Marmara on Women and Public Spaces
10th June, 2016 - Cubbon Park
“Under a tree, in a public space, we sat, shared and reclaimed”
The Marmaras are a safe and non-hierarchical space for women and men to gather and start dialogues around relevant and meaningful issues.
For this Marmara, we spoke about how women interact with public spaces. It was an attempt to create a safe public space and thus thirty of us gathered under a beautiful tree at Cubbon park talking about how women and public spaces
Public spaces include the streets, markets, buses, restaurants, shops, parks etc. Access to public spaces is reflective of one’s place in the social and political hierarchies of our villages, towns and cities. Consequently, women are generally the ones who are more restricted and limited in the ways in which they interact with or use public spaces. This reality reduces women’s freedom of movement and also limits their access to cultural and recreational opportunities outside the home. This is evident in the ways in which they are expected to conduct themselves in public spaces, questions of safety in public spaces and their purposes for being in a particular public space. While men can be seen loitering around, women generally require a purpose to be outside. Men have the authority to occupy public spaces on account of their gender. We have been socialised into our gender roles that dictate our behaviour, which includes our behaviour in public.
We believe that women and their relationship to public spaces is significant to question at this moment in history, as demands for women’s freedom are being brought to the fore as a result of continued marginalisation and exclusion. There have been many initiatives, movements, campaigns in India and around the world that are challenging the norms and social expectations imposed on women, so in solidarity, we gathered to understand what public spaces meant to us and how we use them. Can we express ourselves in public spaces?
We shared stories of experiences, and experiences of emotions.
From avoiding certain streets, to being questioned on which side of the bus one chooses to sit in, we asked, are public spaces truly free? Implicit rules and societal norms on how to behave in public spaces place restrictions on our freedom.
Various incidents of street harassment were shared including the tasking process of what happens after, which is a result of the trivialisation of an act of harassment.
We also spoke about what public spaces mean to other minority groups such as the transgender community. Often, public spaces such as parks, specifically Cubbon Park (in the Bangalore context), are where members of the transgender community come to meet each other. This is because it is the only place that is safe and private for them, and away from everything else. This illustrates a different way in which communities interact with public spaces.
A transwoman activist spoke of masculinity in urban spaces, and shared an experience of how men perceive her.
I live in a PG near JC road. On my way back to my PG, I have to walk through a street full of garage and metal workshops. Men workers would be all over that street, chatting, smoking and simply loitering. The moment they see me, they ask me whether I am a man or a woman. They ridicule and humiliate me. I am terrified and run for my life from there. I am haunted by the memories.
I am a post operative transman. I was travelling on a bus one day, recently having had my operation. I went and sat in the men’s section of the bus, when I began getting harassed. The bus conductor approached me and started yelling at me, saying that I should not be sitting in that section. When I told him that I was a man, he began asking for proof, and insisted that I take my shirt off to show him, while others on the bus watched. This was a violating and extremely humiliating experience. I could not believe that I had to prove who I was to the bus conductor by taking off my shirt. I feared for my safety and jumped off the bus as soon as I could.
The story of a transman who worked as a security guard was shared who was constantly living in the fear of being identified as a transgender, as owing to the current state of the society it would mean that he would be at the risk of losing his job.
Why is it that a significant part of the population has to live in constant fear of being harassed, humiliated, and ridiculed in public spaces?
It was realised that our perceptions of ‘safe and ‘unsafe’ public spaces are largely skewed by stereotypes and it is necessary that we become conscious of why we consider certain spaces safe and certain spaces unsafe. As we continued to talk about issues of safety in public spaces, we realised that the private sphere is also unsafe for women. Often, when a woman is unsafe and in threat in the private sphere, public spaces are where she feels safe, and away from danger.
It was pointed out, that conversations around women and public spaces are largely centred around the discourse of fear and danger which in turn is perpetuating more fear amongst women which is acting as a powerful force to push women back into the private sphere. Women are made to feel terrified of public spaces and this fear is forcing them to withdraw from these spaces.
An important point was made with regards to transgression. We spoke about how it is important to transgress and break societal expectations that are imposed on women. Breaking the status quo may lead to some resistance but in the longer term, will pave the way for greater freedom.
Finally, we spoke of justice. What does justice mean to us, and how do we acquire justice in such situations?
I was travelling on an overnight train once. I had fallen asleep, when suddenly, I was woken up by a strange man sitting on my berth and touching me. I was startled and confused. He jumped up and left as soon as he realised I had woken up. I went to make a complaint to the TT on the bus, who asked me to describe the man. The man was wearing a red shirt, so the TT went and found every man on the train wearing a red shirt for me identify him from. I felt hurt, shocked and violated, and having to identify this man added more pain to the process. It was extremely difficult for me to have to sit and look at a group of men to find the man who harassed, when I was still in shock from what happened.
This made me realise that the aftermath of such situations of violence (the process of acquiring justice) are arduous and painful, and often make the experience so much harder.
We listened to a story of a young teacher who got justice without the help of the law, but with the help of her students; to teach her harassers the right way to treat others.
A young teacher in Ethiopia used to walk down a road to her school every day. On her way, she would always walk past a group of men who would call out to her and make lewd remarks. She felt extremely uncomfortable and violated, and decided to take it upon herself to make those men aware of their actions. She made pamphlets in school, with the help of her students that had captions and pictures on how to treat other people properly. She then distributed these pamphlets to people in the neighbourhood through her students and also had her students give it to the group of men who harassed her; her intention behind being that the men feel guilty and ashamed of all that they do. Months later, she continued to see her pamphlets on good behaviour posted on the windows of the shops.
Creative ways to acquire justice often brings more resolution than going through a harrowing process with the law.
It is important that debates on public spaces shift from a politics of safety and fear to a politics of pleasure. This would demand that we examine what it means for women to have ‘fun’ in public spaces. This Marmara was an attempt to discuss our rights over a public space that would surpass the discourse on fear and centre around the discourse of pleasure; our right to loiter, our right to stand on a pavement under the infinite sky sipping tea, our right to let our eyes wander and seek pleasure.
This gathering was the beginning of a conversation that will continue with many more Marmaras where we would sit, share and reclaim.
Photos of the Marmara on Women and Public Spaces >>