Nothing is more alarming than when women do patriarchy’s work for it

Illustration: Nahfia Jahan Monni

A few days ago, a video that went viral showed a young college-going girl beating her harasser on a bus, ripping his shirt in the process, and making him beg for forgiveness. He had touched her inappropriately while she was resting with her eyes closed. Most passengers chose to remain quiet, which calls to mind Dante's words, "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." Some passengers asked her to let the perpetrator go instead of creating a scene. She was told that she should expect such occurrences and it wasn't that big of a deal—in other words, normalising sexual harassment and strangling the voices of protest against such harassers.

In fact, this college girl was told that she shouldn't have resorted to physical violence, but she claims that she wouldn't have done so if others had protested in some way. She probably knew that a molester is unlikely to be brought to justice. Prof Ziaur Rahman of Dhaka University's Department of Criminology asserts that 97 percent of sex offenders go unpunished (Dhaka Tribune, 2020). According to Sheepa Hafiza, executive director of Ain O Shalish Kendra (ASK), the reason why such offenders remain unscathed is because of the culture of impunity and the state's indifference towards eliminating said culture. A glaring example of this is the fact that victims often face further harassment when they seek justice from police. No one stopped this girl's harasser from getting off the bus, and so she did everything in her power to ensure that he would think twice before molesting someone else.

A few days after I saw the college girl's act of bravery, I came upon another video where a woman on a bus was screaming at a much younger girl, who was wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans, blaming her for why two-year-old babies get raped. One can hear a man blaming the girl's upbringing, while another one tells the harasser that her claims are correct, i.e. the girl's choice of clothing is the reason why rape is on the rise. Ironically, the girl's character was questioned around the same time when the government banned questions probing the "immoral character" of rape victims in criminal cases by amending the Evidence Act, a 19th century British law.

What struck me the most was how the girl bore it all and remained mute. In the comment section of the viral video, I saw a substantial number of people wondering why the girl didn't utter a single word in protest, while another significant percentage commented on the clothes of the harasser. I found both types of comments problematic:

While it's easy to say that one should have raised her voice in protest or "slapped" the "psycho," one needs to bear in mind that unlike the college girl on that passenger bus, who was with her mother, the victim in the second story was alone in a bus full of men siding with a harasser who seemed like she would physically assault the girl if instigated in any way. Or, perhaps, she was wise enough to remain calm in that situation because some battles can't be won, especially if you're up against a person who is beyond logic and reasoning. After all, according to a Persian proverb, silence is the best reply to a fool.

The harasser was dressed in a pink salwar-kameez; her orna was wrapped around her head. People took a few stills from the video, focusing on the tightness of her attire and the curves of her womanly shape. Moreover, the fact that she wasn't wearing an actual hijab or that she was beporda or that her neck was exposed was also pointed out. I get where these types of comments came from. People just wanted to point out that the harasser was in no position to be the moral police because she herself wasn't dressed in the most Islamic of ways. However, what's the point of commenting about the hypocrisy of the harasser? The real problem here was a woman slut-shaming another woman. When women bring other women down in this fashion, they give men the right to slut-shame women too. They make it easier for patriarchy and rape culture to thrive, and they impede the achievement of gender equality.

That being said, the root of the problem lies in the traditional form of hegemonic masculinity, which promotes stereotypical masculine heterosexual traits. This kind of masculinity puts men in a dominant position in a patriarchal society in a way where women aren't forced into becoming the subordinate gender; rather, women themselves give consent to being dominated by their male counterparts. Therefore, the female harasser on the bus is, in essence, a victim of hegemonic masculinity. She doesn't just advocate slut-shaming, which is deeply rooted in patriarchy, but is also of the conviction that women must have a certain "station"—or "sthaan," as she put it—in a male-dominated world.

Noora Shamsi Bahar is a writer and translator, and a senior lecturer at the Department of English and Modern Languages in North South University (NSU).