Why women are choosing to call out their harassers on social media

By Ila Ananya

On 23 July, Ekalavya Choudhari, an undergraduate student of Jadavpur University (JU), was exposed via Facebook for sexually harassing several women in JU both physically and online. Women uploaded screen shots of conversations with Choudhari, and others wrote Facebook posts about being physically harassed by him. Two days ago, news began to circulate that he had been suspended for a few days until the university had finished its investigation.

A few days after Choudhari was exposed, an ex-student of St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, put up a post with screenshots on Facebook about how she had been sexually harassed online by Rex Fernandez, a Mumbai-based musician, and St Xavier’s alumnus, and stalked by him in the college. Her post was taken down after it was reported by Fernandez’ brother, but a few women had already come out in her support, and three others told her that they had also been harassed by Fernandez. When she put up the post on Facebook again on 27th July, she was barred from putting up any news posts for 24 hours.

Ever since these women started telling their stories online, I’ve wondered what it must be like for them to sit in front of a screen and type out what has happened to them. I realise these women are now not just talking to one person, or a room full of people, but to many, many more, most of whose faces they have never seen, and whom they might never even meet. It isn’t the same as their stories being discussed by the mainstream media because they have written these stories themselves. Perhaps they will find support, or something will be done, or, as in the case of the woman who called out Fernandez, the story can just disappear. For me,the women sitting before their screens creates a brave but terrifying image.

The cases of Choudhari and Fernandez are similar to that of Manik Katyal, photographer and editor of Emaho magazine, who was accused of sexually harassing many women in 2015. In this case too, women took to Facebook to call him out, before the blog,  I Was Harassed by Manik Katyal, was created to publish accounts from all those women who had been harassed by him online, offline, or both.

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The accounts on this blog, called testimonials, are short, precise descriptions of exactly what Katyal said or did to the women. Some of these testimonials are screenshots of conversations — in these, the women appear obviously uncomfortable, while trying hard not to be disrespectful, and are worried for their own careers.

Anybody who still wants to ask why the women chose to call out Katyal on his harassment years after it had happened, these testimonials should be enough.  Then there are those who haven’t been subjected to the experience themselves; for them online harassment may appear less real, when compared to a similar situation in real life.

There is no right way of immediately responding to harassment when it is happening: maybe you’re terrified, confused, upset, or angry; or maybe, you’re all these things.

The men accused in all these cases seem to have a history of being sexual harassers that has initially gone unreported. Or may be, the case was reported but inaction from authorities (like in the case of Choudhari, where a student had filed a complaint against in August 2015, but nothing was done) may be the reason, the issue didn’t make it to the headlines.

It seems as though the confidence in these men that they can get away with their acts comes from their own positions of power: Choudhari is the son of a professor (who was due to become Head of Department) in the Department of English in JU, Katyal is a well-known photographer with influence in the photography community, while Fernandez is a well-known musician.

In many ways this is similar to the RK Pachauri case. Pachauri, the former head of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has been accused of sexually harassing several junior colleagues there, creating an atmosphere that encouraged silence on his behaviour from within the institution itself.

What does it mean for as many as 13 women to call out Choudhari, or more than 36 women to expose Katyal?

Perhaps these women were not thinking about how the world will respond to them, whether they will be supported or further harassed, or whether their story will be heard or forgotten, and what will happen from there on. Or perhaps they were.

As I see it, these women seem to actively call out their harassers because they wanted to shame them, and because they wanted to draw attention to what has happened to them, and have something done about it. As one of the women who was harassed by Choudhari wrote in a Facebook post (which was later removed), “Friends in need, do remember that the shame is not ours, it is theirs. We will work together and find justice.”

In an atmosphere like the present times, where colleagues are made complicit in the crime, and when institutional sexual harassment cells often do not redress complaints, it seems as though social media has emerged as a space where women can really voice out the wrongs they been subjected to. Social media is now a platform for women not only to voice their complaints, but also to draw together women who have faced similar experiences, and to encourage other women to speak out loud for themselves.

The more complex stories we hear, the more we understand the nature of sexual harassment, and we are no longer required to imagine the perpetrators as monoliths of power. We will no longer require women to be ‘perfect’ victims to get sympathy, empathy and support.