#MeToo in West ignores realities elsewhere
North American women have tools to fight back. So many others don’t
Let’s be honest. The current discussion on sexual harassment has been mostly limited to North America, despite the fact that attempts at a revolution have been taking place outside the continent for decades. And at an excruciating cost.
This focus on the North American story exposes the stark disconnect between the perception of the liberated and empowered woman of the West, and her counterparts in poorer, non-western countries.
Because the world of misogyny, patriarchy and sexual subjugation is far, far bigger than #MeToo. And in developing countries, far, far worse — even though the conditioning of women to be subservient to, or be afraid of, men is common to both hemispheres.
The difference, however, between how women have responded to this conditioning across cultures is access to resources: financial, technical and intellectual. The West won on those counts more than 100 years ago, when the suffragettes changed the world. Yet we now have a reckoning that claims women in the West have been sexually abused for most of their lives.
Is the world’s perception of western women as strong and fearless a complete fallacy?
I can’t speak for any of the women in the world who have experienced sexual harassment of the lowest kind. But like many others, I have experienced my share as a woman who has lived almost her entire life in a country (in my case, Pakistan) where many openly despise women.
Bricks-and-mortar courts don’t even exist in many places, and the result of women simply wanting to leave their homes unaccompanied could mean certain death.
The story isn’t just one of sexual harassment, but brutal sexual violence without any recourse or hope for justice.
I and women in other countries such as India, Afghanistan, South Africa and Brazil face this fear every day in our homes, on the streets, and in the workplace. Not to mention women in countries at war, where they are used as sex slaves.
So, when I hear of “harassment” in privileged and so- called progressive countries, it’s baffling. Especially cases in which the women visibly hold some sense of power. Hollywood actresses, female academics, corporate executives, media personalities: Women who are otherwise credited with breaking the glass ceiling, are, suddenly, mere pawns in the depraved sexual desires of men. And by imbibing the fear that their male abusers instil in them, they perpetuate the cycle of oppression.
Here in Canada, the Jian Ghomeshi case was baffling, not because the alleged victims in question perjured themselves in court, but because they lost the most valuable chance a woman has in this world: the chance to seek justice. What women in my part of the world would give for that opportunity.
Undeniably, patriarchy still exists in the West and its justice system is often skewed against women. But in a liberated western society that provides women more access to education, wealth and economic opportunity than they have anywhere else in the world, why are women still afraid to stand up for themselves?
In the enlightened West, at least, she can enter a police station and report her case. Imagine having to produce four male witnesses to corroborate one’s accusation of rape. Or having to endure the humiliation of the “two-finger test” that confirms virginity.
Yet, it seems that women in the West have been unable to take advantage of the opportunities available to them and have, instead, helped perpetuate the myth of feminine weakness by staying silent. That’s something that should have been overcome more than a century ago, along with the corset.
The #MeToo declaration of victory by North American women mirrors a humiliating defeat of sorts for those women in poor, underprivileged countries who have none of these options. To see their western counterparts act as if they’ve been powerless up to now is a disappointing finale to a struggle that hasn’t really even begun in many countries.
While women gaining ground anywhere is something to celebrate, in the larger context of violence, poverty and depravity, the current North American wave of female activism seems almost misplaced. And very North American.