Juror 75 Uncle: Your Embarrassing Desi Uncle, or an offshoot of Brahminical patriarchy?
I finally finished the Sean Combs documentary. It is heavy to watch. I could not take in more than one episode at a time. But I don’t want to take up space discussing the abuse as it was violence perpetuated primarily against Black People, and those are the voices that should be centered. I do want to talk about the juror who mortified South Asians all over the internet, Juror 75. When asked, “you didn’t see any force, fraud or coercion between Cassie and Sean?” Juror 75 replied,
“That was a very very interesting relationship. Two people in love… like overly love. She wanted to be with him. He took her for granted… Just like both hands clapping. You cannot clap with one hand.”
“You see how they are getting back together… like nothing happened. He’s beating her, next minute they’re going on dinners and trips. It’s back and forth. If you don’t like something, you get out. You cannot have both ways—have the luxury and then complain? I don’t think so.”
Ah, yes, the all too familiar words of a man who never inconvenienced himself with the realities or lived experiences of the women around him. On one hand, we can argue that a trauma-informed professional should have been interviewed to negate this ghastly perspective, and while that definitely should have happened, we know that justice for survivors wasn’t the producer’s top priority in the making of this documentary. We can talk about how problematic, harmful, and embarrassing this Juror’s viewpoint is, but as a woman and mother of 2 daughters, I am compelled to say that Juror 75 Uncle is not an anomaly but exposes a deeper truth about South Asian culture and its tolerance for violence against women. We struggle, if not utterly refuse to call violence by its rightful names, let alone hold male perpetrators accountable in the public square. Instead, we often coddle and infantilise men, diluting their violence toward women and girls, making the victims responsible for their own abuse.
We expect women to always be soft spoken and agreeable, never giving them license to scream when they have every right to, and we malign them for fighting back.
There is no smooth road to accountability or justice when women are abused. We pick them apart rather than condemning the predatory and violent behavior of their abusers. Some women even brag about having cracked the misogyny code, figuring out how not to get abused, as if that is what we should aspire to.
Being too clever to get abused is not the goal.
Women must be able to freely exist without having to accommodate patriarchy and reject the notion that we are solely responsible for the violence we experience because of it.
This is not an issue that is relegated to our native lands, but has traveled with us throughout the diaspora and has resulted at times in death.
When family members and others in the community are questioned about how this could have happened, they often echo an oversimplified perspective similar to that of Juror 75. Whether it is domestic violence or a form of sexual abuse, we sweep it under the rug and never speak of it. If someone does, they are rarely supported publicly.
Just as we cannot dismantle systemic racism simply by addressing it on an interpersonal level, we cannot endeavor to talk about Juror 75 from that shallow vantage point either. It does not explain the gross and persistent violence that South Asian women face from South Asian men in every part of the world, regardless of socioeconomic status and education level. Instead, we must examine the foundation that ungirds it all, and that is caste supremacy. In this case, specifically, we see a manifestation of Brahminical patriarchy. A form of patriarchy unique to South Asia that fuses casteism and patriarchy to exert pysichal, psychological, spiritual, and cultural control over women. It permeates everything, influences all genders, and hides in plain sight. Just as you do not have to be white to uphold and participate in white supremacy, one does not have to be Brahmin, male, or Hindu to uphold Brahminical patriarchy.
“The perspective that Brahmanical patriarchy offers is difficult to accept. We tend to think of ourselves as capable of making our own decisions and thinking for ourselves. It’s hard to counterbalance this self-image with the idea that our tastes, desires, ambitions, choices, and decisions are shaped by wider social patterns that we often cannot even identify, let alone combat. It’s even harder to accept that sometimes, we will identify these patterns, recognise the harm they do to us and to others, and yet not change.” - Dr. Vasudha Katju
“From time immemorial man as compared with woman has had the upper hand. He is a dominant figure in every group and of the two sexes has greater prestige. With this traditional superiority of man over woman his wishes have always been consulted. Woman, on the other hand, has been an easy prey to all kinds of iniquitous injunctions, religious, social or economic. But man as a maker of injunctions is most often above them all.” - From time immemorial man as compared with woman has had the upper hand...” — Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development” (1916)
I do not begrudge the uncle jokes about Juror 75, but I do want us, South Asians, to talk about dismantling the systems and ideologies that informed Juror 75. Like white supremacy, Brahmanical patriarchy will not die with our elders, it is already seeded in our youth. This is our work.
Rebekah’s note: I want to acknowledge that all genders experience violence, but for the purpose of this piece, I am focusing on women and girls.
Note to the readers of white European descent, this work intentionally does not cater to your gaze. Engage with my work respectfully, as you are a guest here. I encourage you to be introspective about the systems of patriarchy and misogyny within your own community and avoid the temptation to draw comparisons. I love my culture and deeply respect my kin throughout South Asia; our cultures are rich, complex and worthy of respect.
