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A court cannot convict someone for conduct that does not constitute an offence under the law. However, it does not follow that the only appropriate response outside the courtroom is to say \u201cwe do not know\u201d.
\n | Photo Credit: File photo<\/p>\n
During the #MeToo movement in India, around 2018, there were few articles in the press written by Indian men that engaged seriously with what women were saying about sexual violence and with the social conditions that allow it to persist. But instead of a failure of individual men to support women, the gap reflected a difficulty in thinking about gender-based violence as something produced by individual acts as well as by social relationships and assumptions about masculinity.<\/p>\n
By and large, men\u2019s responses then, as now, following the Bombay High Court\u2019s commendable decision to reverse Tarun Tejpal\u2019s acquittal, have instinctively been to become defensive or huddle together rather than open up, meet women on their terms, and think through and talk about sexual violence.<\/p>\n
On August 11, a senior Supreme Court advocate argued in The Tribune that because criminal law can punish only conduct that satisfies the legal requirements of an existing offence, we should suspend judgment on the Tejpal case and wait for the decision of the Supreme Court, where Mr. Tejpal has appealed. A court cannot convict someone for conduct that does not constitute an offence under the law \u2014 and due process and the presumption of innocence are legitimate subjects of discussion. However, it does not follow that the only appropriate response outside the courtroom, as the advocate says, is to say \u201cwe do not know\u201d. We can still distinguish between what a criminal court is legally entitled to conclude and what the social dimensions of a case allows society to conclude.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Andrea Waling, honorary adjunct at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, Melbourne, reported in a paper in the Journal of Men\u2019s Studies \u201cfive key framings\u201d in #MeToo coverage based on 163 media reports: \u201cmen are victims of masculinity requiring intervention, men are positioned as inherently \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019, boys and men are lost and need to be found, men are performative in their \u2018awakenings\u2019, and men\u2019s take up of protector or allyship roles may in fact be attempts to be false heroes\u201d.<\/p>\n