on my thigh, I cringed.”
Yep, male is predator; female is prey. And these days of #MeToo he should be the one cringing. Men journalists suspect are being pushed to walk into the sunset. The world is turning into a loony bin. One flew east, one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest! Ole ‘sweet nothings’ spoken across lunch at a swanky restaurant, orange juice and spring rolls to get going, are being resurrected to hoist the man-journalist by his own petard.
That’s about a senior print journalist who frequently appears on TV to hold to task political parties flirting with public order. Years ago, he took a female colleague to lunch and for appetizers told “her”, “Baby, I love you.” She said, “Nada” and he buttoned up, paid the bill, and went home. Next morning, out of frustration or love blues, which happens, you know, he sent her a “sarcastic” message which she pulled out “yesterday” after twitter handle @restlessquil started a #MeToo thread to hang male-journalists’ sexual misconduct.
#MeToo is like a clothesline, where men are hung out to dry after they are put through a whirlpool of accusations that fly in the face of due process and anything close to presumption of innocence, which is what should get precedence over every other notion to have hit human being. To that the reply is: “But, hey, we aren’t filing criminal charges, we’re just calling him out, the guy has to pay, you know?”
The love-struck journalist of years ago is not the only media-person with his back to the #MeToo wall. There’s the resident editor of India’s most prominent daily, the one with a sprawling heritage building in Mumbai, and a former editor of a newspaper which picked its title from the human genome. Poor chap, he’s got old now but like Harvey Weinstein he’s dried fish, paying years later for acting fresh with an intern!
Names culled from the sticky cobweb are being pulled out and dragged through the mud – Prashant, Soni, Mayank and Gautam… “Hey, Sreeni! You no-good rascal, pervert, here’s the tail coming to bite you in the head. Resign or take hell!” But Sreeni is not cowed. He says “law will take its own course, I’ll submit myself before the committee.” That’s because the same lady has alluded the owner of the newspaper is in Sreeni’s pervert league! And men of a cloth flock…
Yep, “men notorious for their transgressions”, given their powers and the workplace environment, the balance tips in their favour. Women hesitate to confront and expose these wolves in sheep’s clothing when the sexual misconduct happens. But, today, a year after #MeToo launched, Christine Blasey Ford and Tanushree Dutta have fired up memories which are appearing in flashes to nail hides.
The ‘Bakchod’ comedian who sent “dick pics” hastened the trend. Now the joke is on everybody male media-person. Some of the revelations and words they spoke, texted are straight out of porn. The comedian has apologized but should rightly be behind bars. He has a pattern of sending offensive horror pics of his private parts to young girls who crossed his path.
Now, in a rush of adrenaline women in media are speaking up. One woman narrated how a certain Soni journalist wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer and pestered till thankfully “her Uber” came and whisked her out of a risky proposition. Soni, now, says he has realized he was an idiot and should have behaved. “Sorry girl!”
It’s scary, the past coming to bite guys in the backside, just when the chap has been domesticated and the most he does on a weekend is to take his children to the zoo or read a book he wrote to sleep. Some are so far gone in age, they are stunned with a call right when they are flapping gums at their mirror images.
That being said, male and female journalists will attest that the newsroom is not a place where niceties of language and behaviour are honoured. The ‘F-word’ flies to and fro, thick and fast, and the talk often takes sexual turns and overtones. Falling in love with the opposite is part of night and sweet nothings in candlelit settings are not rare. Making newsrooms safe will take a combined enterprise, it’s not ‘you do it and I’ll see’.
Most important, if sexual transgressions happen, they should be “outed” and reported at the earliest, not a decade later. The female journalist is not the “meek woman” of a dominating man. Granted, it’s hard and awkward and there will be backlash. But to cry foul after a decade is not the alternative. Most awful is to ask “men to stand by us”. On what basis? For what? To tarnish, to search and destroy families? (IPA Service)
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