Woman, conform or thy name is ‘vedi’

What’s common to Ranjini Haridas, Arundhati Nalukettu and Hima Shankar Sheematty? They are all Malayali women who have been showered with sexual abuses online over a period of years, albeit for different reasons. Ranjini, simply for being herself, Arundhati for taking part in the Kiss of Love protest of 2014, and Hima for putting up a revealing picture of herself taken as part of a film.Ranjini and Arundhati were given a fresh dose of abuses recently when Sunny Leone came to Kochi; Ranjini for anchoring Sunny’s show, Arundhati for speaking for Sunny. And the word which dominates among these abuses is the same — vedi, slang for prostitute. ‘Two vedis on the same stage’, ‘a vedi as company for another’, so on and so forth. And they are not the only ones to have suffered slut-shaming. Actresses, activists, feminists and simply any woman who has done something, anything, different has been subjected to a liberal showering with the word. We ask these women what they think about this peculiar culture of name calling.
I think it’s a fear of empowerment, for the male chauvinists: Ranjini Haridas, anchor, actress
The easiest way men can put down a woman, and affect her psyche and emotions is to abuse her based on her sexuality, by sexually relating her to an act which society deems wrong — prostitution. They think calling a woman a vedi will make her feel demoralised and give up on life, like they used to show in movies back in the day. But unfortunately for these men, women these days do not give a damn about what they think about them!
What I’m concerned about is when people use these words on a public forum like Facebook. In doing so, they are creating a generation of kids who think that it is okay for a man to address a woman this way on a public forum.

Interestingly, when you use the same form of attack against their mother, sister or wife, you will see an entirely different side of theirs. Once I got a call from a guy who asked me how much my ‘rate’ was. I said it’s more than his mother’s. He hung up in shock, but then called again asking how dare I say such a thing about his mother.
But I’m completely okay reading about someone writing about my body in weird ways, simply because it has nothing to do with reality. It’s part and parcel of being in this industry. We try not to let it affect you as a person.
And I don’t think it is unique to Malayalis; Kalki Koechlin, Soha Ali Khan and Lisa Haydon have all been slut-shamed for the pictures they have put up. It’s a go-to tool for men worldwide to use against any woman who they think is independent or a woman of today. I think it also comes from a fear of empowerment, for the chauvinists among the men. Because some woman being empowered also means women in their homes too will get empowered, eventually.
Any woman who doesn’t conform to the pavam stereotype is a vedi: Hima Shankar Sheematty, theatre artiste
I was called vedi left, right and centre, for a photo shoot I had done once, as part of a professional assignment. ‘She is someone who goes around pimping herself, unable to contain her ‘kadi’,’ they said. Even otherwise, there are a lot of people who don’t like me, simply because I don’t conform to their concept of a Malayali girl, who should be bashful, a ‘potti pennu’, who is submissive and naïve, who lives in fear of society and reputation. However progressive the man is, his concept of a woman will be the same. At the same time, their sexual concept of a woman is completely different; he wants her to be sexy.

But if a Malayali woman behaves according to that sexual concept, he brands her as having ‘too much kadi’ and she is branded a ‘vedi’. So there has always been a basic conflict within the men. Sunny Leone is fantasy for them and so it’s okay to worship her, but the Malayali woman is their possession. That a woman is not to be possessed and that she is also capable of lust, like Sunny Leone, does not occur to them.
It’s a weapon to silence women who speak out: Arundhati Nalukettu, Phd scholar, UTY of Hyderabad
On my page, I had stated that Sunny Leone had pointed out the sexism prevalent in Bollywood. But these people who abuse me have no clue even what sexism means. I faced the maximum amount of abuses during the Kiss of Love period. In my opinion, they use such words not really because they see us as prostitutes or because of their ignorance. It’s deliberate, and there is a clear male politics behind it. They think the girl will fall silent once you use this word. It’s a weapon to silence women who speak in public. It works in Kerala since our morality is structured that way. She can be ostracised using that label.

The way we should counter it is not by asking them not to use the word, but by sending out a strong message that being called a sex worker is not a bad thing at all. It’s after all, a profession, and it is better to be one rather than hide your face and abuse a woman! Already the change has started. There used to be highly educated men who used the word against me two years back, but many have become silent now. It’s probably because they have realised it’s not politically correct and that they may get attacked in turn. Once I put up a screenshot and exposed quite a few. Many begged me to remove them saying they have families. Right wing extremists who used to call me by that name have now replaced it with ‘anti-national’.
And forward thinking women in Kerala attach absolutely no value to the word. I would attribute it all to social media education, a kind of awareness you won’t get from schools or mainstream media.