Gender, Caste and Subjectivity: Revisiting the #MeToo Movement in India

Abstract

The #MeToo movement has claimed to mark a ‘new era in Indian feminism’ by introducing feminist articulations into the quotidian through the powerful use of social media. The ‘sharing’ of survivor stories has served as a means to challenge the taboo of victimhood while also creating the possibility for solidarity. The #MeToo movement in India claims inheritance of previous movements such as the 2009 Pink Chaddi1 movement against moral policing, the 2011 Slut Walk movement against victim blaming, the 2015 Pinjra Tod movement against sexist curfew in hostels, and the 2017 Bekhauf Azadi.2 All these movements from which #MeToo claims heredity from, are movements proclaiming women’s right to access public space. The article will delve into the positionality of the speaker; the role of intersectional identities of caste, class, and gender in determining subjecthood, and solidarity. In its focus on gender inequality and sexual violence, the #MeToo movement, ironically, reproduces casteist, classist and sexist hierarchies. What seems to drive the #MeToo movement in India is the anxiety regarding women’s confinement in the domestic sphere and the resultant inability to ‘speak’. This understanding categorically erases Dalit women, whose lives as well as oppression, encompass both private and public spaces. This article highlights the latent Brahmanism of the #MeToo movement by examining the erasure of Dalit women.