May 29, 2016

Sexually Harassed

Sexual Harassment: “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” (American Association of University Women workplace definition, February 19, 2015, accessed May 29, 2016, www.huffpost.com)

I was sexually harassed while in India. Many who are reading this are probably shaking their heads and saying to themselves that this is no less than what they expected. After all, India gets a lot of negative Western press about their patriarchal society (as if ours isn’t) and reports of some high profile cases of sexual assault (the gang rape of a female student in Delhi in December 2012 comes to mind). Some people likely worried about me traveling alone as a single woman to India, fearing for my safety. Someone even gave me pepper spray to take with me in the event I got into a dangerous situation. I myself worried that, as a white woman, I might be at risk. On my previous trip to India, in 2014, I certainly got a lot more attention than a late middle-aged woman might expect.

But I wasn’t sexually harassed by any Indian men during my 5 ½ months in India. I was sexually harassed (touched inappropriately) by a white man, a fellow tour member, on the 54-day train tour around the perimeter of India with G Adventures, a Canadian-based tour company.

I am not going to describe the sordid details of my experience.

What I want to point out is my feelings of humiliation in admitting to myself my own racist attitude, having assumed that any sexual harassment I would experience would come from Indian men. And I think this is worth bringing out into the open. Fear of inappropriate behavior by Indian men probably keeps many Western women from traveling to India and experiencing this amazing country. But attitudes like this also perpetuate a “we versus them” mentality and promote a sense of cultural superiority. Men from the West are much more advanced and aware, right? Feminism, women’s rights, sexual harassment laws, etc. We got this.

But should we feel smug and superior? Let’s take a little detour and talk about sexual harassment in the United States. In 2014, the NGO, “Stop Street Harassment (SSH),” commissioned a survey of 2,000 respondents and reported that 65% of women had experienced street harassment during their lifetimes, and of that 65%, a large proportion, 23%, had been “sexually touched” (“Unsafe and Harassed in Public Spaces: A National Street Harassment Report,” www.stopstreetharassment.org, accessed May 29, 2016).

But my situation was more like sexual harassment in the workplace because I had to face the perpetrator every day after the initial harassment (and endure a second incident), much like women must face their perpetrators in an office setting. The Huffington Post reported in early 2015, in a survey of more than 2,000 women conducted by Cosmopolitan magazine, that 44% of working women between the ages of 18-34 have experienced unwanted touching and sexual advances in the office (“Survey: 1 in 3 Women Has Been Sexually Harassed at Work, According to Survey,” February 19, 2015, www.huffpost.com, accessed May 29, 2016).

I don’t know what the statistics might be in India for sexual harassment on the street or in the workplace. To me, the material point is that sexual harassment is an ongoing problem in the United States and my view that I was more at risk by Indian men than by Western white men seems ludicrous in retrospect. I don’t think there is any room for claims of Western moral superiority here.

After the incident on the G Adventures tour, I began wearing a lanyard with pepper spray, a pocket knife, and police whistle in order to protect myself. What happened when I reported the sexual harassment incident to G Adventures? Their response is instructive of perhaps the overall cultural dismissal of women’s ongoing struggle to overcome this outrage. I spent perhaps 44 out of 54 days in this situation, and the most G Adventures was willing to do, at the time I reported the incident, was to tell the perpetrator and me to avoid each other. Then a second incident occurred (in a temple where I was not able to wear my lanyard), which I reported; however, no company action resulted from it.

I am happy to say that I did not allow this experience to spoil my trip around India. However, once the train tour was over, I realized just how much stress I had been facing for 44 days, trying to avoid this guy, wearing that lanyard, and hoping worse would not happen. I wrote to G Adventures with a complaint about their handling of the situation. In the process of my communications with the company, I discovered that G Adventures does not have a published “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy, unlike their competitor, Intrepid Travel (through which I took an earlier Rajasthan tour and enjoyed the overnight camel safari). Here is what G Adventures’ official response was:

• They’ll put a note in the perpetrator’s file.
• They’ll give their tour guides more power to manage the situation in the future. They’ll offer better training.
• They offered me a $250 voucher for the next trip with G Adventures (!).
• They have a “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy in the works, but it is not yet ready for publication.

That’s a fine, enlightened Western approach to the problem of sexual harassment by a company conducting tours all over the world. I cannot imagine this is the first time anything like this has happened in their 26 years of operation, and if the company had wanted to write a “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy, they would have done so by now.

I have told G Adventures that until (and if) they publish their “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy, I cannot imagine traveling with the company again, and that I would be unable to endorse their company to anyone in person or on any of my social media sites. G Adventures chose to protect the rights of the perpetrator rather than a female customer with a sexual harassment complaint, and I strongly advise my readers to reconsider any tour with G Adventures anywhere in the world.

Although I did not experience sexual harassment by Indian men, I did take precautions: I wore sunglasses and never looked at any man directly while walking around in public or tourist sites; I dressed very modestly; I rarely stayed out alone late at night; and, I was always on guard, always aware of my surroundings. But how is that different than the prevailing attitude in the West, where the woman is often blamed as having “asked for it,” with her attitude, her schedule, her mode of dress, her unaccompanied wanderings?

Sexual harassment is no joke. It is a misogynist power play intended to “put women in their place.” But assuming that men of a different culture and country are more likely to perpetrate the crime is to misunderstand our own country’s (and the West’s) issues and to claim a moral superiority that’s not ours to claim.

I’m glad, strangely, that my own racism was revealed to me.

But I would be even happier if all women were respected, all the time, and everywhere.