Well, It’s Not Ok

Or when forgiveness is yet another tool used by the patriarchy to subjugate women....

I see women around me forgiving all the time. They let snarky remarks slide and keep quiet when they are humiliated. Sometimes, they giggle with the discomfort obvious. They laugh along to the jokes that are cracked on them, and sometimes, add elements to it. They answer questions made in bad faith and smile to keep the peace.

I have seen people letting go and refusing to punish. Forgiveness, after all, is a virtue. Forgiveness, in scriptures is likened to godliness, as Jesus himself implored his father to forgive those who murdered him, because the Romans “knew not what they do”. We are told that we must forgive if we want to be forgiven and in the new age where wellness tips are available for free on social media, the unexplained ache we have in a hard to locate part of our bodies, is due to all the grudges we have been holding on to. Forgiveness therefore, is the medicine that is missing in your healing journey. Forgive others, yourself, your younger self, your parents, your anxious self, your past life, your stars and if that was not enough, you also are instructed very clearly to forget. Forgive and forget, was also a mantra repeated often when I was younger. It allowed everyone to never seek forgiveness. It was offered to you on a plate, the ‘it’s ok’ even before you got the ‘I’m sorry’. Easy peasy. You offer yourself justice in your mind, because the probability of there being real justice is actually quite low or doesn’t exist at all. Viktor Frankl, The Buddha, and others have reminded us the power of our minds and how we can use it to help ourselves when we are in a sorry situation. The power to be the bigger person because at the end of the day, the man who matters the most, is the man in the glass. <Man!>

My mother would forgive me, every time, I would back answer her. I resented my mother for being so forgiving because she used to also forgive my father as easily. In my eyes, he deserved no forgiveness. What I saw in her was someone who was so unwilling to confront and put a stop to the bullying my father meted out, that I felt she was so weak. I felt like her forgiveness, freely offered, allowed my suffering.

My mother is not the only woman who kept quiet when she should have made some noise. My friend who had a corporate job, did not complain about the sexual harassment she faced while working because ‘these things happen in the corporate world, no big deal’. In a classroom that I was observing last month, the young boy students spoke out of turn and cut off young girl students, and the teacher didi didn’t say anything. In a WhatsApp group, several years ago, a male colleague mansplained something to a female peer, to which she responded with an “ok”. Sometimes, silence is the best violence (as someone who has been given silent treatment for years, you can trust me on that one) but does it really work when people cannot read silences?

Aarfa Khanum Sherwani, journalist at The Wire, and my role model, once posted on her Instagram account that the right-wing trolls were desperate for her attention. She simply didn’t give it to them- silence in this case was really violence. Several Bollywood stars and other celebrities stay quiet in the face of loud and bad faith criticism. It might sound like forgiveness, but it is just silence, and we cannot be sure if it involves forgiveness.

Arfa Khanum Sherwani refusing to back down; source: @khanumarfa on X

I do see the point in being quiet though. One has only so much energy and it is pointless to engage with people who clearly are incapable of understanding. Some find joy in despicability such as common trolls. But shouldn’t there be instances when women do not forgive?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Palace of Illusions”, is the retelling of the Mahabharata from Draupadi’s point of view. Draupadi, who was disrobed in the Kaurava court, by Dushasan ensures throughout the book, until revenge is sought by the Pandavas- her husbands, that the incident is never forgotten. To hell with forgiveness or forget-tings.

Similarly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to forgive when Republic Senator Ted Yoho used an expletive for her on the steps of the Capitol. She in fact didn’t back down after his non-apology, but made a riveting speech that inspired a hundred young women to say that they will not accept abuse from men. Mahua Moitra, the former MP from the All India Trinamool Congress roared after her disqualification from her post on charges of corruption. She didn’t hold back when she lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party and the patriarchs therein, and promised them that she will fight them from the gutter. Sen. Elizabeth Warren did not shake hands with Sen. Bernie Sanders, after their face off in the democratic debate just weeks before the 2020 Presidential elections in the United States. She refused to make peace with someone who just a few minutes before, was dragging her in the dust. In 2009, a colleague refused to let a male colleague interrupt her by saying “let me finish”, which is a phrase I now use every now and then. Noorjehan my cook brought down the roof, when the security guard of my society stopped her from entering the building because she had forgotten her ID card. She came home, belligerent, saying, “I have shown my ID card every single day for the past eight years and he thinks he can stop me”. Small and big acts of unforgiveness, of not letting people of the hook, of saying- no, for F@#* sake, it’s not ok.

Screenshot of the comment section of an article describing AOC’s response to Yoho. Source: BU Today

Warren’s refusal and Bernie’s hand; Source: Boston Herald

Mahua Moitra saying FU in creative ways; Source: The Print

Some of us live in worlds where we rarely get apologies and so we have to make do with our own versions of closure. Especially those of us who wield very less power. Irk a man and watch him go to war or make a violent and misogynistic movie. But not women. You irk a woman and live your entire life blissfully unaware of “how that could ever be hurtful”. Not forgiving is a way to reclaim some power, your own power, to make someone uncomfortable. Or just a little less comfortable. What if you believed that the unexplained ache located in some hard to locate part of the body, is actually the dull pain in your heart of not having stood up for yourself? What if by not forgiving you made someone else a little uncomfortable, made space for your own anger and showed someone else, you didn’t know was watching, that it’s ok to say, “for F@#* sake, it’s not ok”.