Coexistence of Multiple Truths: Aditi Mittal, Kaneez Surka and PTSD

When my bestie moved to Cambridge this month, she decorated her room with things her friends had written for her. Among the notes was tagged an old mutual friend of ours, (let's call her Y) someone I'd fallen out of touch with since ages. I felt quite sad that she didn't have anything I'd written to put up, and mentioned that. I then ignored all the other weird sensations and attempted to move on.

A day or two later, comedian Kaneez Surka wrote about a problematic interaction she'd had with Aditi Mittal. Mittal, a comedian who has emerged in the last few years as a counter to AIB's fanservice "saleable feminism," had kissed the latter onstage without her consent once. She spoke about how it made her feel uncomfortable, and how Mittal had turned "hostile" following that. She requested an apology, which was immediately given. And so slow are our reactions when it comes to uncomfortable transgressions of personal space that it took this incident being reported for me to be reminded of why my friend's post had dredged up some ugly emotions.

Y had, at one time, been considered one of my closest friends. Upon realizing that we were both bisexual, and for the better part of a year, she had engaged in some very problematic behaviour that amounted to sexual harassment.

Now, I'm not used to thinking of women as predators the way I am of men. Women are the safe space, at least in terms of bodily integrity and basic boundaries. We retreat to all-women groups when we find ourselves threatened. Nor am I the most comfortable when it comes to innuendos or sexualized behaviour - it takes me quite a while of being in a relationship with someone to actually normalize that. So to be told sexually suggestive things or touched inappropriately by a woman meant that I froze and repressed these incidents. I attempted to shrug them off as jokes. Eventually, I stopped responding to them altogether, my stiff silence communicating to my friend that her behaviour wasn't being taken lightly.

After one particularly ugly incident which caused me to clarify to her (yet again) that I wasn't attracted to her, I thought the matter settled and continued our friendship as usual. Until another of our friends told me that Y had been saying things like "I feel like grabbing her and kissing her every time I see her" about me. The things she'd said were prompted by our imminent (possibly permanent) separation, and apparently caused her to become even more "affectionate" than usual. She knew by now that I did not welcome such behaviour or discussion, so brought it up with our friend instead. Perhaps she expected confidentiality, but I'm glad my friend told me the truth.

I finally confronted her, told her how much I detested her behaviour and how not okay it was. She got tight lipped,was annoyed that I had "compared her to a creepy dude" and refused to discuss it with me any further. That was the last time I ever saw her.

Having had countless discussions on feminism with her, I was astounded when she denied that her behaviour was harassment. She knew as well as I did that the guidelines for harassment were based on what the victim finds uncomfortable, and yet that didn't matter one whit.

She said we would discuss this at a future date, but we never did. I went on to ensure she didn't lose out on our friend circle, reminding people of her birthday every year and making excuses for her whenever they were annoyed with her.

Mittal explained that she had apologized at the time, and then avoided the same circles to keep Surka from feeling uncomfortable. Which, fair enough. But something else she said jumped out at me. She said that immediately after her apology, she and Surka had bonded over the boys-club mentality that was becoming apparent in AIB at the time. She seemed to think that this meant things were great between them. In the moment of reading it, I wanted to reach out and tell her that continuing a conversation by turning the topic to someone else's misbehaviour was a terrible idea. That apologizing alone doesn't wash away someone's discomfort at being around you. That, yes, you may have to acknowledge your fault every time you want to discuss lack of consent in others.

That maybe, just maybe, it was too soon.

That being said, I still have received no apology from Y.

In my earlier days of friendship with a colleague named Z, I narrated the whole story of what happened with Y, and how that had made me extra cautious with women who were interested in me. Z used to be into women, but had now concluded that she wasn't anymore. Cut to a year later, when Z drunkenly harassed me (and some other stuff,) which led to my cutting our friendship off completely.

I got back in touch with Z this year, although I've been keeping her at arm's length. The first (and only) time we met after that, she hit on me again. She doesn't know it yet (I'm not great with confrontation) but I'm never meeting her again. And in a group where another friend of hers (B) was discussing how C, a mutual acquaintance of B's and mine had behaved inappropriately with B, Z was quick to remind me of how Y had done the same thing to me. She's completely forgotten about her own actions.

My problematic fave dude who says the worst things ever was quick to comment on Mittal. "It's interesting to see how a woman has become the villain of the story." No, problematic fave dude. It's not even worth a mention. Someone can be an abuser and still have their own story of abuse to tell. How bout we believe and investigate those stories, instead of using them to discredit anything any woman ever has to say about what she's faced?

(Note: Y, Z and C have all faced tonnes of sexual violence at the hands of men, and are stronger women for it. If I can acknowledge that while also acknowledging their own perpetration of violence, why can't you?)