Men Men Men Men Manly Subcontinental Men

READING TIME: 5 minutes

In the wake of reports of mass molestation in Bangalore during New Year’s Eve celebrations, I tweeted an article saying how the reaction of the Indian men twitterati, starting the hastag #NotAllMen AND getting it to trend, was typical of Subcontinental men.

I came across my Nepalese equivalent of the typical subcontinental (social media?) man less than a week later.

It came about when I tweeted an article about the remand in custody, by the police, of a conductor and a driver of a public vehicle for verbally abusing and harassing girl passengers.

The Nepalese man responded saying that boys and men “does not deserve to be harassed.”

“Knowing” him — I had had discussions with him in the past when he had shown, firstly, to have issues with my arguments and, secondly, to struggle with logic — AND noticing both the assumption he made and the fallacy in his logic, I tried to shed light on them BOTH to help him understand them, but to no avail. (For images of some of the series of exchanges I had with him immediately following that tweet, click here, here, here, here, and here.)

It was clear that he just didn’t understand what I was saying and yet kept insisting on an answer to his question. So, I made a series of tweets to explain everything starting with the following.

(To which he responded saying that I had gotten his original tweet “wrong”.)

(To which he responded saying, “that’s the spirit. appreciate u.” Obviously, he missed the significance of what I said!)

(He didn’t respond to the tweets above. I suspect because, most likely, he didn’t understand them.)

Then I went on to make a statement about harassment of females in general.

(Bizarrely, but not surprisingly, he misinterpreted the above tweet. He WRONGLY thought that I was saying the girls in the public vehicle had ACTUALLY been sexually harassed. When I asked for evidence, he responded saying, “Your logic did.“)

(Even an informal, non-scientific, online poll conducted by Code for Nepal recently discovered 98% of girls and women respondents to have been victims of harassment in public transportation.)

Next, I addressed the assumption in his original tweet starting with a question.

(He didn’t respond to that either. My guess is that he did NOT understand the question. Regardless, I had already provided, indirectly, the answer to the question in an earlier tweet, to which he hadn’t responded either.) 

(Of course not, but again, he didn’t respond to the question, and so I am left to assume that he did NOT understand the tweet.)

(He misunderstood the above tweet too. Firstly, he WRONGLY thought I had misread the article: he pointed out that girls were harassed and the boys faced the consequences. Secondly, in another tweet, not only did he (again) WRONGLY think I had accused him of saying that boys were harassed, he reinforced his original tweet saying “no one should be harassed.”)

To give another example, when activists in the US say #BlackLivesMatter, it does NOT logically follow that white lives don’t matter.

When highlighting  or raising issues affecting females in the country —- in newspaper articles, on social media, for instance — I have noticed a tendency, on the parts of Nepalese boys and men, to refocus and redirect the attention to themselves, not much different from Subcontinental men in general, not much different from the way the Indian men on Twitter did when women and girls were expressing outrage over the new year eve mass molestation incident in Bangalore earlier this month.

What do you think?

 

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Additional Relevant References (added after the publication of the post):

E-samata (February, 2017). नेपाली मिडियामा लैङ्गिकहिंसा सम्बन्धी समाचार निकै कम छापिन्छन् (Low level of reportage of gender-based violence in Nepali Media). “नेपाली मिडियामा महिला हिंसाका समाचार सामग्रीहरू कति र कसरी प्रस्तुत गरिएका छन् भन्ने विषयमा अस्मिता प्रकाशनले हालै गरेको नेपाली मिडियामा लैङ्गिक हिंसासम्बन्धी समाचार सञ्चार अनुगमन प्रतिवेदनले नेपालका मिडियाले महिला हिंसाको प्रकाशन र प्रशारण सन्तोषजनक ढंगले नगरिरहेको पाएको छ ।” The article also reports on the data.

Kantipur (February, 2017). पैसा र पारपाचुके. See below for a tweet of mine containing a Facebook critique of the article.

No surprise that we can see the following kind of promotions in Kathmandu!


 

#NotAllMen explained so so much better than what I could have accomplished had I even attempted: Think It’s #NotAllMen? These 4 Facts Prove You’re Just Plain Wrong. [Added on Nov. 6, 2017.]

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