Mars in a hotel suite

Premonitory or what? In last week’s column I had written about testosterone-driven, predatory, alpha-males swaggering around, high on power, who, operating from their own sense of entitlement, objectified women.

I wrote of a dinner I’d attended that week where the elegant older married women were ignored or patronised, as the men converged around Dalal Street gossip and business tips.

I wrote of how the only time I noticed a man’s attention stray from the topic of money was when I saw a powerful industry leader’s eyes light up as he was introduced to an unattached girl in a short skirt, young enough to be his daughter.

By any account it was an unconventional and risky topic to pen for a business newspaper, read by a predominately male readership, many of whom are — dare I say it — testosterone-driven predatory top-dog alpha males swaggering around high on power in a country on the verge of a double-digit economy.

In a climate where opportunity lies at every corner, where there are fortunes to be made and worlds to be conquered, who really has the time for matters of the heart, for sexual dynamics, for Mars and Venus or for how powerful ambitious men have begun to treat women? Surely these are effete and trivial things, best left to women’s dailies and the tabloid press?

But a wise and clued-in editor published the column saying “there are so many sides to this issue of power, sex, wealth and ambition” when I wrote “that a pink paper would be the right place to talk about the subject of men and women: my reading is that the higher and more powerful they get, the more obnoxious they are to those around them —wives, kids, employees, parents, servants — perhaps without even realising it!”

I wrote this on Thursday 12 May, the article was published on 14 May, and a few hours later, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, one of the world’s most powerful financial leaders, an alpha male if ever there were one, was arrested for alleged assault, rape and acts of sexual violence against a hotel maid.

Of course, rape is one of the most extreme forms of the way men disrespect women. And DSK’s history with women speaks of a man more troubled than most with his sexuality and relationship with the other sex.

But the reason why I had brought up the topic was because never have I felt that the gap between what men and women want from each other wider than it is now, never have I sensed such a breakdown of communication, such a souring of the gender dynamics pot and felt such an urgency to revisit that hoary old F word that is never spoken of in polite circles these days — Feminism. Of course, cultural and social nuances inform our responses to the topic of gender; what passes in libertine Europe might not in Protestant America, and may simply be swept under the carpet in “don’t ask-don’t tell” India.

But there is a strong case for educating men on the subject of women, what they want, how they feel, how to understand them, respect them, work and live with them and perhaps, even love them, so that understanding and harmony and mutual respect is achieved and in the 21st century assault and battery are never again the choice that powerful men feel they can employ as alternatives to foreplay and seduction!

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer