More about sexual harassment at the Goa Writer's Group I was lucky, however, that when I was in that writing group, I was surrounded by 30-somethings with a low tolerance for misogyny. What we shared, besides our intuition towards language, was this common abuser. It was time to ‘out’ him to the rest of the group. We strategised so as to be as sensitive as we could. Our basic message was that someone like him ought not to be moderator, because he was using his position to prey on unsuspecting women. He had to be divested of power. There was an established pattern. We had proof of cyber harassment. What followed was a couple of harrowing weeks. Instead of extending empathy, the abuser’s friends, and many other women in the group, too, defended him and made us out to seem like liars, like co-conspirators out to break up the group and disrupt its laconic cohesiveness. It was suggested by the more powerful members that the group be dissolved, especially since many of the male writers had begun to leave, out of solidarity with their abuser friend. But the real reason was so that the email archive could be deleted so no trace would exist of our rebellion. Our characters were besmirched, and, eventually, unable to face the hostility, one by one we exited even the new-old group. https://www.vogue.in/content/me-too-hashtag-against-sexual-abuse-in-india/
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