Shame is Always the Woman’s: Chinmayi on Pollachi Sexual Assault

Chinmayi, who fronted the MeToo movement in TN, speaks exclusively to The Quint on the Pollachi sexual assault case.

Even if it is consensual sex and a man filmed it, it is still illegal. But because there is shame associated with the act of sex in this country, girls are unable to go forward, and they are caught in this vicious ring of blackmail and extortion.   

Chinmayi, playback singer, dubbing artist

Chinmayi, the woman who fronted the MeToo movement in Kollywood and the rest of South India speaks exclusively to The Quint about the kind of issues the Pollachi sexual assault case underlines in our society. She also elaborates on her concerns about shaming and slandering the victims, while the perps are given a clean chit.

The Shame Associated With Sex

The Pollachi sexual assault case has been going on for a very long time it seems. Some of them say seven years. I think it underlines several issues that intrinsically are not in place in Indian society today. We know a lot of families where parents excessively control their girl children. They monitor every step, they don’t let her go out for movies even with girl friends. They monitor their social media activity, they monitor who they are with, they keep calling every half-an-hour to enquire whether they are coming back home. And they also make sure that the said friend is with them. All this happens with girls and the same thing does not happen with boys.

Now if you generally notice, a lot of normal boys, boys you would otherwise think are decent are sending d!@k pics and masturbation messages, and messages to random girls on social media saying that they want to j!@k off to their photograph and that they find it very pretty. So where does it come from? Generally, sexual repression.

One aspect of this is that, even now, despite movements like MeToo, girls experience a major trauma recounting all of this. Even if it is consensual sex and a man filmed it, it is still illegal. But because there is shame associated with the act of sex in this country, girls are unable to go forward, and they are caught in this vicious ring of blackmail and extortion.

I think girls need to somehow stop their partners or boyfriends or husbands from filming them while they are having sex. I think that is very important because anybody gets access to anyone’s phone, and thereby to sexting or video calls…people need to be very very cautious even if they are married, right? All of this gets accessed by a third party, who then extorts them for money.

At the end of the day, the shame is always the woman’s, and not the man’s.

The Shame is Always the Woman’s

Here, a lot of girls are not able to come forward and lodge cases against these guys. We also read reports of how the second victim had to wait for a whole day at the police station to file a complaint. The GO revealed the name of the victim and her brother in the FIR. All of this re-victimises women who have already gone through trauma, and makes them want to change the statement time and again thinking, ‘even if I speak the truth, I am going to be shamed.’

I can’t even understand the amount of trauma that they are going through. You see a lot of social media posts, in Tamil especially – Don’t take girls from Pollachi. They all are damaged pieces.

People, men basically having a problem with ‘why did she go with a guy? How can she go? Only if it is my sister, it is a sister. No one else can be seen that way.’

You’ll even find this (attitude) in a couple of problematic interviews that Amir (a Tamil film director and actor, who has spoken against the MeToo movement) has given during the MeToo movement.

In a recent video in which he’s talking about the Pollachi assault case, he asks, “Where are the MeToo ‘poralis’ (activists)? They won’t come for this. They will again come for some other issue,” at which point of time, people like me will come out and identify other men to accuse.

Time to Spread the Word, in Tamil

Nobody’s actually looking into the problem that these guys actually filmed the girls and blackmailed them.

All of the social media influencers, and even those pontificating on the issue are not doing ANYTHING to give confidence to these girls to come out and lodge a complaint. Especially if the girls are already married, or are settled and want to put it all behind them, that too is not going happen. The media is now reporting that if there are 200 possible victims, why are only one or two of them coming forward? Where are the others? It all comes down to the selective shaming that humans of social media are doing. This is where I hope mass media will take control and stop the shaming, and write editorials, especially in Tamil.

This content needs to go out in Tamil to get both men and women to stop shaming victims. Because I see a lot of people say: ‘How could she go? How could she make friends on social media? This is a result of illicit lesbian relationship’.

Every which way, they are subverting and diverting this issue.

All of us need to be doing something to give confidence to the women in general, in our families, homes, universities, offices, to get up, stand up and report cases of sexual assault. And in that entire exercise, they should be given the confidence that they will not be re-victimised, shamed, slandered, alienated or gossiped about. This is what I am really concerned about. I hope it doesn’t become politicised and then a dud afterwards, because that’s why the MeToo movement even happened.

I’m really praying that more people get unearthed, all the culprits, and I hope they rot in jail forever.

(Chinmayi Sriprada is a musician, playback singer and dubbing artist, who works predominantly in the Tamil film industry. She was at the forefront of the MeToo movement that exposed a number of men in the Tamil film industry.)