#MeToo to #UsToo: Power lies in numbers

It was early 1986. I was a rookie reporter, in my early twenties, living alone in a tiny South Delhi terrace room. That was all I could afford on my salary. I was a migrant in the city with no contacts, nor relatives.

My workday typically ended late. In summer, my room was unbearably hot; I slept out in the terrace on a camp cot. One such summer night, I felt something stir near my feet. I woke up. It was the landlord. He was sitting on my bed, a leery smile on his face. He said he had come up for some “fresh air”.

I shrank in fear as he inched closer. Then I did what I thought was the only thing I could do at that moment. I rushed to the toilet, and locked myself in. I stayed there till dawn.

As I read the avalanche of horrifying testimonies by women in the media and entertainment industries about alleged sexual harassment and assaults by famous and successful men like M.J. Akbar, Nana Patekar and Alok Nath, my mind goes back to that terrifying night, when I was trying to figure out how to save myself.

Should I have complained to the wife? Why didn’t I scream to alert the neighbours? To be honest, I was afraid. I feared the landlord’s wife wouldn’t believe me. I was afraid of being thrown out of the house in the middle of the night.

My fears were justified. The next day, the landlord’s wife did ask me to leave. Their neighbourhood, she said, was for “respectable people”, not women journalists who came home late.

I’m sure many single women who came to Delhi with no contacts and little money but with aspirations of making it as a journalist faced similar ordeals. My family lived in another city. That night, alone on a South Delhi terrace, I was vulnerable. I had to find another barsati.

This was before the era of mobile phones, text messages, WhatsApp and email. We couldn’t connect as easily or immediately, as one can now with the Internet. Lewd things were said, not texted. It was tougher to gather evidence to “out” a predator.

Mine was not the workplace sexual harassment that most of the #MeToo stories have dealt with. But memories of that night haven’t faded.

Personally, I didn’t face sexual harassment by bosses in any of the organisations I have worked in. Many women aren’t so lucky. However, as a woman reporter travelling alone, at odd times, sometimes to remote locales, I’ve had to deal with creepy behaviour from many male journalists. Once, on an assignment in Srinagar, I remember a male TV journalist in an adjacent room in the hotel, asking me to come over for tea and company in the middle of the night. I put the phone down, double-latched the door, and didn’t step out of my room till morning. There were no internal complaints committees those days in most media organisations. I didn’t pursue the matter.

As the years rolled by, I became more confident but if I still felt ill-equipped to handle powerful, male editors with dodgy reputations. I often passed up opportunities that might have helped my career.

Today, the dam has burst. The rage of women is out in the open. Brave women journalists are speaking out, making it clear they won’t be intimidated any more.

Numbers are pivotal to the battle against sexual harassment. If so many women are speaking up today and having an impact, it’s because they are incredibly courageous and because each one feels hers is no longer the lone voice. You can gag, buy the silence of a few, but not when it is a torrent. And, now, there is the social media as an amplifier.

The stories of sexual harassment that we are hearing today can’t be all lumped in one basket. Nor is the sorority of victims a homogenous community. Those working in small towns, in small media outlets where the proprietor-boss is often a politician or has close links with politicians, are much more vulnerable. As are millions of women who work in the informal sector, without a contract. Many don’t know who to tell their stories to, or who will listen. They don’t know lawyers who can defend them pro-bono. Many aren’t even aware of their rights.

That is no reason to be dismissive towards women who have mustered courage and are outing their predators or see the current #MeToo movement as a conflict between grassroots feminism and elite feminism. It’s not an either-or. It’s important to listen to the stories of dalit women who are raped by upper caste men in the hinterland, the everyday sagas of sexual harassment faced by women living on the edge in our cities. It’s equally important to listen to what women journalists are saying about the horrors of working with sexual predators in newsrooms. Each woman’s ordeal is real to her. One testimony doesn’t diminish the other.

The #MeToo movement opens up an opportunity to connect the two worlds: to mobilise support systems and legal help now available to urban and upper middle-class women, the more privileged among us and extend those to other women.

Are all stories accurate, down to every detail? Nobody can definitively say that false accusations or half-truths are impossible. But in the current context in this country, the chances of women coming forward to name and shame powerful sexual predators without any basis are slim. At any rate, those who are in the dock are being given and should be given  a chance to have their say. And there should be a proper inquiry in each case that is being reported.

I haven’t worked with a boss who tried to grope me. But you don’t have to have been hunted personally to realise there are hunters, recognise the early alerts and “out” them before they can strike. All these years, the focus was on what women should or shouldn’t do. Now, male behaviour is on the radar too; a rising number of women are saying “no” to unsafe workspaces, for themselves and others. This is one of the biggest achievements of the #MeToo campaign.

The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com