I carried out my PhD fieldwork in Delhi during a very particular ‘moment’ in relation to gender and sexuality in India; high profile cases of sexual violence between December 2012 and December 2014 framed my fieldwork period. In my study schools, in addition to norms of gender segregation (Chapter Four), the gender narratives that shaped young people’s everyday lives revealed further ways in which gender and sexuality were made to ‘matter’. In the wake of the December 2012 gang rape case, these narratives of girlhood and masculinity were both contradicted and reinforced by seemingly ubiquitous stories of sexual violence. This chapter explores competing narratives of girlhood (5.2) and masculinities (5.4) that already shaped young people’s experiences of schooling, and then seeks to locate girls’ (5.3) and boys’ (5.5) responses to cases of sexual violence within these often contradictory gender narratives. In this chapter, schools are considered both as institutional agents and as sites for other kinds of agents, particularly students (Connell 2000); I explore the interactions between gender narratives on an institutional level and within peer cultures at the schools. The work of Connell (2005), Holland et al (1998) and Cornwall & Lindisfarne (1994) has also proved invaluable in order to conceptualize multiple masculinities and femininities in this chapter. Going beyond Connell’s (2000) framework, I begin to consider the role of sexual stories (Plummer 1995; Epstein & Johnson 1998), particularly stories of sexual violence, in shaping young people’s gendered and sexual learning; these stories provided another, perhaps more immediate dimension to the risk-‐based sources of sexual learning examined in Chapter Four. Findings presented in this chapter are consistent with Gilbertson (2014), Dasgupta (2014), Phadke, Khan & Ranade (2011) and others who discuss the conflict in post-‐liberalization India between new expectations and opportunities in young women’s lives, and old restrictions on female sexuality and freedom of movement in the name of women’s ‘safety’. I also go beyond interpretations of recent sexual violence in India in terms of a ‘crisis’ of masculinity (Dasgupta 2014; Kapur 2012) by examining boys’ own anxieties and concerns, and by exploring the complex ways in which violence was embedded in their everyday experiences of schooling.
Firstly, however, it seems important to consider how the focus of the research, and my analysis of students’ stories, was shaped by my own experiences and responses to ongoing cases of sexual violence in India during the fieldwork period. The December 2012 case occurred two weeks before the start of my first fieldwork trip to Delhi (see Chapter One); as well as sharing the widespread, horrified reaction at the brutality of the attack, I admitted in
my early field notes that the case had made me feel ‘scared and anxious’ about going to Delhi (Field notes, 05.01.13). I was not alone in this fear; my parents repeatedly told me to ‘be careful, ‘keep safe’ and ‘be sensible’ while I was in Delhi. I was indeed careful while in Delhi, planning my days to avoid travelling after dark, travelling in the ladies’ carriage when using the Delhi Metro, and constantly worrying about whether my choice of clothing was appropriate (although this was as much to do with a desire to ‘fit in’ as with concerns about personal safety – see Chapter Three). I later heard similar stories from girls and women in Delhi, both the girls who participated in my research and older female colleagues, who shared their strategies for ‘keeping safe’ and responding to their families’ anxieties for their safety in the city.
Narratives of female vulnerability, then, were at the forefront of my mind when in Delhi at the beginning of 2013, and again when I returned to the city in August 2013. However, given the feminist framing of the research, as well as my own feminist politics, I began to resent these forms of self-‐restriction and the apparently unquestionable logic of my vulnerability as a lone woman in public spaces. I particularly struggled to deal with the persistent staring with which seemingly all women in India have to contend while alone in public21. At best, this just involved
men blankly and unapologetically staring (something I have always struggled with during visits to India, perhaps a result of the ‘it’s-‐rude-‐to-‐stare’ mantra I grew up with in the UK), but more offensive forms involved a suggestive leer accompanied by kissing sounds and/or ‘comment-‐ passing’. In an atmosphere of heightened fears about violence against women, even the blankest of stares from individual or groups of men in broad daylight took on a sinister edge, which unnerved and angered me during the first few weeks of the main fieldwork period. While previous family visits to India had to some extent prepared me for such experiences in public spaces, I had not anticipated similarly unwelcome scrutiny from boys in the schools. Assumptions relating to the ‘power of the researcher’ were completely subverted during CGS and RIS questionnaire sessions, where I was already struggling to appear authoritative in front of a classroom of 15-‐17 year olds. When attempting to introduce myself and the research, I became aware of groups of boys whispering, pointing, and smiling suggestively at me – which left me feeling both powerless and unnerved. I found this attention even more unexpected since I had taken great care (or so I thought) to ‘fit in’ during my school visits, wearing a modest churidar-‐kurta suit complete with dupatta (see Chapter Three).
21 According to Phadke, Khan & Ranade (2011), this is linked to the relative invisibility of women in
urban spaces; while men are frequently seen ‘loitering’ all over India’s metro cities, public spaces are transitory spaces for women, used to travel from one private space to another.
I did not articulate this general sense of uneasiness in the early weeks of fieldwork, either to my research assistant or when writing my field notes. However, reading a particularly powerful article on the December 2012 case by Jason Burke (2013b) finally led me to express the anger I felt at this persistent sense of vulnerability, albeit not particularly coherently.
[…] Walking back to the hostel after reading this [the Burke article], I realized how in the midst of all this I am – suddenly I felt both startled and angry when I noticed a man staring at me as I walked past the Metro station, which is something I had become used to over these past weeks. Or at least I’d become used to ignoring it […] And then I thought about the ‘eve-‐teasing’ I’ve been getting myself in the schools […] Pankaj saying loudly to me in the corridor in front of his friends: “Ma’am you’re looking gorgeous in Indian dress!”, and then one of the boys in 11B shouting “Ma’am you’re looking gorgeous!” across the classroom.
[…] Thinking back on my varying reactions to their behaviour, I want my next reaction to be more along the lines of pointing out in the most eloquent and convincing manner possible that they are part of the problem, that they are implicated when they behave like this and think it’s okay to behave like this, as if girls and women are just a joke, or just cardboard cut-‐outs which they can use to exert power and feel so fucking dominant.
(Field notes, 12.09.13)
This experience of being ‘in the midst’ of key aspects of my research – gendered, sexualized interactions in schools and beyond – encouraged an ongoing process of reflexivity during and after fieldwork, and made me particularly aware of the embodied nature of my research (as discussed by Unnithan-‐Kumar 2006). Additionally, my responses to boys’ attentions in the schools did change over time. While I initially felt exposed and vulnerable during informal interactions at CGS and RIS, over the fieldwork period I became more comfortable within the school environments, and felt more equipped to deal with and respond to boys’ attentions. In particular, this had an impact on my interactions with SGS boys, where I started research with students after five weeks’ experience in CGS and RIS. I initially felt that the SGS boys were more friendly and less intimidating than the CGS and RIS boys, but further reflection suggested that this may have had more to do with my own changing positionality than with the students themselves.
These experiences and personal reactions also directly influenced my research focus. My decision to include an activity on ‘eve-‐teasing’ in the mixed FGDs (see Chapters Two and Three), for example, was undeniably linked to my personal experiences in Delhi, combined with the daily media reports on the December 2012 trial, which took place from August until mid-‐September 2013. In this chapter, I explore students’ own experiences and responses in
light of ongoing cases of sexual violence, and locate these stories within particular gender narratives that shaped their school lives. The chapter explores the ways in which, within the context of broader narratives of sexual violence, narratives of girlhood and masculinities both reinforced and contradicted each other. Throughout the chapter, reflections on my own embodied experiences as a woman living in Delhi, and as a female researcher working within the schools, inform the discussion of students’ stories and experiences.