Now that that’s out of the way. It is time (finally after almost a decade) to look into what you think of sex and consent. Without, of course, assuming it reflects your worldview that gave editorial sanction to put a victim on trial for not behaving adequately like a victim. (To your credit, you have taken it down after a decade and more, with a little push from the audience).

I must say, Mr. Sekhri, until reading this article, I had never thought of sex as a roller coaster ride with “ups and down”. But we learn something new everyday. Hope you will, too.

My primary disagreement, Mr. Sekhri, with your expedition into the grey areas of sex and consent is that you believe “to discuss this honestly would require a graphic description of circumstances.” But the thing is, we can, in fact, discuss this honestly. Without graphic descriptions and more importantly, without playing the worst devils advocate known to man.

Allow me to discuss. When two consenting adults (please note the present continuous tense because consent is ongoing and active) go through the “coupling ritual” they care about having each other’s consent throughout the experience. I hope, you have been informed, in POSH sessions since this article, that consent is not static or definitive. It can be withdrawn at any point. I believe you definitely know this because that is sort of what you are trying to say. But you get it terribly wrong.

Only those who want consent to mean permission would assume consent to be akin to a call centre experience. Every time you say consent or describe how consent is articulated by anchors in studios, you conflate consent with permission. In your defence, your understanding of permission is correct. Permission is binary. Permission lacks nuance.

When you write consent but mean permission, you place men in this imaginary position of “needing permission”. Nobody in the world thinks there must be a complete absence of a “no” for the act to be consensual. Because this is not about language, this is about power. And you understand that, but your language limits you from comprehending its complexity. Your rebuttal article fails to understand this either.

You are right that consent deserves nuance. But not the nuance you have to offer. “No means No” has a historical context that you seem to not remember. We live in a country where the name of the game is turning a woman’s no into a yes by any means possible. The nuance you are missing is that ‘no means no’ is for victims to know they have power. In a helpless, vulnerable situation, their one word is powerful enough to hold the man accountable.

You assume this power to mean, again, permission. A “no” is about the power a word that small can have to reinstate your equality with a man dehumanising you. From your POSH sessions, you would also have been made aware that a “no” is not necessary for the act to be considered unwelcome and non-consensual. The context under which consent is given is taken into account by our law. I wonder if that puzzles you further. Because even a yes in the wrong context, can be read as non-consensual — as it should be — by the state.

This was never about the words, Mr Sekhri. This was about power that you have abundance of except when you stand before the state. I wonder why in the many metaphors that you come up with, the equation between a citizen and the state never struck you as a perfect equivalent.

You can dissent all you like, will you be heard is the question not how often or loud your dissent was. Hope that helps.

I am glad that we have crushed your hopes of this being a phase. It may not have seemed as constructive articulation to you in 2017, but it has been for women since. We can all see how effective it is since it has made people aware enough to put pressure on you, even if a decade later, to take responsibility.

Mr Sekhri, it is important you understand that while these opinions may have flown under the radar in 2017, they display a pattern within Newslaundry’s editorial’s view of women, sex and consent. In both instances —2014 and 2017— two “progressive” men were on trial. In both instances, the victim’s characters and behaviours were called into scrutiny by the courts. In both instances, your publication tried to add “more perspective”. We pay you to keep the news free.

But can you keep the news free from your boys club? We await answers.

In closing, you did get it completely wrong and sounded like an uninformed and primitive Neanderthal. I hope you accept you stand corrected.

A decade too late.

NL subscriber,

Hannah

I first read Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay when I was in college. Most people have probably encountered the abridged version of her essay in the Barbie monologue. America Ferrera’s monologue finds its roots in Gay’s essay. “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” (And if you ask Gay, it’s almost as impossible to be a feminist.)

But she is wrong just as she was wrong in 2012 when she published this essay. And she remains wrong even after defining this decade of feminism. Hindsight is a gift and I like using it.

Before Barbie, there was fleabag — the original baddie. An important moment for women in media as writers and storytellers. Without Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, there would be no Fleabag. 10 years ago, the show and its self-aware expose of feminist women ushered a new voice in women’s writing. One that settled for negotiation with patriarchy and feminism instead of rejecting the former and embracing the latter. Since then, we have been trapped in this cynical, self-deprecating, self-sabotaging fever dream led exclusively by ‘bad feminists’.

I believe their time is up. If we are to end this era of bad and baddie feminism, we must begin by dismantling the myth of the bad feminist.

Roxane Gay opens this essay by offering her favourite definition of a “feminist”. Quoting Su, an Australian woman, she says, feminists are “women who don’t want to be treated like shit.” (Oddly, implying that there are women who perhaps want to be treated like shit.) However, by this definition, Gay believes she falls short in her commitment to feminism. This becomes the central conflict of the essay — A feminist with short-comings trying to navigate her way through this realisation.

With such an interesting quest at the heart of this argument, one would imagine the essay to be about the inescapability of gender and its performance or patriarchy that feels encoded in our DNA. But Gay wants to talk about the tyranny of good or “essential feminists”, the dictators who decide how one should be a feminist. Her shortcomings are not because she was raised in a gendered world but because feminists make no room for complexities and individuality. As she builds her case, the absurdity of her argument is unmissable.

“Which leads me to confess: I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one.” Gay and I disagree, here. Not on her failings, but on her attribution of feminist as a label. She fails at the starting line when she defines a feminist. And a feminist is only as good as her feminism.

Roxane Gay is a boring feminist because her feminism lacks creativity. Because a pitiful lack of imagination is the only explanation to view feminism as a mere label. To me, feminism is a canvas. The dream of the denied and a prophecy of justice.

While it is a movement with certain goals, that is not its mission. Feminism is a vision. A new world order not a negotiation with the old. When Gay claims that feminism lacks room for individuality, she resigns from her duty to dream of that reality. Instead she argues that “there is an essential feminism, the notion that there are right and wrong ways to be a feminist, and there are consequences for doing feminism wrong.”

Many would agree. Awkward Goat would probably bleat in agreement. It’s not easy being a feminist. The feminist police is always on the lookout for the baddies who get it wrong. Fortunately for feminists and unfortunately for fascists, being a bad feminist is not a punishable offence. Just a cringe-worthy one.

Roxane Gay got it completely wrong. She isn’t a bad feminist. She is simply a boring one. And it doesn’t matter. Because neither bad nor boring feminists change the world. They only convince us to settle for less.

If you wear feminism as a label, you are bound to find yourself more concerned with the label than liberation.

Feminism is a lens. The sharpest tool in your kit to cut through the lies and myths that deny us our humanity. It has never been a race to the top. When we begin to lose sight of the task at hand, we find solace in personal achievements. Our private victories become more important than the sky waiting to be coloured in freedom. The waves of feminism have retreated because we refuse to add to the vision. We simply take. Hoarding the fruits of feminism. Without gratitude. Without hope. Without compassion.

If you wear feminism as a label, you are bound to find yourself more concerned with the label than liberation. A wise woman once said: Hindsight is gift, stop wasting my time.

A decade ago, Pink released. 10 years later, Tapsee Pannu — a lawyer this time — is set to release a déjà vu of her last courtroom drama. To leave nothing unsaid, the film is titled “Assi” referring to the familiar statistic of 80 rapes that happen in India everyday. Change may be a constant. But India seems to be an exception to the rules of change. We live trapped in this cycle of picking representation instead of agitation.

Even with the cultural momentum that #metoo gave us and the strength that the women at Shaheen Bagh displayed for us, we let feminism become reduced to podcast banter.

Representation was supposed to bring in more perspectives. But it has only concentrated power in the hand of the few. So now, women are everywhere and nowhere. One woman who can shrug off the prices of onions while being able to control them is everywhere. But the woman who has to budget the weekly ration is invisible. One woman can be the face of luxury bottled water while another loses her 6-month baby to contaminated water only for her loss to be mocked by ministers. Women are everywhere and nowhere. Yet we keep choosing representation instead of agitation.

It is not in a vacuum that baddie went from meaning a villainous man to becoming slang for a confident, stylish woman. Girlbosses always had villainous ambition. Their erosion of feminism and society — by merging with their respective country’s “women empowerment” charade — was an inevitability. With Erika Kirk on one end of the baddie spectrum and the girls from the Tyla concert who announced to the world that Indian women are desirable on the other end, baddie feminism craves to be seen, captured and clipped. But not without their bronzer and blush. Make-up is self-expression. Self-expression is self-care. Self-care is basically feminism. Audre Lorde said it or something. You can look it up.

The pursuit of ‘intersectional’ feminisim uncritically applied to the Indian context has also yielded no particular benefit. Neither has it brought disruption in the movement nor has it created any new strategies. Apart from panel speakers, who has benefited from increased representation in feminist discourse?

Our current strategies have failed to create any meaningful change that we can claim as ours. Even with the cultural momentum that #metoo gave us and the strength that the women at Shaheen Bagh displayed for us, we let feminism become reduced to podcast banter.

It is time we accept that our generation of women have failed to steward feminism with the courage and hope of the past. We have settled for negotaiting with tradition instead of making a new pledge with the future. Unless we intend to make different choices, we will remain on this treadmill claiming to strive but moving in no direction.