Toxic Masculinity & Backlash Against Women’s Rights | Mohan Rao

Remarks at the valedictory session of the three-day international conference “Reflections on the Past, Looking to the Future: Fifty Years of Towards Equality”, 3rd-5th March 2025, organized by the Centre for Women’s Development Studies at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

Good afternoon, friends. First, I must congratulate everyone at the CWDS who worked so tirelessly hard in making this huge conference so easily and eminently workable. Many congratulations and thanks to all of you. I am truly grateful that I could attend this magnificent conference, one of the best I have been to in a long time. In fact, I thought these kinds of conferences— sharp, incisive, critical— were a thing of the past. The breadth of themes, the depth of scholarship, the passion and drive of activists and of course, meeting so many friends and comrades was incredibly heartening. However, one elephant in the room was men and masculinity.

Last week in yet another feat of astonishing diplomacy, Mr. Donald Trump had Mr. Andrew Tate and his brother Mr. Tristram Tate, released from prison in Bucharest, Romania and flown to Florida. Their trial had not yet been completed. They had been arrested two years back on charges of rape, child sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

Prominent influencers in their home country, with male followers in the millions, they were wanted on similar charges in the UK. The UK has not officially responded to this extraordinary act of rendition by the USA.

Over a period of a decade, they had been earning millions on-line, grooming young men on how rape and sexual abuse could be chic and indeed something women liked, but above all, deserved.

The global growth of toxic masculinity has brought to power Donald Trump in the USA, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary and our own 56-inch chest.

In India too, the death by suicide of a techie in Bangalore has led to an outpouring of toxic masculinity. The young man in his pre-mortem video alleged that harassment by his wife and her family and the indifference of the police to heed his complaint compelled him to kill himself. This led to shrill and angry voices, in the social media particularly, arguing that men in India were victims of “Western” feminism that has influenced laws in the country. That data shows in fact an increase in violence against women (and the lower castes) in the country was ignored, as was the fact that these laws were reluctantly brought in by the state after decades of mobilization by Indian women’s groups who have carved out their own feminisms, hardly imitative of the West.. Men’s rights groups have sprung up in major cities, hogging a lot of social media space, calling for a repeal of these laws, supposedly anti-men.

I think there is a need to understand this phenomenon both globally and in the Indian context. How much is this a backlash against the supposed gains of feminism? How is this related to neo-liberalism, economic growth without the growth of employment and incomes among a large section of young men, and indeed women. Indeed, this has led to falling marriage rates among men in the USA who have not been to college, including large numbers of White men. Is it also related to growing education and aspirations among women, many of whom choose not to get married. How much is this related to the growth of social media? How is this related to the widespread feeling among these men that all political parties, all institutions, including the media, the “elite” have let them down? These same men are also vaccine-sceptics and argue that all science is meant to benefit the already rich?

In India, is Hindutva a cause or a consequence?

It is of course profoundly ironic that this brings to power Trump or 56 inches with unbridled, uncontrolled, pro-oligarchic policies, policies that will further disempower these men.

The widespread rage against the system and its real inadequacies then takes the form of rage against women, against immigrants and against all minorities.

In the face of this rage, the challenge for us feminists is to forge inclusive solidarities. How do we do that?

Thank you.

Mohan Rao

5th March 2025

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