[Reader-list] Response to Lehar from Saheli

[Laxmi Murthy]

Dear Friends,

Although there have been several timely and well-argued responses to Lehar�s �Public Interest Alert� we at Saheli would like to respond to some points. We were surprised to find our name at the end of the mail which suggests that we endorse her rather strong viewpoints. Checking with our views and experience before doing so would have clarified this. 

Lehar has raised very important concerns relating to violence against women, but unfortunately, the conflating of sex work with trafficking, consuming alcohol with alcoholism, sexually explicit material with pornography is problematic and tends to confuse issues. Such conservatism being projected under the banner of women�s rights can be dangerous, particularly in the present context of ascendant right wing orthodoxy. 

Certainly, the continuous projection of women's bodies along with all that caters to male constructs of sex appeal is disturbing as is its impact on women in general. Yet moralistic positions, endorsements or indeed exhortations of censorship and arming the government with more powers to �censor and ban� are more than likely to backfire on us. Women�s groups have more often found legal interventions to be inadequate, and in fact promoting a retrogressive image of women, rather than enhancing women�s rights. Lehar�s faith in The Indecent Representation of Women Act is at best misplaced (The nomenclature of the Act itself should be telling, rooted as it is in notions of �decency�/�indecency�). 

Current debates about prostitution � decriminalization, licensing, zoning etc, among prostitutes' collectives and unions, as well as human rights' and women�s organizations are well-nuanced, demanding far more complex interventions than those suggested by Lehar. 

Clearly, the issues compel more informed engagement, and constant challenging of our own understandings responses and strategies. 

In general, many media representations -- of women, war, patriotism, community, religion and  �normalcy� are worrisome. These, and deteriorating standards of journalism, the decline of media ethics, the selling of news space in leading dailies, flying journalists to Paris for the launch of a drug which finds �mention� in the op-ed of TOI � are most certainly concerns that face a newspaper reading public. Yet, pleading for more heavy handedness can only lead to more authoritarianism. 

The ease with which the blame for all evils is laid on "the West" is also disturbing. Perhaps we need to critically examine such depiction of women from a feminist lens, rather than parade the convenient and tired scapegoat of the "foreign hand". Only then can we even consider how/whether an alternative feminist culture can too be promoted by institutions like the media.

In solidarity,

Saheli, Delhi

 


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