The conversation around abusive behaviour by men in mainstream spaces has re-emerged with the arrest of Mathur Sathya, a self-styled political activist and former Communist Party of India (CPI) member from Tamil Nadu. A complaint filed by a third party has details of how Sathya posed as a Marxist ideologue to gain public space and used it as a means to befriend women in different cities and then become intimate with them.

Then, according to the complaint, he recorded videos of intimate moments and circulated them with friends. When one of the women found out that her video was being shared with strangers, she approached a friend who wrote to the CPI, which removed Sathya from all party positions while a CPI member registered a criminal complaint against him.

As the news swept social media, Sathya shared a tweet claiming innocence and said that the intimacy and recording had been consensual. He did not say if he had consent to share the videos. The discussion around the incident became centred on what constitutes consent and how men in positions of power manufacture consent and simultaneously use such problematic consent to re-traumatise women. This was followed by titillating descriptions of what Sathya did to the women, which then became the mainstay of the outrage and conversations.

Somewhere along the way, the question of how men continue to reduce women to mere sexual objects was lost. Nobody asked either why a man who described himself as a political activist believed that he had the impunity to get away with abuse. Neither was the responsibility of the larger social structure that enables behaviour such as Sathya’s discussed.

In the experience of the writers (all three have been part of groups that advocate for safe spaces for women at work and are part of internal complaints committees or ICCs), such incidents of sexual violence and harassment in organisational spaces fall into a certain pattern.

For instance, it takes time for the women to convince themselves of a predator in their midst. In Sathya’s case, his public persona was that of an activist who spouted Marxist/Ambedkarite/feminist theory. He was regularly invited by media channels to speak on issues concerning women; he issued statements condemning predators such as the Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu. Sathya often called himself a “mentor” to those interested in reading and understanding communist ideologies.

For most women, just to see through a facade like this and prioritise their experience of abuse over it takes time and effort. Then comes the question of dealing with such a person’s public clout. Women have often spoken of how there is a “brotherhood” out there to defend actions like Sathya’s and malign any women who speak up against their abuser.

And finally, when these women do speak out and seek help, the collective attempt is to turn the act of speaking out into an act of malice. This is the norm. When Raya Sarkar put together a list of abusers in academia, the first #MeToo attempt in India, the focus remained on establishing her mala fide intents. Centring the historical experiences of women in academia took a back seat.

Locker-room conversations then move on to strategising how to avoid such exposes rather than facilitating space to understand how predators find a centre stage in progressive spaces. Even in a State like Tamil Nadu, which regularly positions itself as one of the leaders in development indicators for women, there seems to be zero ownership in getting to the root of the issue—that women are only seen as sexual objects, not as political beings on par with men.

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It is also important to note that Tamil Nadu, which fares much better than the national average when it comes to health and education indices, has far fewer women in the political sphere. The number of women who register for a PhD in the State is three times the national average (1,757 per 1 crore residents) but women account for only 5 per cent of elected representatives in the Assembly, less than States such as Gujarat and Bihar, as reported by Sakthi, a volunteer group working towards women’s representation in politics.

This factor becomes particularly important in this conversation since the core issue here is not just that abuse occurs; it is that abuse is repeated with almost no consequences.

Redressal mechanisms

We repeatedly talk about the need to set up ICCs, and POSH and grievance committees, whenever there is any dialogue around gender-based violence. (POSH refers to the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.)

These may seem like basic redressal mechanisms but the reality is that even these are yet to be executed in an honest and transparent way that addresses the root of gender-based violence. Women are still gagged and sidelined within organisations for speaking up, being assertive, and owning their space.

We need to ask a follow-up question here: what are the prescribed rules of engagement between men and women in political spaces? Are women still seen merely through their bodies and gender by men or is there any sense of camaraderie or any efforts to build spaces of camaraderie in progressive spaces?

If there is such an effort, what tools or programmes do political parties use? Do they spend energy and resources on this effort? Is there even a simple guide for men to unlearn their positions as the traditional patriarchal custodians of political opinions and spaces? Do organisations even have the knowledge to prepare such guides if mandated?

This brings us to the question of how political organisations view the representation of women in their spaces. Women are often reduced to being a sole female representative on stage and then asked to speak only on gender issues. For instance, in the recently published book The Cambridge Companion to Periyar, there are only two women contributors and one of them co-writes her essay with a male writer on “Periyar, the Women’s Question, and Maniyammai”.

The most visible space in Tamil Nadu is the platform of mainstream politics, and understanding it becomes pertinent here. All political parties have a symbolic “women’s wing”, almost as if it is impossible for the imagination to think about women in the central leadership.

Women in politics

What, then, is the idea of representation that has been understood by political entities? In Tamil Nadu, since 2016, there is 50 per cent reservation for women in municipal corporations, municipalities, town panchayats, district panchayats, panchayat union councils, and village panchayats. Earlier, it was 33 per cent. The experience of women who have tried to exercise their independent will to contest these elections has often been that of violence. Dalit women face even more violence as they face discrimination both because they are Dalit and women.

When electoral seats are reserved for women, it is often the wife or daughter of a male politician who is projected as a candidate, across political parties. Priya Rajan being elected Mayor in 2022 is spoken about a lot, portrayed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) as a feminist move but criticised by others as the DMK “fixing” the seat.

The truth is that Priya Rajan was fielded since the seat is reserved rotationally for a woman from a Scheduled Caste. This was the first time that reservation had facilitated the election of a woman as Mayor to the oldest municipal corporation in the country.

Chennai City Corporation, formerly known as the Corporation of Madras, was formed in 1688. The first woman mayor was Tara Cherian, who was elected in 1957, seven years after her husband P.V. Cherian finished his term as Mayor. The second woman Mayor was the DMK’s Kamakshi Jayaraman (1971), who was fielded since the post was reserved for the Brahmin community. Her councillor husband, Jayaraman, would have contested but for his untimely death. Kamakshi Jayaraman was the only Brahmin in the DMK at the time.

It is within this history that we should locate Mayor Priya’s election, one where we know that mainstream political parties, no matter how progressive they portray themselves as being, are not in the habit of creating space for new first-generation leaders, especially women.

After Priya Rajan was elected, it became a regular spectacle to see older male DMK leaders towering over her and speaking on her behalf. It is clear that these men believed they had to patronisingly present her in public, almost as if it is their right to do so, even though Priya Rajan was fully qualified herself.

Almost on cue, an entire ecosystem of trolling sprang up to subject her to ridicule and was hyper-fixated on her attire, her body language, and her mannerisms, an experience that many Dalit women leaders have also spoken about.

The discussion here cannot be about Priya Rajan’s capability or her family’s political background. A reserved post exists because it creates space for a class devoid of fair representation in political leadership due to the near-absolute control of dominant caste men over all political spaces.

Tamil Nadu has no dearth of Dalit woman leaders. In fact, there are many such leaders even within the DMK, who are there with no political clout from families. The efforts of such women, including those from the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), an alliance partner of the DMK, who have worked over the decades to establish themselves as community leaders, has been thwarted and sidelined through various means.

Even when such spaces are created by reservation and not by the free will of these parties, the efforts to control these seats are continuous. All this invariably works to further vitiate the space for aspiring women leaders and malign existing women leaders.

To understand how far women are even from the sidelines, one needs to look at the representation of women in any party’s leadership group. A few symbolic positions such as head of women’s wing, IT wing, etc., are given to women to project the right optics, but the real positions of power such as district secretaryships and treasury positions are controlled by men.

The DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the State’s two major political parties, each have only one woman serving as a district secretary. Geetha Jeevan, the DMK’s district secretary of Thoothukudi North, inherited the post after her father’s demise; he had held it for more than three decades prior to that, which indicates his family’s caste capital in the region. This example shows just what is needed for a woman to actually hold power.

Another interesting example is that of Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, one of only three women in the DMK, including K. Kanimozhi, to hold the position of the party’s deputy general secretary, the only leadership position reserved for women. After losing her seat from Modakuruchi constituency in the last Assembly election in 2021, Subbulakshmi resigned from the party and retired from politics. She later alleged lack of support from her own party cadres to explain her loss.

It is almost impossible for women to reach leadership positions in the political sphere. When, in rare cases, they do manage to climb the ladder, women are denied support by their own party men, who ensure that their careers are cut short. The possibility of women holding roles that are actually powerful within the organisation and having the free will to act on their powers is yet to be seen.

Reforms from within political organisations that work towards centring strong women leaders, who can then bring about a larger party-wide or society-wide gender consciousness, will remain impossible unless the present structure is split wide open.

Need for gender consciousness

There is an urgent need for gender consciousness to become a priority within political organisations, independent of the cycle that is set off whenever a man abuses a woman or a predator is outed.

The tradition in most political spaces is for existing leaders to take the lead in identifying the next generation leader, who is then groomed and entrusted with taking the party and its ideology forward. In this method, one man simply chooses another man. The inherent gender bias built into this exercise of passing on social and political capital has not been acknowledged or addressed adequately.

It is this all-male field that has created the feeling of infallibility that reigns among male politicians and political party members, where most of them strongly believe that no matter what they do they can evade accountability, even after exposure.

When powerful men such as Vairamuthu are called out, it is almost as if they have transcended the barriers of the individual self. They no longer exist alone, they are seen as representatives of larger ideologies and organisations that enable them to manufacture consent, to claim legitimacy for their acts, to claim trust. Women are expected not only to trust the men in such cases but to trust the ideology too.

This element of ideological trust is vital in any discussion around consent. Which is why we stress that there needs to be a system of accountability within progressive organisations to ensure that this added element of ideological trust is not misused. The added trust and capital that such men depend on to get away with impunity is often not accumulated by them on their own but passed down to them as tradition from their mentors.

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The question then becomes about what happens when only men are chosen to be the torch-bearers of the next era. This exclusive form of selective inheritance in social capital not only elevates men to icons but, most importantly, sidelines the potential formation of women leadership within progressive organisations.

It is also evident that political organisations or parties act as enclosed units with their rules of initiation, engagement, and separation determined by men who operate under the lens of patriarchy. When a woman enters these spaces, she is forced to adhere to these rules, failing which she risks being seen as a trouble-maker. The inherent conflict of class in the form of gender is never acknowledged; the only choice left open for women is to go through party channels, which are controlled and monitored by men, or leave the space.

The paradox of Leftist organisations that exist to annihilate class conflict, but which deny women the right and power to organise and mobilise within the party, also needs to be spoken about. The same can be said about how Dalits in non-Dalit and progressive political spaces and organisations are denied the space to form a Dalit consciousness. Or how Dalit women are denied space to form a gender consciousness within Dalit organisations.

Extending this argument, we must ask if women from across progressive party lines can come together and form a feminist solidarity on women’s issues. The reality seems far from it. Women do not have the free will to form a collective consciousness of feminist thought beyond party lines. They can act only as subjects of their party by ignoring their class interests with other women. Moreover, women are often pitted against each other, so that ingrained patriarchal and misogynist views are delivered by the women themselves.

To conclude, the episode with Mathur Sathya has illustrated once again why we should move away from a dialogue that is only about consent and about the representation of women in political spaces. The focus needs to shift instead to the efforts of men and progressive organisations to de-gender their notions of accountability, boundary, and solidarity. It is time to make men answerable about how they are sharing and passing on social capital equally and retrospectively to women.

This cannot happen without acknowledging that the inherent gender bias is the “one size fits all model” that exists in political outfits across Tamil Nadu. This has been singularly responsible for preventing women from organising within and across organisations to create a collective feminist consciousness/movement and has, instead, limited them within “women’s wing” politics that continue to be controlled and supervised by men.

Jeyarani is a writer and senior journalist.

Kanaga Varathan is a techie and writer.

Greeshma Kuthar is an independent journalist and lawyer.