F said...

I didn't misunderstand you. I completely agree that male apathy is a serious problem. I just don't see how that makes female apathy any less troubling. The fact that male attitudes need to be changed doesn't mean that female attitudes don't need to be changed also - so bringing in male attitudes is just obfuscating the point and trying to shift the responsibility.

And sexual harassment is a women's issue in part because women won't talk about it. The reason support groups are mostly women are because victims aren't comfortable talking to men about this stuff. If men don't experience sexual harassment and women aren't going to tell them about it (because they'd rather 'deal' with it silently) then how do you expect to get men involved. It's not that there aren't a significant group of men who don't care. I know I've had women friends tell me about stuff that happened to them years after it happened and I'm always like, well, why didn't you tell me then, I would have tried to help, we could have talked about it, I would have been supportive. And the answer I get is always that she wasn't comfortable talking about it. Well then. If you want to see more active male participation (and we should want to) then it needs to come with more openness. The Blank Noise Project drew in a whole bunch of male bloggers, because it allowed them to share in an experience they don't usually have access to. Yes, many men don't care (too many). But by not talking about this stuff you're not letting those who do play a role.

And please - go look at litigation on women's rights (remember the anti-sati stuff?), go look at groups working lobbying with government on issues of gender abuse. There are men there. Maybe a minority, but certainly larger that 1%. The fact that there aren't more at a grass root level is at least as much a choice women are making.

As for all these countless other ways that women are being strong and helping to solve sexual harassment. What are they exactly? What %age of the 80% of bloggers are involved in them? You want me to believe that 80% of all women bloggers in India are actively involved in activities to curb sexual abuse, but would rather blog about something else than talk about the issue that they're trying to attack in other ways? Ya, right.

I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm saying, if you want to convince me (and you don't have to, naturally) then you need to spell out exactly what at least some of these other ways by which women are addressing the problem are (and being strong and silent does NOT count) and what % of the non-participating bloggers you think are involved in those. It's a list I'd love to see.