Not ‘eve-teasing’, it is harassment!
Sexual harassment is a malice that must be stamped out from society
By : amar tejaswi
Update: 2015-07-21 03:41 GMT
Hyderabad: Sexual harassment is a malice that must be stamped out from society, but so should the use of the term “eve-teasing” in contemporary usage. Eve-teasing is a term used in the media and even in official discourse by the police and organisations to describe minor sexual harassment on the street.
But, while many use the term without the knowledge of its origins, it also implies that the victim of sexual harassment herself provoked the offence, opine experts. Eve-teasing is defined in the dictionary as “The use of sexual innuendo, making of indecent suggestions and sometimes minor physical sexual harassment”.
Used generally in South Asia, and particularly in India, the term has even been used by the National Commission for Women (NCW) and more frequently by the police in First Information Reports (FIR). It is also quite common in public discourse. But the meaning of the word isn’t just sexual harassment. The etymology comes from Eve who is herself portrayed as a seductress, leading to the absurd but obvious inference that the victim provoked the act of harassment by being the seductress.
In a recent research paper, Prof. Pratiksha Baxi, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, noted, “eve-teasing lives in post-colonial India as a cognitive category that refers largely to sexual harassment of women in public spaces, thereby constituting women as ‘Eves’, temptresses who provoke men into states of sexual titillation. This popular perception of sexual harassment posits the phenomena as a joke where women are both a tease and deserve to be teased.”
Hyderabad-based human rights lawyer Greeshma Rai says the term is just plainly derogatory. “Simply put, eve-teasing is a very derogatory word the use of which should be completely stopped in all forms. It is a word that has stemmed out of the male chauvinistic society that ours is.” In her book Indian Feminisms: Law, Patriarchies and Violence in India, University of Bristol faculty Dr Geetanjali Gangoli wrote that eve-teasing is an Indianised English term and its mere usage trivialises the grave issue of sexual harassment.
Teasing animals is painful to them as well as derogatory:
Not just eve-teasing, but even the term “animal teasing” is in a way a derogatory term. Teasing animals is often perceived as playful but it can be very painful from the victim’s point of view. The word “teasing” is defined as any activity that is playful, but that description must fit both the sides’ perspective. Even the word “teasing” in eve-teasing is derogatory because it is not acceptable to women. It is interesting to note that these two terms are used exclusively in South Asian countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh even in official discourse. But the use of such terminology is absent outside the subcontinent.
Eve-teasing is, in fact, an Indian origin euphemism, the genesis of which is described by feminists as a testimony to the male chauvinistic mindset of the region. The wide use of the two terms in the region must also be done away with. In India, eve-teasing is used for incidents, which are “minor” and occur on the streets. But they are cases of sexual harassment nonetheless and must be referred to in that way. The quantum of punishment is anyway as per the gravity of the crime. Street harassment is also used as an alternate term. Even the word animal teasing must be done away with. Any activity that causes stress to animals must be referred to as harassment.