How society perpetuates within a limited cycle to reiterate the narrow mindsets has become a normalised practice. Words are power. Your thoughts are threatened. Reduced to mere puppets.
FCC ruled the restrictive approach to harassment in workplace harassment laws as per s2(h) of the Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010. Harassment is merely reduced to only being of ‘sexual in nature’ which isolates protections and emanates gender-based abuse to a grander scale. In a bench dominated by men, the utter disregard for the obvious was visible. The lens brings us to a significant wandering.
How the societal rewiring persists and echoes through the internalisation and resurfaces in the form of lexis. You can manipulate the way people perceive. The way people judge. The way they interact.
All by permit. By the shoulders they rely on to structure their superiority. By satisfying a higher complex, a moral compass.
The thorough line to define an event of harassment insinuates the abusers to weaponise. As vocabulary contributes to toxicity, the occurrences are illustrated to a society which builds catastrophe. One by one, grammar and harm grow. This was not what was envisioned.
As the words transition to lived realities, the definitions reveal horrors. It guides the evaluation and evidentiary burden for victims to be elevated to an unreachable level. The ghastly isolation of reality allows the perpetrators to evade accountability. How this restructures as a hostile environment by mere dictation is a colossal regression. By invalidating a ‘different’ harm, one would begin to read it as an ‘absent’ one.
The case at hand had shocking details. Allegedly, respondents drew explicit depictions, threatened the complainant to remove her clothing, queried about her marital status and intimate details and directed coercive mannerisms that disregards workplace safety and dignity. To refer them as invalid since it didn’t amount to a limitation leaves one aghast. To set those free in near future on this basis rings nationwide alarms.
The public would begin to only pay heed to a conclusive case. In a society fueled by victim blaming and utter ignorance, the requirement of independent evidence and accountability fuels normalcy of violence. Targeted isolation, destructive remarks and threats would be overlooked to be acceptable as workplace disciplinary management which has proven to be ineffective. To recall legal recognition to an irresponsible society sends a disastrous message. One we interpret it as a legal loophole to a lethal mindset. That cruelty would survive unless what’s deemed outrageous.
The recurrence of subjectivity as the overarching truth by support of diction translates to the impossibility of equity. How are we to expect progression when justice would provoke the evil to fit in gray areas?
The system strives on working the social signals and identification factors. To shift the entirety of boundaries impacts significantly. Erasure of empathy, sanctioned humiliation and psychological harm would prevail. Measures like these transform our perceptions and interpretations.
Instead of inclusive nuances, we take thousand steps toward misery. The silenced scenarios and unsaid pain encapsulates society. Expansive reclaim is a necessity.
To refuse is mirroring a society that accompanies humanity. Justice is for a shield, to escape possible manifestations of oppression rather than blow life into its creation. A collective realisation and imminent change is imperative. Walk further with a beacon to light success.