Why the viral photo series Perspectives fails to capture the reality of street harassment
A photo series, "Perspectives" capturing street harassment in India recently conquered a major portion of the internet. Including the attention of foreign feminist media like Bustle.
Lensed by Priyanka Shah, an art student based in Bangalore, the pictures take an artistic swing on the great Indian gaze that forms the ground of sexual harassment in the country.
For those of us who are willingly attached to the feminist movement, this falls among the kind of straightforward visual content which aptly verifies the wrongness of a patriarchal India. A college project and an almost social experiment as Priyanka claims, submits dissent; but the problem is that it is impaired and flawed.
As one can clearly spot people caught in the act of judgmentally staring at the woman, it isn’t difficult to notice that the pictures seize the working class alone and miss the upper class gazers who are just as many, and often times threatening. The ones who aren’t expected to be sitting off roads like the two old women, or buying groceries from the mandi (a local vegetable market).
Casteism and classism work in dreadful ways. While viewers are appreciating this as a step towards capturing reality, the possibility of them accepting that it is a certain caste and class that cause it, remains very alive.
It is relatively easy for forward caste people to venture into environments where their presence will mark the air and sight, the same goes for a Dalit person if she/he is caught in an environment that only “allows” the forward caste.
Max Weber’s theory of social power supports this dynamic when it elaborates how caste evolves itself into a functional system by the virtue of the working class. This is the same working class that becomes an easy target when folks try to portray the evil of society.
Another attached fallacy is the considerable number of women being shown as perpetrators. This is not to say that women aren’t patriarchal or judgmental, but that it tampers with the comprehension of patriarchal bargain, which, in fact, is attributed to men.
There is no question or objection to the clothes the subject is wearing or the fact that Priyanka captured these photographs concealing the camera. Her manner and precautions are understandable.
But at the same time, it is an ingrained or, perhaps, subliminally accepted notion that only a certain “kind” of people always stare.
This isn’t a rookie mistake. Elle India’s viral advertisement, "WEvolve: Let her be" went through the same road of ignorance while focusing on sexual harassment; such mistakes come with mirrored consequences. At one end it attempts to tackle victim blaming the woman should be free to do, and wear whatever she wants, wherever she wants and shouldn’t be stared at.
But at the same time it is blaming just the working class as the harasser, thus giving the sexist population (online and offline) a chance to victim-blame the woman for wandering in the alleged working class neighbourhood - as if that was the only problem.
Is it the makers who just randomly choose the costumes used in these projects, or is it us viewers who are inferring that how she is “shown” is the problem?
The problem is, in fact, that most Indian feminists aren’t taking intersectionality as seriously as they should.
It is not about what the woman in the ad or Priyanka’s subject (her friend) in the pictures chose to wear.
Rather, it is the assumption that the women appearing to be judgemental in the pictures do not get stared at, because they engage in staring, just like men.
Similarly, it is never a particular class of men that participates in vulgar gazing, but includes a majority of men who own expensive cars, run start-ups and go to college.
Not to mention the thoroughly upper class elite women who, as a result of patriarchal bargain, gleefully engage in everyday judgements within their own communities - such irony.
The evidence and witnesses who noted the Bangalore mass molestation on New Year’s eve shattered this misnomer because the molesters "looked" upper class and came from the posh-pub-going community. The same goes with verbal harassment such as ogling, which peaks the "types of sexual harassment" in workplaces where people are urban and educated.
After some online backlash, the photographer countered the arguments stating that terms like "classiest" and "casteist" are offensive. In a Facebook post, she said, “Many said that I photographed my series amongst people of ‘lower-caste’. Firstly, I do not think the labeling of ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ caste is justifiable. Such labels are offensive. Secondly, these are the same people and the community that I live with.”
This again touches the ground of straw man arguments where a person refrains from accepting a problem by subverting the very concepts that identify it. Priyanka is right when she says the labels shouldn’t be justifiable, of course they shouldn’t be. But here labels aren’t used to persecute the socially oppressed, they are being used to identify them in order to rule out the conditions those labels have created for them in the first place.
The lack of privilege recognition has now begun to defy gravity ever since faulty activism started making more and more fans. A major hand in aggravating this fault is the media websites', which fail to spot such drawbacks before putting them out with ridiculous clickbaits.
By doing this, they are simply approving of something so criticisable as authentic and having the viewers disseminate it. This makes their understanding of feminism questionable.
Calling out this double standard has nothing to do with sabotaging the art, skill, courage or the intention that goes into highlighting such horrid realities that women face everyday. In an article, Priyanka accepts the criticism and also clarifies that her intention wasn’t to target any class and caste.
The work and motive of the project "Perspectives" is imperative, but the result isn’t inclusive, considering how the matter of the subject is as serious as street harassment.
We may fail to explain the epidemic of patriarchy to this society entirely - but in any of our attempts, we must not forget to be encompassing of crucial factors that define it.