Trust issues at workplace

Avijit Pathak
Professor of Sociology at JNU, New Delhi

THE narratives that the explosion of the ‘MeToo’ revelations has generated shatter our foundations. We are horrified, and become increasignly sceptical about the possibility of a dignified, symmetrical man-woman relationship at workplaces, be it a media house, a film studio or a university. While the ‘MeToo’ explosion reveals the recovery of women’s voice — their courage to overcome the imposed silence, and see themselves not just as passive victims, but as self-actualising subjects striving for justice, it also poses a challenge in front of us — how we undergo an ethical/professional process of cleansing, and move towards a life-affirming work culture based on trust, dignity and non-exploitative engagement with seniors. 

Let me make a generalised, yet fairly relevant statement: patriarchy has done severe damage to men; many of us have been destroyed emotionally, spiritually and ethically. Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘second sex’, the patriarchal men driven by the ‘will to power’ tend to think, is essentially an object of desire and conquest. See its devastating consequences. As women, because of their sheer determination, intelligence and education, are entering the public space, and making their presence felt in diverse sites of work, many of their male colleagues find it difficult — psychologically and professionally— to cope with the changing reality. No wonder, even as a colleague she remains just a ‘woman’, not a professor, an editor, a doctor, a scholar, an artist in her own right. The oppressive male gaze continues to see her through her body, look, dress and fashion. And when this gaze is further poisoned through the exercise of power, sexual abuse or physical assault becomes the sub-text of this male-centric/pathological practice of sado-masochism. Apart from brute violence, women often experience subtle violence. How often we see our offices nurturing the culture of spicy gossip — see her; she is quite ‘pushy’, she would ‘impress’ the boss; or see this research scholar, she has been found to be present in a late- night party at her supervisor’s residence! We fail to see a woman beyond her ‘externality’. And the fault is hers — she is too ‘ambitious’, unnecessarily ‘pally’ with men, she is ‘extravagant’, ‘drinks’ and ‘smokes’; and hence she should be taken for granted!  

At times, the intoxication with power breeds the psychology of brute masculinity that is aesthetically and spiritually impoverished; the masculinity that cannot accept no, the masculinity that, because of inner emptiness, seeks to possess and conquer women. It is not impossible for two colleagues to have a consensual/dignified love relationship. Nor is it impossible for a teacher and his student to rediscover themselves as life-long companions. Love, every poet or a mystic would confirm, follows no pattern, and its mystery and unpredictability enrich its beauty. However, when love as a true fusion of horizons is replaced by the routinisation of ‘fleeting encounters’ characterised by instantaneous gratification, impulsive sexuality and exercise of the power of privilege, trust disappears, violence is normalised, and the voices of pain and resistance are silenced. The ‘MeToo’ phenomenon reveals the pathology of a form of masculinity that dissociates sex from love, equates power with conquest, and confuses fearful silence with consent. It is the ultimate fall of man.

How do we come out of this hell? Legal measures or ‘technical’ guidelines of proper behaviour or installation of CCTV cameras, these are just temporal solutions. For a meaningful transformation in our behaviour, we need to go deeper, and ask some uncomfortable questions. Should not we think of the all-pervading ‘pornographic mentality’ that the culture industry is promoting through the dissemination of sexual imageries associated with music, films, material/symbolic goods, and ‘YouTube’ posts? In a society where in a wedding ceremony men and women dance together on Honey Singh’s songs (that reduce women into edible objects), or in a ‘reaity show’ in which children are encouraged to sing an Asha Bhosle’s ‘hot’ song, or in a technologically-induced culture in which ‘dating apps’ reduce a relationship into a mere thrill — is it at all surprising to see what ‘MeToo’ is revealing? We breathe violence; we eat and drink vulgarity. Fighting for gender justice, and indulging with a  culture of sexual objectification cannot go together. 

As a social scientist, I suggest two things: first, we ought to work in the domain of education, education not merely as mastery in mathematics, history and biology; but education as a way of living with grace, a way of relating to humans and nature with love, care and empathy. And this is possible only when we nurture the spirit of androgyny. To grow up as a boy does not mean that one refuses to be soft, musical and relational. And to grow up as a girl does not mean that one refuses to see her agency, her courage to see beyond what Henric Ibsen would have regarded as the ‘doll’s house’. This is to see beyond the ‘aggression’ of masculinity and ‘submissiveness’ of femininity. Second, we need a new language of feminism, one that interrogates the growing invasion of the market in everyday life — the way we are seduced to define ‘body’, ‘beauty’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘freedom’. Quite often, patriarchy becomes sophisticated through market-induced fairytale of boundless pleasure, consumption and freedom. Life loses its grace amid mindless boozing and late-night parties. Restoring grace in life is not conservatism; it is the spirit of genuine radicalism: a politico-cultural struggle for fighting objectification, and promoting dignity, beauty and poetry in relationships.