Lucknow Cab Driver Case: Why feminists have to answer for class disparity?

Long story short: A woman who almost got hit by a cab, thrashed the cab driver in a fit of rage. After the video went viral, social media was stormed with #ArrestLucknowGirl, and ultimately the police filed an FIR against the girl. The case, which was not even remotely connected to ‘fake’ feminism’, as most Twitterati suggest, got highlighted by the self appointed torchbearers of men’s rights. What began as a case of road rage is now a topic for gender based discourse.

To clarify a few things first: No feminist endorses violence. No feminist applauds the girl for assaulting the driver. Assault is assault. Hate is hate. Feminists condemn both.

In the midst of all this debate about feminists and our so-called agenda of spreading man-hatred, people forgot to question a whole other sociological aspect to this case, that is the class disparity that plagues India. The actions of the girl must be condemned, but our condemnation should be directed to the right place.

While watching the video, it's strange that no one thought about what if that man was not just a driver but someone who owned the car? Being the car owner, definitely would have reflected on the way he was carrying himself and his mere appearance would have provided him the position of a decent man. In this case, he might have also pushed the woman, and traffic police would have also thought twice before trashing the man. Maybe then everyone would have blamed the woman, who was carelessly crossing the road, and thanked the car guy for not hitting her and for saving her life.

We have to understand that she did not attack the man because she was some feminist, and her feminism made her think that women are stronger than men, or that women need to trash men. Feminists have said it a thousand times before and will say it a thousand times more, we do not think women are better than men, we advocate equality. She attacked him because he is a part of the proletariat, the working class, a car driver, and she from a privileged 'class'. Among all other societal hierarchies, class difference has its own violence, many times totally based on the appearance of the person. This is largely a reason why its mostly lower income group men wearing a skull cap, or pathani suit or other symbolic add-ons that reflect on to their religious identity, end up getting lynched. Here, also its not just the religious identity but also the class identity that together result in such heinous crime. And it was this class difference that made the Lucknow women feel powerful enough to attack a man in the middle of a crowded crossing without any fear of repercussions.

We have been asked “Is this the kind of empowerment feminists want? What do feminist women have to say for themselves now? You always cry victim and paint men as villains, look how she is behaving.” And these are no new arguments or questions, and they keep on targeting feminist wherever their in violence conducted by gender minorities, which also happened when the Zomato delivery boy assault video went viral. This has been a pattern to always drag Feminism into a story where it never belongs, to always question those who fought for equality to explain such incidents.

Even in the Zomato assault case, we as a society conveniently forgot how class played a vital role in everyday abuse such as these. The delivery boy who was earning his living by putting his life at risk during the covid time, was trashed and accused by a woman who was from a privileged background. But blurring these narratives, the men’s rights activists brigade online only want to crucify an entire movement, and negate the plight of an entire gender, based on narratives that have been manipulated to appear as gender-based, by highlighting only the gender of the perpetrator of violence, and not their class.

Women, who have been on the facing end of violence and assault since forever, know better than anyone that there is no excuse for assault. But social media is doing a huge disservice to men who have to deal with assault by women, by shifting the agenda to “evils” of women empowerment. Empowerment does not advocate or demands the right to hit or injure someone.

The difference between men attacking women, and women attacking men, is that the former comes through generations of male predominance proffered by patriarchy. These attacks are a show of power dictated by standards of toxic masculinity. However, the latter are isolated incidents, which do not have their roots in gender based inequalities, but more often than not are based on class disparities.

When an entire narrative is based on not uplifting men and freeing them from the clutches of patriarchal oppression, but pointing out flaws in the drive to uplift the opposite gender, what more can be expected? What is being done to address male sexual abuse, male domestic violence, oppression of men at the hands of patriarchal practices, male career policing, etc., apart from targeting feminism and women empowerment?

When any case of assault or violence perpetrated by a man props up, these people are the first ones to cry wolf about #NotAllMen. They scream against generalisation, but the moment a man becomes a victim, they generalise the whole idea of women empowerment and feminism as a man-hating machine. They get furious about such incidents and give it a gendered narrative because they are intimidated by the idea of feminism. They know that feminism fights patriarchy which systematically benefits men. Those who do not miss any opportunity to malign feminism, are the ones who will conveniently be silent when patriarchy is under the lens.

- Smriti Choudhary