Abstract
This study examines how men in Nepal position themselves in discussions of sexual harassment against women in public spaces, including the discursive strategies they use to disassociate themselves from the identity of perpetrators. Through in-depth interviews with men from diverse backgrounds, findings demonstrate two primary forms of disassociation: blaming women and activists for unduly exaggerating the prevalence of harassment, and attributing violence to men from different age groups, classes, or ethnic and caste backgrounds. People from higher socioeconomic status, upper-caste, and middle-age groups often used language reinforcing hierarchical structures, while men in structurally disadvantageous positions employed resistance strategies to disassociate from both harassment and privilege. Regardless of their direct involvement in harassment, these discourses enable harassment by excusing men of accountability and by preventing them from recognizing and challenging such behaviors. The strategies described also highlight the subtle ways in which violence persists not only through overt acts but also through narratives that normalize violence.
Introduction
Sexual harassment, characterized as unwelcome or intrusive sexual conduct (e.g. sexual jokes, verbal comments, whistling, horn honking, staring, following, sexualized gestures, touching, exposure), is a form of gender-based violence that must be understood in the context of unequal power relations, including those based in gendered and intersecting forms of oppression (Fileborn and O’Neil 2023; Sen et al., 2018). Sexual harassment in public spaces makes these environments disproportionately hostile to women and girls 1 , LGBTQ+ people, and groups facing intersecting oppressions (e.g. based in class, race, perceptions of sexual availability) (Fileborn and O’Neil 2023). The harms of such harassment are experienced cumulatively, and may lead to fear, avoidance of public spaces, and other safety measures, resulting in disproportionate restrictions on women’s mobility (Fileborn and O’Neil 2023; Vera-Gray 2016). Thus, public sexual harassment is a spatial manifestation of heteropatriarchy which reinforces public spaces as men’s spaces and limits the rights of those who experience it to act in the world (Boyer 2022; Neupane and Chesney-Lind 2014).
Studies have consistently found that men’s use of sexual violence is correlated with their adoption of gender inequitable attitudes, masculinities that promote men’s entitlement or dominance over others, and their perception that other men hold similar beliefs (Fileborn and O’Neil 2023; Kilmartin et al., 2008; Spencer et al. 2023). Furthermore, even those men who do not engage in sexual violence may espouse norms and ideas that condone it, or remain silent when others do so, thus overtly or tacitly legitimizing such violence (Kilmartin et al., 2008). According to social norms theory, social norms are not merely held and forwarded by individuals, but constitute “nets of accountability through which peers, leaders, and institutional gatekeepers produce, position, and police” rules of practice, including the use of gender-based harassment and violence (Brush and Miller 2019, 1649).
In addition to the social pressures men may experience to engage in harassment, or to remain silent when it occurs (Kilmartin et al., 2008), research shows that men seek to disassociate themselves from sexual harassment. They do this through discursive strategies such as minimizing its seriousness and impacts at both the individual level and in relation to structural relations of gender, focusing on benign intentions, rationalizing harassment, and shifting the blame onto others (Bongiorno et al., 2020; Schuck 2020; Wiener et al., 2004; Wood 2004). Such discursive strategies deny accountability on the part of those who engage in sexual harassment and reproduce the normative conditions in which it is allowed to continue.
Recent historical events and trends in Nepal, including in domains of education, labor migration, employment, and women’s increasing involvement in community meetings and politics, have created more opportunities for women to step into the public sphere (Ghimire and Samuels 2014; Tamang 2009). Yet, research has found that public spaces—such as streets and public transport—are largely masculinized, and women are often viewed as intruding into these domains, a perception which heightens their risk of harassment (Neupane and Chesney-Lind 2014). Such harassment reinforces the notion that public spaces are inherently unsafe for women, perpetuating a climate of fear and exclusion (Tamang 2009), and can be seen as an extension of the control men exert over women in private spheres (Ghimire and Samuels 2014).
This study builds on a previous analysis which found that men perceived that harassment in public spaces was not only tolerated but encouraged within men’s peer groups, where harassing women was seen as a way of affirming one’s manhood and gaining social status among other men (first author’s forthcoming). Given that men also seek to disassociate themselves from harassment, we seek to answer two interrelated questions in this article: (1) How do men in Kathmandu, Nepal position themselves in discussions of sexual harassment against women in public spaces? (2) What discursive strategies do they use to disassociate themselves from the identity of sexual harassment perpetrators?
By examining men’s self-positioning and discursive strategies in relation to public sexual harassment, this study seeks to understand the subtle ways through which sexual violence, and the social environments that maintain it, persist.
Discursive Strategies to Disassociate from Gender-Based Violence
The concept of discourse refers to systems of representation that operate through a variety of media, including language, images, practices, architectural or spatial arrangements (Hall 2001; Willey-Sthapit et al., 2022). Discourses are not conceptualized as individual attitudes, beliefs, or utterances so much as the ways in which people collectively make sense of the world through the formation of knowledge, everyday practices, as well as the accompanying rules, norms, and assumptions that underlie these. Because there is no meaning without discourse, discourses circulate throughout society and provide the means through which knowledge is constructed, reproduced, and/or contested. Yet, due to differences in privilege or power, individuals and social groups are differentially positioned to shape which discourses will become dominant. Dominant discourses often serve to maintain the power of those who already possess it (Foucault and Gordon 1980; Hall 2001). Discourses that maintain existing relations of power are not only used by those who have engaged in harmful behaviors but are also reflected in the ways issues are represented, for example, by media outlets, politicians, and members of social groups (van Djik 1992).
We draw on the notion of disassociation in the context of sexual harassment to refer to the varied ways in which members from dominant groups distance themselves from the harassment, often separating the act from its broader social and cultural implications (Wood 2004). These mechanisms allow individuals to evade accountability and operate as social defenses to avoid facing the realities of gender-based violence. This involves framing sexual violence in ways that obscure the violence and power dynamics at play by distancing it from the structural context of gender inequality and making it appear as an isolated or even benign incident. For example, individuals who have harassed may use euphemisms, downplay their behavior, or frame it as a “joke” to deny the intent to harass or to minimize the impacts of harassment. Even when such acts are acknowledged in the wider society, they are trivialized as being a “minor nuisance and a lighthearted ritual associated with young men’s transition to adulthood” (Nalla 2021, 236). This discourse has often appeared in public narratives, where media or institutions may label harassment as “unwanted attention” or “flirting gone wrong,” subtly shifting the focus away from the power imbalance and aggression inherent in the act (Schuck 2020).
Disassociation through rationalization involves justifying or excusing the violence by shifting the blame onto the victims, often through cultural or moral narratives. For example, women may be blamed for provoking violence through their behavior, dress, or failure to adhere to traditional gender roles, thereby absolving the perpetrator of full responsibility. Existing research also suggests that such blame reversal is a discourse used by some men whether they have used violence or not (Berns 2001; Bongiorno et al., 2020; Henry 2017). Other studies have shown that people have biased perspectives that result in negative attitudes and behaviors with greater blame toward women victims and empathy for men perpetrators (Bal and van den Bos 2010; Bongiorno, McKimmie, and Masser 2016).
Berns (2001) described the above discursive strategies as bids to (1) degender the problem, by understanding it outside of its structural context, and (2) to gender the blame, by blaming women. At the individual level, these strategies are found when men defend allegations of harassment by saying that it was a misunderstanding, on the one hand, or that a woman is leveling a false accusation on the other (McDonald 2019; Tata 2000). This discourse is not limited to a few deviant individuals. At a broader social level, Berns (2001) found that most articles in men’s and political magazines portray domestic violence in ways that undermine men’s responsibility for violence and shift the focus and accountability onto women.
There is another discursive strategy that has been identified in literature on the discursive production of the self and the other in the context of justifying oppressive discourse. Discursive disassociation is accomplished through denials which take the form of constructing another group in pejorative ways, and then denying that oneself or the group to which one belongs is like them (van Dijk 1992). Stokoe (2012) found that men who were suspects of intimate partner violence tend to construct different categories of men, claiming membership in one (men who do not hit women) by invoking the notion of the other (men who do). Wood’s (2004) study revealed that incarcerated men who took part in programs for men who had abused their partners agreed that they had engaged in the actions considered to be violent and yet disassociated themselves from the category of real abusers. They did this by conveying that “I’m not really the abusive type,” and that their violence was “limited.” A similar process found in literature examining discourses that justify and maintain racism is known as “othering,” which entails differentiation and demarcation between “us” versus “them” where the “other” is considered inferior (Dervin 2016; Schwalbe 2000). “Othering” happens both in interpersonal and societal level discourse and comprises one of the ways dominant group members seek to curb accusations that they or that the systems in which we all live and work are inequitable (Dervin 2016; Jensen 2011). While anyone may construct their identities through references to ingroups and outgroups, othering constitutes a discursive process by which those with relative power demarcate groups according to dominant norms (Jensen 2011).
Research Context
Nepal is a diverse country in terms of language, ethnicity, and cultural traditions. For example, the government of Nepal has identified 123 languages spoken as a mother tongue as well as the presence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Kirat, and other religions (Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Nepal 2014). About 40 percent of the country’s population is Janajati, or Indigenous ethnicities, most of which traditionally do not follow the Hindu religion and the caste system (NEFIN 2016). Janajatis were considered by high-caste Hindu leaders as subordinate to them when the caste system was codified into a modern legal framework in 1854 (Pariyar and Lovett 2016). Similarly, the population of Dalits comprise 13.6 percent of the total population, which are grouped into seven Hill Dalit castes and 19 Madhesi Dalit castes (Pariyar 2022). While Dalits have been historically oppressed and dominated by higher castes, denied social status and respect in a society where ideas of superiority, inferiority, purity, and pollution are deeply embedded in the caste system, today the term Dalit also represents the struggle for equality (Bishwakarma 2019; Pariyar 2022). Likewise, Madhesi communities, who live predominantly in Nepal’s southern plain, have historically faced discrimination (B. K. P, 2015; Bhardwaj and Yadav 1991). Certain jobs that are considered as belonging to “lower” caste/ethnic groups have been taken up by the Madhesi people in Kathmandu (B. K. P, 2015).
Despite such diversity and the fact that caste discrimination has long been illegal, the majority of ruling positions in Nepal have been held by high caste men, and Hindu norms and ideals have historically conditioned the institution of patriarchy in Nepal. For example, Tamang (2000) argued that the Panchayat government of Nepal (1962–1990), through laws such as those regulating family life and property, constructed a homogenous vision of the “agency-less Nepali woman” in need of development, based on a Hindu template, in order to extend laws that regulated families over other groups in the country, many of whom have had very different, and often more flexible, gender norms and roles. As elsewhere, men have primarily been associated with public life, education, and authority, while women have been tied to subordinate roles within both the household and society (Bennett 1983; Uprety 2016). At the same time, shifts in Nepal’s political and social structures, such as the growing influence of education and international migration, and even women’s participation as combatants in Nepal’s civil war, have started to challenge such gendered divisions (Ghimire and Samuels 2014; Tamang 2009). Research shows that women’s participation in public life and their access to education and employment are increasing, albeit unevenly, across regions and caste/ethnic groups (Ghimire and Samuels 2014; Tamang 2009).
Even as women were increasingly stepping into Kathmandu’s public spaces, sexual harassment in these places appears to have been growing as an issue of concern. For instance, Liechty (1996) found that as middle-class women in Kathmandu sought to assert their rights in the democratic space opened by the successful People’s Movement in 1990, they perceived an increase in sexual harassment. Specifically, women perceived that men had grown to interpret and practice their increased freedom as freedom to harass. Existing research on sexual harassment in Kathmandu has found that roads and other public places are among the most common sites of sexual harassment for girls in grades 9 to 12 (Thapalia et al., 2019) and two separate studies found that more that 95 percent of women and girl participants who ride public transportation had experienced sexual harassment during their commute (Gautam et al., 2019; Neupane and Chesney-Lind 2014). The impacts of such harassment, as described by college age women, included feelings of fear, distress, and disempowerment, and limitations on their mobility (Neupane 2025; Neupane and Chesney-Lind 2014).
Methods
This paper is a part of a larger study, which comprised quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with men and women in Kathmandu, Nepal. Forty-eight men were recruited for semi-structured individual interviews, and an additional five group interviews were conducted, each comprising 3–5 participants, altogether making the total number of participants 68. A research assistant who was a man with a master’s degree and research background in the social sciences was hired to conduct some of the interviews if men preferred to discuss sexual harassment and related issues with a man. With training and feedback from the first author, he interviewed 28 men, while the first author interviewed another 20 and facilitated all group interviews. Overall, it appeared that the reporting of incidents of physical harassment were revealed more to the research assistant than to the first author. Also, there was more laughter and casual conversation in the interviews by the research assistant. Human subject approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, before contacting the participants.
Participants’ demographic characteristics
All the interviews were conducted and later transcribed in Nepali language. Interviews began with questions about participants’ demographic information and their use of public spaces, including public transport. Participants were asked whether they had witnessed any unsolicited acts of a sexual nature against women by men, their perceptions of the reasons for such incidents, who they believed were involved, whether anyone had shared experiences of engaging in such acts, and if they themselves had been involved. On average, interviews lasted 1 hour.
After reviewing the transcripts, instances of men’s disassociation from involvement in sexual harassment were identified and compiled. The first author and the research assistant reached a consensus on what qualified as “disassociation” in the data subset. Then following an inductive approach (Charmaz 2014; Glaser and Strauss, 2017) the identified incidents were coded through three main phases: initial coding (first order), axial coding (second order) and aggregate coding (see Table 2 in Appendix). Initial coding involved a close reading of the selected data followed by coding incident to incident. Then comparisons were made between incidents across the selected data sub-set. The second phase, focused coding, involved developing the most salient categories in larger batches of data by grouping the codes made in the first phase. This process of continuous analysis allowed us to develop with concepts and themes to reflect major findings in the third phase. Following traditions in similar studies (e.g., Wood 2004), the thematic categorization included two criteria: (i) for an idea to be considered a theme in a participant’s interview, it must appear at least three times, and (ii) for an idea to be recognized as a theme across participants, it needed to emerge in at least one third interviews.
Findings
Most participants stated that they had engaged in behaviors that meet definitions of sexual harassment, but did not consider these behaviors to be sexual harassment. For example, seven young men admitted to making sexual comments, 16 participants admitted to engaging in “teasing,” and three acknowledged involvement in physical harassment such as touching. However, 49 men shared the perception that teasing was harmless, and those who engaged in physical harassment framed it as mutual fun. Despite the presence of harassment behaviors, most men discursively disassociated from sexual harassment through denial, and through blaming women and other groups. Those who engaged in denial blamed women activists for perpetuating what they saw to be false narratives of harassment. Most men also blamed women for provoking the harassment, and blamed men of different ages and socioeconomic status as those who engage in harassment. Six participants did not shift blame and recognized harassment as a social problem. Two of them expressed regret for verbally harassing women in their younger years. The following sub-sections present findings from those who variously disassociated from involvement in sexual harassment.
Blame Reversal
Although many of the respondents shared that they respect women, one common discursive strategy used to disassociate themselves from harassment was to blame women, either for spreading what they perceived to be false narratives of harassment, for women’s “inappropriate” presence in public space, or simply by perceiving women as desiring such attention. Twenty-two out of 68 men denied the existence of harassment. In the following quote, a 55-year-old man working in a community organization holds women activists responsible: In my opinion, I do not think there is any harassment against women in public spaces. There are seats reserved for women in public buses. Most women attack men nowadays. The state is also in favor of women. The media in Nepal have also lifted them up. Sapana Malla has also manipulated women and taught them to attack men. If it were biologically possible, women would ask men to bear children. Whether you agree or not, they [women] have forgotten their duties.
Sapana Malla, now a supreme court justice, was a lawyer and a women’s rights activist when the interviews were conducted. Another middle-aged man working in a government organization said, “These women who are paid by INGOs are pushing a Western agenda.” For both men, raising the issue of sexual harassment was interpreted as promoting a “feminist” agenda. Nepali women activists were also accused of misusing the justice system and promoting men-bashing campaigns, akin to observations made by researchers in other contexts (Berns 2001; McDonald 2019). This backlash is visible in the above example with hostility toward women’s access to predominantly masculinized spaces in the city. Faludi (1991) argues that such criticisms often rise in reaction to women’s progress. The consequences of such denials are intended to dismiss or delegitimize the existence of the problem (van Dijk 1992).
In connection to women activists, a man in his mid-20s shared, “I have seen women activists asking people to teach their son not to rape but they should instead teach their daughters what to wear.” He further referred to a Nepali proverb, agoko chheuma ghiu paglinchha– If you place butter (woman) next to fire (man), it melts. Similarly, many men (41) rationalized sexual harassment by questioning women for their “inappropriate” self-presentation in public life. Many shared the opinion that women desire such attention. For example, a man in his late 20s stated: Suppose there is one uncovered candy and another covered one, which one do you think attracts a fly more? When girls are in grade 6–7, their skirts are longer, down to their knees, but when they are in grades 11–12, the length of their skirts is too short. Then how can you say there is harassment of women? Such kinds of things happen because of women.
This was another way of using disassociation by shifting the blame onto women and girls. The analogy of flies on a candy, used to describe men sexually harassing women in public spaces, implies that this behavior is either inevitable or biologically driven, thus shifting responsibility away from those who engage in harassment. A phrase commonly used in discussions of teasing was, “tyo ta vaihalchha ni,” [that will of course happen], which expresses the sentiment that, particularly in the face of temptation and men’s nature, such harassment was inevitable. By externalizing the blame, the impacts of men’s behaviors were not taken into account and negative connotations detached (Skyes and Matza 1957). Similar to Berns’s (2001) observation, the strategy of gendering the blame diverts focus away from men’s responsibility and ignores the cultural and systemic factors to foster an environment in which sexual harassment is perpetuated.
Disassociation through Blaming Other Groups of Men
Beyond blaming women, disassociation from harassment was apparent through participants’ social construction of in-groups and outgroups. The groups were discursively constructed at the intersection of the participants’ age, caste and ethnicity, occupation and social class.
Disassociation and Age-Based Ingroup-Outgroup Dynamics
Twenty-three participants admitted to engaging in verbal harassment (jiskaune or teasing), though they did not view it as sexual harassment and considered it harmless. They reserved the label of “real” harassment for acts involving physical contact. Young men criticized physical harassment but shifted the blame onto middle-aged and older men, whom they identified as the primary perpetrators. They argued that older men are less likely to be held accountable due to societal beliefs that older men, who generally tend to be married and have their family, do not harass women. This categorization allowed younger participants to deny their own involvement. One young participant in a group interview remarked, “We’re not like that… Some older men are dangerous. If they find a taruni (young adult woman), they won’t let her go untouched.” A conductor (21 yr, driver’s assistant in a public bus) shared a story about witnessing such an incident on his vehicle. There is an old man. He always carries a bag. He always goes to sit with women or girls. He is about 70 years old. He is really old. He gets the ride from Chabahil and first asks me if seats are available. Then he finds a seat next to a woman… You won’t believe it. Old people are more dangerous (laughs). One girl complained to me that the old man touched her here and there. She told me that he used his bag as a cover to do that.… you know what? Old folks are like that.
Since such behaviors largely go unnoticed in public spaces, particularly in public transport, it is not difficult for perpetrators to save face unless the incident is observed by others or intervention under-taken by the victims or others. A participant referred to a popular saying when discussing older men’s involvement in sexual harassment—sarpa pani marne, latthi pani nabhaachine, (killing a snake and not breaking the rod). This proverb suggests that those (older) men who harass women tend to do so with no notable consequences to themselves, especially since people may not question their behavior due to their relatively older age.
Many responses from middle-aged men attributed the role of perpetrators to “other men” and denied their own involvement, often stating, we are not like that. They mentioned that they had witnessed numerous instances of harassment in public spaces and 16 of them referred it as a “problem of youth.” By portraying young men as the primary perpetrators, middle-aged men constructed a negative depiction of youth. Adopting a moral stance (Stokoe 2012) and projecting themselves as socially responsible individuals, this response serves as a prominent strategy for middle-aged men to disassociate themselves from sexual harassment.
Additionally, some middle-aged men framed young people as being driven by strong sexual desires. By invoking the popular Nepali saying, “Even a jackal is energetic (ghorle) in its young age,” some middle-aged respondents suggested that, just as a relatively weaker animal (implicitly compared to a lion) like a jackal feels empowered in its youth, it is natural for young men to have desire to the point of engaging in sexual harassment.
Disassociation and Social Class/Occupation-Based Ingroup and Outgroup Dynamics
Some participants distinguished their higher social class during the interview by contrasting themselves with individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds or those in occupations that Nepali society generally does not confer with much prestige (Turin and Yang 2021). A man in his late twenties said: I need to think about my career. A prestigious job is all about recommendations…The reason why I do not tease is not that I fear a response from women…But I have a feeling that society may be watching me or the people I know may see me teasing women. We are not like one of those wandering boys in the streets.
This excerpt illustrates how a self-identified middle-class man engages in disassociation by constructing a distinct social identity separate from “wandering boys,” establishing a dichotomy between the “self”—a middle-class, prestigious job seeker—and the “other.” The “other,” depicted as “boys in the street” who are presumably unemployed or engaged in manual labor, is framed within a deficit narrative, portraying them as inferior to the “we” group.
The idea that men in “lower” status occupations have less to lose if caught was echoed by others. For example, a 36-year-old government officer remarked: If a man working in a restaurant does such activities and somebody catches him doing it, what happens? The maximum he receives is two slaps. That’s all. It does not affect him much. In my case, if I do such acts, there is a massive loss… Youths in grades 11 and 12 tease girls in the street: it’s the same thing. There is no loss of their prestige.
Societal expectations and norms in Nepal heavily influence how different forms of labor are perceived. Most manual jobs are predominantly occupied by individuals from lower social classes, and their engagement in physical labor situates them lower in the social hierarchy (Turin and Yang 2021). As illustrated in the above quote, a restaurant worker is perceived to lack a dignified social identity, and the strategy of othering serves to create a sense of distance from marginalized and socially disadvantaged “others.” By depicting these individuals as deviant or carefree, higher-class individuals with “prestigious” jobs construct a more positive self-image and justify their claim of noninvolvement in harassing women.
Five construction workers, who were from lower socio-economic strata, denied the possibility that members of their group could be the perpetrators of sexual harassment. For instance, a 45-year-old man asserted that he did not engage in such behaviors. Due to his disadvantaged social position, he believed that the consequences would be more severe for him if caught in such acts. In his view, wealthy individuals from Kathmandu are in a more secure position to protect themselves, given their financial resources and stronger social networks. For instance, a construction worker shared: I have seen enough cases of such harassment…If the men involved are from a higher class, women silently accept them. But I do not get involved in such activities. We are poor people… In this modern time, people run after money. If any person seems to be having money with him, women enjoy these behaviors from those rich men. Men know this and follow such women. You know! We are different people than these men with money.
The individual above discursively distanced his group (low SES) from harassment while attributing blame to those in privileged positions. By pointing out the social structures that enable more powerful men to harass, this construction worker exercised one form of resistance even as he perpetuated the idea that women liked this attention.
Disassociation and Caste/Ethnicity - Based Ingroup and Outgroup Dynamics
Disassociation also occurred through the construction of ingroups and outgroups based on ethnicity and caste, specifically between Brahmins (upper caste) and Dalits (lower caste), Brahmins and Janajatis (Indigenous nationalities), and between Pahadiyas (hill people) and Madhesis (residents of the southern plains), all employing the same discursive strategies: We are not like them and there are other people who do it. The term Pahadiya is used here as a social category to refer to mostly Brahmins and Chhetries. Groups shifted blame predominantly onto other castes or ethnic groups, constructing those “other” masculine styles as inadequate or inferior in establishing a model of who harasses. Among the various expressions of masculinity in Nepal, upper-caste Brahmin practices, which Maycock (2019) refers to as “Brahminic masculinity,” place a strong emphasis on educational attainment and adherence to purity rituals. This form of masculinity is characterized by a deliberate distancing from manual labor, reflecting broader cultural values that associate intellectual and ritualistic pursuits with higher social status. The majority of middle-aged men from “upper” castes mentioned their non-involvement in sexual harassment and linked this to their caste status alongside their perceived prestigious occupation. A few of them simultaneously projected a sense of superiority onto their entire caste community. For example, one Brahmin man in his late thirties noted: People like us are afraid of conducting such activities since we have two types of responsibilities such as family responsibility and public responsibility of my professional job…We worry about any bad reputation.
By “public responsibility”, this participant appears to refer specifically to castes and occupations that are linked to higher social standing in Nepali society. The perceived need to maintain a reputation for moral integrity and ethical behavior reinforces dominant ideologies, which in turn suggest the authority and privilege of high-caste men in Nepal (Turin and Yang 2021). In a group interview, another man from an upper caste echoed a similar sentiment and blamed Dalit and Indigenous groups: What I observed was – once I was standing in a queue, there were other men like me, and a man who looked like a Damai man was there too. That Damai suddenly came from nowhere and stood next to a woman. He deliberately positioned himself between two women there. He tried to talk to them many times. I have seen a similar situation with a Tamang man in a bus. With some exceptions, I feel caste might work in that way. Those who drink jaand raksi are like that.
Damai, a socio-historically marginalized sub-caste within the Dalit community, has long endured social and cultural oppression from higher-caste Hindus and other dominant groups (Bishwakarma 2019; Lawoti 2010). In the above quote, the participant seems to perceive the interview group, including the interviewer, as members of a “respectable” high-caste Hindu category. Many men from less dominant castes and historically marginalized communities are forced to navigate their expressions of masculinity within a caste system that positions them lower in the hierarchy (Turin and Yang 2021). The interviewee assumes that someone is Dalit, based on his appearance alone, and generalizes the actions of a single individual as representative of Dalits in general. By referring to “those who drink jaand raksi” he further attributes blame to another group, Indigenous Tamangs. He characterizes certain cultural practices of the Tamang community, such as the consumption of traditional alcoholic beverages including jaand and raksi, as markers of the “inappropriate” behavior stating, they are like that. This response also reflects characteristics of normative Brahmanic masculinity, which emphasizes purity and asceticism, where engaging in behaviors that are not socially sanctioned—such as certain sexual practices or non-normative food consumption—risks men being perceived as deviant or even effeminate (Uprety, 2011).
Men from Indigenous groups presented a different perspective about harassment from members of so-called upper castes. Their portrayal challenged dominant narratives of upper-caste Brahminic masculinity, as seen in the following response from a 29-year-old Tamang man: We have more liberal gender roles than Bahun [Brahmins]. Bahuns have a lot of restrictions. Our system is more matriarchal. We respect women. Those Bahuns are clever and dangerous. They do not respect their own women. Bahun men treat women worse as they [Brahmin men] think they can do anything. You need to ask them why they are involved in the sexual harassment of women.
In the excerpt, the participant’s perception of Brahminic masculinity (Maycock, 2019), which he views as deeply patriarchal and exerting oppressive control over women, is seen as closely tied to the issue of women being disproportionately targeted as victims of sexual harassment in public space. This targeting is interpreted as a deliberate mechanism to reinforce Brahminic hegemonic masculinity both in a literal and derogatory sense, functioning to sustain both gender and caste dominance within the broader social hierarchy. The excerpt alludes to the broader social discourse that women from an upper caste are often subjected to stricter adherence to traditional patriarchal norms compared to women from lower castes and Indigenous ethnic groups (Bennett 1983; Tamang 2009).
Pahadiya - ruling elites from the country’s middle hills, mainly referring to Bramins and Chhetries (Blair 2018) - and Madhesis also disassociated from sexual harassment by blaming each other. For example, one Pahadiya man stated: Those who are originally from the Terai conduct such activities. I have seen them slowly leaning toward women in a bus…. These men die for Nepali [Pahadiya] girls. They are not as aware as us for respecting women. They do not need to maintain their status. They do not want to live here [Kathmandu] forever since they are here just to earn some money. So, they worry less about what other people might think while being engaged in such activities.
Derogatory representations of Madhesis as the “other” reflect the pervasive stereotypes and biases, reinforcing discriminatory narratives.
Conversely, a 45-year-old Madhesi man at a bus park shared that he had never engaged in any form of harassment against women. He emphasized the mistreatment and lack of respect that he and his ethnic group routinely experience due to their ethno-regional identity and stated that it would be inconceivable for them to harass women in Kathmandu. As a member of a historically and socially marginalized community navigating masculinity within the caste system, he employed a similar disassociation strategy as other disadvantaged groups.
Discussion and Conclusion
This article has examined the various strategies employed by Nepali men to disassociate themselves from sexual harassment against women in public spaces. These strategies include denying the existence of harassment, as well as constructing their in-groups as not those who harass through blaming women and blaming groups of men who differed from them in terms of age, socioeconomic status, caste, and ethnicity.
Regarding blaming women, through the process of blame reversal, the participants reframed instances of harassment and violence in a manner that obscures men’s involvement and shifts accountability onto women, including women activists. This observation is reminiscent of prior research on men’s responses to sexual harassment against women, which often involves victim blaming (Berns 2001; Bongiorno et al., 2020). Moreover, some men perceived no need for empathy towards women who have experienced harassment, effectively eradicating any grounds for attributing blame to men perpetrators. Likewise, many participants tended to interpret verbal sexual harassment as “harmless teasing”, thereby rationalizing harassment and downplaying its seriousness. Such rationalizations are also likely to play a significant role in shaping the narratives surrounding sexual harassment. Regarding another strategy, the findings indicate that the respondents disassociated themselves from their involvement in harassment by portraying the members from other social groups based on age, ethnicity, social class, caste, or occupation. The findings in this study align with previous research on symbolic disassociation from the abuser identity (Wood 2004) as well as the process of discursive othering by which people in power define the “other” as culturally and morally inferior (Dervin 2016; Jensen 2011).
Although the findings in the present study demonstrate that disassociation functions in both directions, we argue that participants with relatively high socioeconomic position tended to reproduce othering discourses through pejorative language that reinforced an entrenched hierarchical social structure. This use of othering simultaneously constructed higher status groups as moral, responsible, aware, culturally sophisticated, and—in the case of high caste groups—as ritually pure (Bennett 1983; Guru 2009). Members of disadvantaged groups, on the other hand, contested the negative depictions imposed on them (Blair 2018) by pointing out structural hierarchies that they saw as enabling higher-status men to harass without consequence. This is a form of what theorists like Scott (1990) have referred to as “weapons of the weak”—subtle acts of defiance against a dominant order.
At first glance, the finding that men use the construction of in-groups and outgroups appears to contradict previous findings that men experienced intense peer pressure to engage in harassment (e.g., Wamoyi et al., 2023; Wesselmann and Kelly, 2010). However, this contradiction was resolved by the fact that most of these men did not construct behaviors like teasing as harassment. Furthermore, regardless of how disassociation is characterized (e.g. as othering or as resistance) in relation to social hierarchies between men, by denying accountability of themselves and their peers, the discursive strategy of disassociation reproduces the social relations that enable sexual harassment against women and girls to continue. Furthermore, the harm perpetuated through these discourses exists regardless of whether a particular individual engaged in harassment, as such discourses absolve and otherwise provide cover for those men who do harass, prevent men from seeing or responding to the harassment used by their peers, and perpetuate broader discourses that sustain such harassment.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Note
Author Biographies
Appendix
Procedure in coding and creating thematic categories
First order with frequency of incidents
Second order
Aggregate themes
• Denying the existence of harassment (22)
Dismissing the existence of harassment
Denying and rationalizing harassment
• Identifying most verbal harassment as “harmless” teasing (49)
• Blaming women activists and Non-Government Organizations for spreading false rumor (13)
Spreading myths and promoting men bashing
• Questioning women’s self-presentation in public space (41)
Reversing blame to victims
• Mentioning women’s desire for seeking attention (29)
• Acknowledging involvement by young participants in verbal teasing (19)
Acknowledgement of involvement in teasing by young adults but not in physical harassment
Disassociation and age-based ingroup-outgroup dynamics
• Distancing by young participants from physical nature of harassment (23)
• Blaming middle-aged as potential perpetrators (13)
Blaming middle-aged and old-aged men as harassers as they can disguise due to societal norms
• Blaming old-aged as potential perpetrators (7)
• Recognizing social and cultural norms of revering older people as cover for harassment (10)
• Perceiving middle-aged and old-aged men’s experience of involvement in harassment as an asset (11)
• Denying self-involvement by middle-aged men (21)
Blaming younger adults as perpetrators by middle-aged and old-aged men
• Identifying sexual harassment as a problem of young people (16)
• Witnessing of harassment committed by young people (11)
• Identifying youth sexual desire as a natural cause for harassment (9)
• Identifying one’s potentially diminished public image if caught of being involved in harassment (11)
Creating dichotomy between “self” and “other” by middle class people
Disassociation and social class/occupation-based ingroup and outgroup dynamics
• Differentiating middle class from working class (14)
• Identifying working class men having low social status and indifferent about losing honor (9)
• Denial by working-class men being engaged in harassment (15)
Acknowledgement of disadvantaged economic status and potential consequence if caught while being involved in harassment
• Identifying disadvantaged economic condition and the associated potential consequences (11)
• Emphasizing upper caste identity and socio-economic status and distancing from lower caste individuals (7)
Claiming upper caste/ethnicity and higher socio-economic status on a positive light and other on a negative light
Disassociation and caste/ethnicity-based ingroup and outgroup dynamics
• Recognizing the connection between the consumption of alcoholic beverages by lower caste and Janajatis and potential perpetrators (3)
• Janajatis claiming the agency of women in family (3)
Displaying caste based cultural practice of gender in/equality
• Janajatis portraying upper caste men as potential perpetrators (5)
• Perceiving Madhesi people as the perpetrator (9)
Blaming Madhesis as perpetrators
• Projecting them as temporary inhabitants in Kathmandu and indifferent about their social status (7)
• Madhesi denying their engagement in harassment (11)
Perceived discriminated social status and potential risk
• Madhesi conveying their experience of social discrimination in Kathmandu (9)