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On Men Getting Women to Shut Up

Unproofed, unedited.

I just began reading Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya which he begins with a reference to ancient Greek philosophers knowing myth as mythos. Unsurprisingly, Pattanaik makes no reference to mythos also involving getting women to shut the hell up, as Homer has narrated of Penelope.

Disconcerting as it is that one of the first records of Western literature involves men getting women to shut up, and that there are virtually no records of women writers since then till recent centuries —discounting anomalies to the rule such as Roswitha who, for all practical purposes, was not viewed as a sexual woman— what is perhaps even more disconcerting is that voice (especially for women) is still 'a mark of privilege' as someone put it.

A mark of privilege on one hand, and a necessity on the other hand: for credibility, for enabling one to fight for what one claims as rights, for being able to narrate one’s own story, for being able to go about living one’s life in a manner one might wish to be able to. A necessity which is routinely denied to women, by men who have no qualms about attempting to get women to shut up especially when they don’t like hearing what women have to say. By men, who for some (presumably cultural) reason, seem to delude themselves into thinking that women should speak in a manner which they approve of. By men who think that their distaste for what a woman may have to say actually matters (or should actually matter) to anyone but themselves.

There is, of course, no shortage of material which has been written about men silencing women, or attempting to silence women, especially on social media, with everything from insults to rape and bomb threats. They are often by men whom one —I write, of course, from my own perspective— would not pay the slightest attention to offline; from men whom one would likely not know offline, and who manage to appear on one’s radar only because of the democratising ‘power’, such as it is, of social media where a message from one’s best friend is just as certain to reach one as a reply from a nondescript thug.

There are, of course, solutions when it comes to strangers who would have one shut up: ignore creeps, block creeps. The problem with both those solutions is that they don’t keep one from encountering creeps in the first place; one can only ignore or block what one has already come across. Also, these solutions don't address the question of what creates creeps who would seek to get one not to speak and who think that their opinion about what another should say (assuming that other’s speech is legal) should have any relevance to anyone but themselves.

Few (if any) women who speak of subjects that don’t qualify as bland (or approved... perhaps cooking and childcare, in acceptable terms!) would likely be able to say that they don’t face a barrage of creeps who would have them shut up. (I’m sure that there are good sociological reasons to be more understanding and not use the word ‘creeps’ but they are not reasons I can emotionally relate to.) Unfortunately, the choices one has in terms of ways in which to respond to such creeps are limited.

There is, of course, ignoring and blocking. And there is —as I’ve once done particularly emphatically re. stranger creepiness— being rude to the stranger in question; a response which I see as being entirely justified, although, of course, such creeps who begin by being rude themselves invariably sulk upon having their own rudeness being met with rudeness. Proponents of the art of being able to dish it out but not being able to take it, it would seem.

Apart from these three solutions (and I use the word 'solutions' loosely), there is also the dismissal of creeps; an approach which I’ve often favoured although it is almost guaranteed to have creeps complain about one’s arrogance and rudeness — never mind the dismissal has invariably been invited (if not begged for) by their own conduct.

What is inescapable though is that none of these approaches address (much less answer the question of) why many men would want to get women to shut up in the first place, why they may imagine that their opinion of a woman’s speech has any value at all, and why they often seem to feel so mightily insulted if their attempts to get women to shut up are challenged in any way whatsoever. And when it comes to non-strangers who would have one shut up, the question only becomes more urgent.

Clearly, there are no easy answers although the question seems indicative of the fact that (many) boys are brought up to have an extraordinary, unearned sense of entitlement coupled with delusions about the value of their own opinions. Perhaps, if there’s any desire not to have men attempt to shut women up, the solutions lie in bringing up boys to respect the right of women to speak in a manner analogous to that in which they take their own right to speak for granted.

For my own part, I'm tired and have no particular desire to speak to anyone.