Can public shaming end menace of 'creeps' soliciting undue sexual favours?
Unsolicited/non-consensual sexual attention bordering on sexual harassment is something many women, and indeed some men, have faced on numerous occasions. In fact, with the explosion of all things digital and social media changing the way we interact with fellow human beings, the commonest epidemic is the barrage of unwarranted sexts, or sexually loaded or explicit texts describing or asking for or hinting at sexual favours.
In a Facebook post, now taken down by the social media giant, a courageous woman, who shall remain unnamed for the sake of privacy, took up this issue head on and "exposed" a man (yes, tagging him in the post, the privacy setting of which was 'public') who had sent her messages that were extremely invasive to say the least, and bordered on sexual harassment.
According to the post, the screenshots of which we have included in this article, the man, who too would remain unnamed, and who could at best be described as a casual acquaintance of the woman, suddenly sent her a series of messages on Facebook which were sexually loaded, presumptive and invasive.
His premise of sending them was that he was "horny as hell" and that, according to him, his sexual needs were "greater" than his wife and that "Acceptance: One Word" was his wife's response to his sexual salaciousness.
The woman was asked by the man to not be "judgemental" because she didn't have proof of her father's "fidelity" to her mother. Her sexual availability was enquired upon because presumably a single woman must be in search of a man to find fulfilment.
And all this from someone who "pop[s] up on Facebook after years and without much of a preamble, seek[s] details of [her] sex life".
In response, the woman puts up a post, which has since been deleted by Facebook. Here are the screenshots.
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If Facebook's premise for deleting the post was that it "violated" the social media platform's community standards, then the issue merits a number of pressing questions.
Firstly, is "naming and shaming" an effective way to "expose the creeps", when there is another way - that is filing a complaint with the Cyber Crime Cell of the police to register a case of online harassment?
Secondly, if a gamut of patriarchal entitlements passed on through generations and amplified by technologies such as social media enables a man to solicit undue/non-consensual sexual favours, isn't a scathing exposé of the multiple and casual sexism at work a suitable method to "unmask" such men?
Thirdly, if more women come out as a result of the said exposé and affirm in public that they too had been victims of his previous "perversities" (as some did in this case), does that give the exposé greater significance? Does it gather moral momentum? Or, is one instance enough to do the exposé?
Fourthly, if men like former TERI chief Rajendra Pachauri send out emails seeking his junior colleague's "affections", or like former Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal, who expect women to reciprocate their sexual advances because they are in an elevator with them, alone, attest to this pervasive hypocrisy at work, what would it take to change the entrenched mindset behind such risible double sexual and social standards?
Finally, if critical, punchy exposés such as the above include (problematic) phrases such as "your daughter, who are about my age" and "stop screwing the young uns", what are we to make of them?