This is another generic blog post that was somewhat inspired by a few things that I’ve seen on this trip and on other trips, as well as some things I know happen in the world, even if I don’t have direct experience thereof.
Basically, I’m interested in the concept of people who try to save people who neither need nor want to be saved. The examples I’m going to give are gender-based. Though, I imagine it won’t take many of you much effort to find other examples if you wished to do so.
There are some men who believe that they need to protect some women. However, this protection may well take a form that the women themselves see not as protection but as persecution.
Here is one example. A man lives in a community wherein women behave conservatively. This community exists in a broader society that is becoming less conservative and so traditional attitudes and behaviours are seen to be under threat. This hypothetical man is one of many who believes that women need to be protected from the threats to their culture, dignity, integrity, modesty. The women are fragile, their sexual purity is a measure of their worth (as is their reproductive capability – once married). This man wants to protect these women. As a result of this desire, he will monitor the women around him and sanction their behaviour. He perceives all other men as threats (perhaps because of how he feels he would behave towards a woman if he got the chance). Despite all this, he believes that women who are compromised are entirely responsible for becoming damaged goods. After all, if a woman is too alluring, it is her responsibility to cover herself completely, it certainly isn’t his responsibility to avert his eyes or to control his behaviour. It is however, also her responsibility to be as alluring as possible for her husband-to-be / husband. He cares about preserving her sexual purity (unless he is married to her in which case her sexual and reproductive rights are his alone). He cares about her physical wellbeing at the hands of others, but also believes she deserves the beating he will give her if she has dinner with friends and does not ask his permission. Since she cannot be trusted to be out on her own or to mix with other men, he will prevent her from doing this, physically, if necessary – he has her best interests at heart. He will save her, whether she likes it or not.
Here’s another example. A hypothetical man in the USA is so keen to preserve his ideal of reproductive purity in women that he will use his political power to legislate such that women are denied access to education that can keep them healthy and safe, and they are denied access to essential medical care that can (in extremis) save their lives. They are absolutely denied agency over their own bodies. They are denied these rights even in cases where the woman in question was not a willing participant in the act that caused her to become pregnant and / or if the pregnancy is a real threat to her life. Women are always seen as powerless, they are always seen as the victim, they are always seen as responsible. He will save each woman (from herself as well as from others). He will do this in the name of religion (though many practitioners of this religion may not agree with his approach). It is also worth noting that due to the aid programmes that the USA is involved in, the women in question here are not just women who live in the USA (many of whom at least have the power to vote against him), but this also affects women in other countries who are denied health and family planning interventions.
A third hypothetical man, this one in the UK, is concerned that his female friend is going to walk home from the pub alone after midnight. He is worried about her safety. He is also a little drunk. He fails to realise that statistically she is at significantly greater risk from him than she is from some random stranger waiting to jump out from behind a tree and attack her on the way home. His concern, while well-intentioned, infantilises her, and creates a culture of fear around her that has long-lasting effects on the way she sees the world and how she interacts with others.
What sort of a world do you think it would be if on New Year’s Eve in coastal resorts in Kerala the women were out celebrating whilst all the men (who can’t be trusted to behave) were at home under curfew? Rather than the last time I spent New Year’s Eve in Kovalam where the women were at home (as the men can’t be trusted) and the men were out partying on the beach.
What sort of world would it be if men wore blindfolds and had to be escorted everywhere by a chaperoning woman rather than women being covered head to foot being chaperoned by a man?
What sort of world would it be if marital rape was rape in every jurisdiction and if domestic violence was simply considered violence and treated as such by society, the police and the legal system – reported, investigated, punished?
What sort of world would it be if there were posters in the male toilets in pubs and nightclubs giving them advice on how to treat women with respect (men reading this who might not know, there are posters in many pubs in different countries explaining how women can approach the bartender to help them get away from the man they are with, and get them a taxi so they can get home safely)?
What sort of world would it be if the stranger danger we teach our children about was seen for what it is – a wilful societal refusal to acknowledge that women and girls (and boys) are at significantly greater risk from people they are related to or who they know and trust?
What sort of world would it be if sexual purity and sexual prowess was seen the same way in men as in women?
What sort of world would it be if a woman’s biggest fear on a first date was that the man she was meeting might be a bit of an unpleasant prat?
What sort of world would it be if boys were taught to respect girls rather than girls being taught to fear boys?
What sort of world would it be if we spent as much money as a society on combating violence against women and girls as we currently spend on the war on terror (I didn’t do much research into this but I found a report saying the anti-terror funding in the UK 2018 was 700 million GBP, the funding to combat violence against women and girls in the UK in 2021 was 300 million GBP – I don’t imagine the terror budget reduced in the intervening years)?
What sort of world would it be if the birth of every child was treated with the same joy and excitement regardless of its gender?
What sort of world would it be if men were taught to limit their alcohol consumption so that they don’t inadvertently harass / abuse women rather than women being told to moderate their alcohol consumption so that they don’t fall victim to lecherous men?
What sort of world would it be if men with our best interests at heart would realise that our agency and our freedom are in fact in our best interests?
What sort of world would it be if the men who try to save my honour would instead work to save my life, my body, my choices, my opinions, my experience – not because I’m a woman and need saving, but because I am a human who deserves solidarity from other humans?
If you think you need to save me because I’m a woman, perhaps you should ask yourself if it is you who I actually need saving from.
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