What is the common thread between the Bangalore car crash that killed five people, Blake Lively’s sexual harassment complaint against It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, and Giselle Bellicot’s rape trial in France? The fragility of the security thread we hang on. It could explode in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t matter how powerful your car, your career, or your marriage is; It may not necessarily keep you safe. Then, what is the point of doing anything? If the basic need for security, both physiologically and emotionally, is overrated, how can anyone remain motivated to achieve anything on an individual or societal level?
Abraham Maslow predicted at least 80 years ago that safety is one of the five basic needs of humans. According to Maslow Theory of human motivationThe hierarchy of human needs is as follows: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. However, safety should be viewed as an all-encompassing category. What is the value of something if there is nothing to protect it?
What is the value of a long and stable marriage if the husband invites strangers to rape the drugged wife?
What is the value of a powerful car, facilitated by a huge pay package, if the roads are unsafe?
What is the value of a brilliant career and reputation if it does not guarantee a safe working environment?
Women and weakness
According to Maslow’s theory, satisfaction of one lower level need facilitates the satisfaction of the next higher level need. Without security, no need is fully met. The need for security must also be understood from a gender perspective. Are women able to reach the top of the pyramid and achieve their goals of self-actualization if they have to constantly look over their shoulders? Or have women differently trained themselves to see safety as an elusive and unattainable concept, and they continue to do so regardless? In other words, have women self-actualized as fundamentally vulnerable human beings? Maybe it was so. Because that’s the only way they’re allowed to work. Accepting their weakness and putting up their walls is what they are good at.
It involves the process of becoming a less-than-human entity. The focus on women’s bodies leads to “women being viewed and acting more like objects than human beings,” psychologists Nathan A. Heflick and Jimmy L. Goldenberg in their study on literal objectification. The most damning indictment of the gender status quo in our world goes like this: “Women themselves also act like objects (for example, by speaking less) when they become aware of this focus by others.”
When the “code” is broken.
Women’s need for security, unless fetishized, has been marginalized for so long that anyone who emphasizes this need makes headlines. It is seen as something radical and, ironically, destructive. A woman’s need for security hurts a man’s need to always be in control. By not continuing to be objects, women break the rules.
During Gisèle Bellicot’s historic rape trial, Dominique Bellicot stated that the trial had destroyed his life and his family. Coming from a man who was convicted of programming an elaborate activity to rape my drugged wife for nearly a decade, the sentiment is dark and sinister.
Similarly, in the case of Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the demand for a safe work environment was described as a problem that needed to be addressed only by destroying Lively’s reputation. Women are not supposed to ask for guarantees, even from men who claim to protect women. Baldoni received the Voices of Solidarity Award on December 9 from the Global Vital Voices Partnership for his commitment to women’s empowerment. What does it tell us about the disposability of women’s equal rights when an “ally” finds it difficult to stop being a garden-variety workplace harasser?
Sometimes, it seems like women just aren’t allowed to feel safe. It’s as if almost everyone, including many women, has accepted it as well. When an accident occurs on the road, the process of determining liability begins. Who is guilty may come later, but at least there is no search for the perfect victim. Women’s lives are shattered by many metaphorical car accidents, often going unnoticed. If women seek safety, they are labeled as destructive, difficult, delusional, or dysfunctional, depending on the flavor of the month.
There is no longer any meaning.
(Nishtha Gautam is an author and academic based in Delhi.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
