I’m 46 years old and mostly doing stuff ‘quietly’ that I think is important. Sometimes, I hang out with friends. I enjoy going out, grabbing a drink, ‘chit-chatting’ and then getting back to doing the same stuff again that I think is important.
Sometimes, I go out with male friends and with about 60 percent of them, the conversation goes like this.
He: I’m married but only on paper. My wife and I don’t have a good relationship. We don’t have sex. What about you?
Even as you are framing your answer, you can see a certain look in his eyes, one that implies that he doesn’t actually care either way. You could be separated, divorced, happily married, in a relationship, just not into men or simply doing somersaults. You could be writing a book, planning an imminent trip to the moon, posted for surgery to remove 50 percent of your organs, dead-deep in loans and scrambling to get free, whatever– he simply and truly doesn’t care.
He wants to have sex with you and it’s actually nothing to do with anything other than your body.
What I mean to say is that you could as well be a mannequin sitting in a corner doing pretty much nothing all your life, because all the interest is directed to your non-physical assets. Yes, you may be an awesome artist, a television anchor, a doctor, an activist, a writer, or whatever. The bottom line is that there is a group of men who JUST DON’T CARE about your identity.
So let’s take the most recent example.
There is a guy from my college I know very well, only through Facebook. He may have chatted with me three times in the last 2 years and that too about the most boring and inane stuff, like work. None of these chats lasted beyond 5 minutes. Then he messaged me that he was in town and would like to meet. I think he is a nice guy mainly because he hasn’t done anything ‘not nice’ so far. Therefore, I think it would be nice to meet.
So here’s the thing – unless you are interested in a guy (which changes responses one makes and will not be addressed here), most guys would fall into three categories. The first is a guy who is a known creep –EVERYONE knows that he misbehaves with women and if you have two eyes and a decent set of ears and even a low to moderate IQ, there is no way that you would NOT know that the guy is just out for some quick thrills with anyone who is ready and willing (or even unwilling). So if you went out with him to a strange place that you couldn’t get out of, you could probably NOT feign innocence.
The second kind of guy is someone who you are probably unsure about, but you go out with him anyway, with suitable precautions, such as going to a more public place with possibilities of getting away.
The third kind of guy is a problem guy according to me, because he seems NICE. Not nice enough for you to consider having a relationship with, but certainly nice enough to have as a friend. You may like his jokes, the compliments, the way he looks at you and talks to you ‘as though’ he respects you and wants to look out for you.
This guy gives you a nice feeling. So you may be a little less prepared when you go out with him because you really don’t have too many reasons to not trust him. So let’s say you go out with this guy and while he is saying all the nice things, he starts DOING stuff that makes you really, really uncomfortable. Maybe he even says stuff which you basically can’t associate with, given his ‘nice guy’ image.
So that’s pretty much what happened to me. This guy was talking about how much he appreciates my ‘social commitment’ and my ‘activism’ and all the while he was steadily inching closer to me, so much so that our legs were touching and he had his arms uncomfortably resting on the back of my chair so if I leaned back I would literally have to rest my head on his arm.
Also, his face was so close that if I turned to look at him, I would possibly end up in a lip lock with him, which I didn’t fancy, so I was trying to have a normal conversation with him while facing away. Now, I was obviously uncomfortable and kept moving away and was unable to continue the conversation in any reasonable way, but he refused to see that.
He chose to act like my reactions and responses were of no significance whatsoever.
Well, I didn’t say anything but left at the earliest opportunity in the nicest possible way.
When I got home, I was angry. People I spoke to said I should have told him right away that it was unacceptable and that I wasn’t comfortable. Someone even suggested that I should have slapped him then and there and created a public scene. It made me wonder why I hadn’t responded immediately.
It took me time to realise that when you think someone is nice but he actually does ends up doing not so nice things, it is difficult to respond only to the nice stuff.
I realise that it’s okay to go back and think things through.
I think that this process is similar to the process of grieving when a relationship is done for.
The first phase is denial. One goes back to the series of incidents and wonders if one contributed to it oneself. Did the fact that you let him do this or that contribute to his unparliamentary actions? Did it really happen? Was the incident not actually as serious as you are imagining? One needs time to process what happened to pass the first stage which is denial.
We need to talk to close friends and family and try to understand what happened.
In some sense we need a validation that it’s not just an imaginary incident but a real one and that others also agree on it being inappropriate.
The second phase is anger. Anger at what the person did, the loss of trust at the fact that you were actually never important all along, but you were seen only as a possible means to roll in the hay. One needs time to come to terms with that anger.
This can be followed by a low period as well – of feeling bad about the end of that particular relationship.
If this has happened earlier as well, there is a sense of losing friendships overnight, of going through feelings of confusion over whether at all it is possible to have platonic relationships with men, of whether people are concerned with anything beyond physical intimacy. Sometimes, these are existential questions. One wonders how his and your family and friends would react. What the best course of action would be.
If you choose not to do anything, then you also have to deal with how you feel about letting that happen to you and how your close friends and family would feel? If you choose to deal with it in private, how would you feel about him pretending that nothing happened, or maybe turning it all against you and making your life difficult? If he is a work colleague or someone you depend on, then this makes it all the more complicated. Would it affect your job? How much of that are you willing to put at stake? Apart from the reactions that one can anticipate, one also knows that there are endless thoughts that occupy the mind. How does one deal with that?
Then, there is a process of acceptance, which helps the woman make some tough choices.
She may choose to be completely silent about it and avoid similar future situations. She may write a nice private note or an angry private note. She may file a complaint. She may publicly shame him or inform someone relevant. Either way the choice is hers. But it would be close to impossible to expect her to do all of this then and there as and when the incident happens.
It’s therefore important to understand and support a woman taking time before she reacts to sexual harassment from a person she knows. She may need time to go through the process of bereavement of the friendship, of acknowledging feelings of denial, anger, guilt and sadness. One needs time to accept what just happened with her. The fact that she didn’t shout and scream and make a public scene doesn’t have to be held against her.
Brave women are not only those who make a noise and slap the person who is misbehaving.
It’s quite okay for women to take time and then come to a decision. Since the onus of this is not on the guy, the burden of a wasted relationship and possibly filing a complaint weighs in on the woman.
And it’s completely okay for her to take time to figure out how and when she wants to react.
(The writer is a public health doctor and researcher working on issues of access to healthcare and nutrition.)
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