Abstract
This chapter examines the new feminist intervention in India against sexual harassment (SH) through the online weapon of anonymously listing sexual offenders. The publication of the list on Facebook—known as the List of Shame (or #LoSha)—was inspired by the #metoo campaign following the Hollywood Weinstein affair and was composed through a collection of first-hand survivor narratives. A list of 70 names of alleged academic sexual offenders was first shared by a lawyer based in the US, and became viral on Facebook. This chapter will look at how this campaign used naming as a risk-taking tool to point at the lack of institutional frameworks within academic spaces. In doing so, it successfully used the online space of Facebook to create a feminist debate around the issue of sexual harassment transcending geographical and hierarchical barriers and to raise questions regarding the viability of the established feminist recourses against SH.
Using the methodological tool of situated critique (Bannerji, Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism, and Anti-Racism. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1995), in this chapter I will utilize my own experience of participating in the list as well as in the larger feminist debate to discuss the politics of risk-taking and solidarity and the implications of list-activism. In doing so, it has re-established the role of cyberfeminism (Daniels, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 37 (1 & 2): 101–124, 2009) in India and surfaced a new intersectional autocritique of the academia based on caste, class and gender. Though questions regarding the method remain, the use of Facebook for providing survivors a voice with anonymity promises new boundaries of empowerment and fear.
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- 1.
Savarna refers to those belonging to the upper castes in the hierarchical caste system practised in India. Avarna refers to those in the population who are considered outside the caste system, such as the Dalits and untouchables.
- 2.
One of the accused sexual harassers in the list, who was subsequently found guilty by his university committee, was a founding member of this blog, though no mention was made of it in the statement. In ensuing debates in the comments section, questions were raised about this absence of any declaration of association. For more, see Menon (2017) comments section.
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For a elaborated foray into the history of the Indian women’s movement, please see documented history, The History of Doing by Radha Kumar (1989), Women’s Studies in India: A Reader edited by Mary E. John (2008) and The Issues at Stake: Theory and Practice in the Contemporary Women’s Movement in India by Nandita Gandhi and Nandita Shah (1992).
- 5.
I use the term “victim” here to point at the pleasurable narrations of incidents of sexual violence which imposes the victim role on the survivor, and the portrayal of media of the survivors in that light.
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Even though the Sexual Harassment Guidelines 2013 ensures anonymity to the complainants, this is hardly the case in reality. My access to and participation in the student communities of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University and Ambedkar University Delhi in Delhi has always revealed to me the identity of the complainants, as it did to many others. This affects sexual harassment survivors’ decision to approach the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) and is contingent on whether they are ready to face the implications of identity revelation.
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The #MeToo campaign was also started by black activist Tarana Burke.
- 9.
Girls in Dhabas is a primary example of our cultural contextual familiarity transcending limitations of borders online. An online campaign started in Pakistan demanding women’s access to public spaces (dhaba literally means a roadside food stall) and it had soon gained popularity in India as well.
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Chakraborty, A. (2019). Politics of #LoSha: Using Naming and Shaming as a Feminist Tool on Facebook. In: Ging, D., Siapera, E. (eds) Gender Hate Online. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96226-9_10
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