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Danushka Gunathilaka is  not the 'national disgrace'

10 Nov 2022

BY Saritha Irugalbandara The news of Sri Lankan national cricketer Danushka Gunathilaka’s arrest in Sydney, Australia, on four counts of sexual assault (“sexual intercourse without consent”) against an Australian woman, is shaping up to be one of the most polarising stories of 2022.  Online and offline conversations about the alleged incident diverge in predictable ways. “Innocent until proven guilty” is making its usual cameo, supported by the bizarre claim that the anti-Gunathilaka sentiment is a feminist conspiracy. It is business as usual for the court of public opinion, with its hung jury and the undercurrent of victim-blaming evident in the viral memes and think-pieces on the greyness of consent. The nickname “Baduthilaka” – a moniker that speaks volumes on how sexual violence is still a cause for humour for many – began circulating shortly after the story broke. The fact that Gunathilaka used a dating app for casual sex, that the woman in question invited him to her house, and the semantics of consent, are key contentions.   The Sri Lankan public discourse about sexual violence acutely increases when a case makes it to the headlines. This interest is perhaps only matched by the perverse curiosity when there is a whiff of a new non-consensual intimate image/video “leak” being circulated. Misogyny of course has an open invitation to these ideological soirees. The periodically renewed interest is a minefield for survivors due to victim-blaming, shaming, and ridiculing.  In all of this, a salient common ground is the misrepresentation of sexual violence as a case of sex/desire gone wrong. The instinct to hone in on the mechanics of a sexual encounter speaks to the pervasiveness of our inaccurate but popular models about power, sexuality, violence, and the complex interplay of the three.  Framing sexual violence as what happens when a sexual encounter goes awry is a foolproof method of shifting blame onto the harmed party. Liberal feminism coined the adage “sexual violence is about power”, which has somewhat offset the structural implications, but not without cost. Adages have a propensity to become one-dimensional buzz-phrases. The implication is that power is inherently “bad” instead of ridiculously osmotic. It is also myopic to consider sexual desire as immaterial to the equation, or that power is not diffused into the politics of desire in ways that are tangible, invisible, and in-between.  To say that sexual violence is about power and power alone is to ignore the salience of sexual desire as an end, and power as the means to fulfil it. Ethno-religious identity, gender, class, connections, and being a national cricketer all attach a listicle of the extent to which you could exercise and abuse to fulfil an end. There is no denying that power is also about the conviction of one’s own capacity to evade accountability.  When we consider these incomplete foundations, it is easier to comprehend why affirmative consent and the need to listen to survivors are flabbergasting tasks for many of us. “So, we have to get consent for everything, even in the middle of sex? She took him back to her house, is that not consent? Sometimes stop means stop, but it also means a playful yes, and to keep going, no? At this point, a woman can be naked in bed with a man and still say no, so where does it end?” These are terrifying snapshots of how deep our codes of sex-as-conquest run, shared by men and women alike, who feel deep shame for desiring pleasure and are relieved to project it onto the low-hanging fruit that are sexual violence survivors.  The glaring lack of healthy, fun, fulfilling sexual encounters is a pitiful indictment of our education system, which prides itself on being free, while costing us the invaluable skills of empathy and critical thinking. How do we unpack consent to someone who does not view sexual pleasure as requiring communication, listening and paying attention to the other person? Maybe these questions are genuine, or maybe they are the labour of absolving all those who have, at some point, missed a cue and are getting an uncomfortable pang of guilt or denial now. Tailor-made maxims for these allegations are truly the ghosts of sexual violence past. “Innocent until proven guilty” is the hollowest of them all. The unspoken subtext is resounding: Survivors and supporters of survivors are rattling a status quo that has historically enabled, protected, and promoted abusers. It is an expectation for history to go ahead and repeat itself. Self-proclaimed rational observers create stereotypes of “anti-Gunathilaka haters”, essentially branding any criticism of Gunathilaka and his alleged behaviour as arising out of an innate dislike for the cricketer. If anything, Gunathilaka seems to be more popular than ever, lauded for “bedding foreign women” and his apparent sexual prowess. Cheezy netizens are crowning him with nicknames and casting aspersions on the moral character and motives of an unknown woman from Rose Bay, Sydney. A former cricketer and team manager joked that perhaps the team should pack male chastity devices when touring Australia next time to protect themselves from “sheilas (a girl or woman) taking men home after a boozy outing”. There is an obscene amount of power in being able to endorse, celebrate, and make light of sexual violence in such public ways. Is there a stereotype in the making for those endorsing and celebrating sexual assault, too? The urgency to typecast one but never the other reeks of an almost irrational fear, considering that survivors, first and foremost, only want to be listened to.  None of this is uniquely Sri Lankan, but Gunathilaka’s standing as a national cricketer undoubtedly has bearing too.  In 2018, Gunathilaka was questioned by the Police over the rape of a Norwegian national by an acquaintance of his. The rape had occurred at the team hotel. Gunathilaka was apparently in the room but asleep at the time. He received a six-month ban for “misconduct”. At least two other allegations of misconduct have now come to light citing Gunathilaka’s unwanted advances to women. Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) had issued three suspensions to the batter for disciplinary breaches.  According to Australian authorities investigating the latest allegation, the woman had asked Gunathilaka to wear a condom. An argument had ensued, and Gunathilaka had then allegedly choked and “assaulted her while performing sexual crimes upon her”. The New South Wales laws on sexual consent recognise that “consensual sexual activity involves ongoing and mutual communication, decision-making, and free and voluntary agreement between the persons participating in the sexual activity”.  A presumption of innocence is what is expected of us, and there is an argument to be made about a person’s past conduct having no direct bearing on current behaviour. What is undeniable, regardless, is that misogyny does not sprout overnight. Sexual violence is a pattern of behaviour, and it does not graduate to rape or sexual assault on a whim.  In the aftermath, the SLC has been scrambling to save its beard and broth. Several statements issued by the Club are surmised as follows: Gunathilaka is suspended from all forms of cricket, SLC emphasises that it adopts a zero-tolerance policy for such conduct, and it is also handling the legal expenses with plans to recover the costs later on. An allegation that the instruction to bear the legal costs came from powerful politicos connected to the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Party and the main Parliamentary Opposition, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, have been vehemently denied. The SLC also appointed a three-member probe to conduct an independent inquiry, including into “various alleged incidents that are said to have taken place during the team’s stay in Australia”.  Gunathilaka’s multiple cases of unwanted sexual advances and “misconduct” fell outside the SLC’s zero-tolerance policy for years. Now, the jungle fowls have come to roost. The SLC’s consistent treatment of Gunathilaka’s behaviour as “misconduct” and the club’s apparent sliding scale for what amount of misogyny as tolerable is only second in Sri Lankan-ness to cricket itself. Zero tolerance is evidently reserved only for the faux pas of sex/desire going so wrong that there is a criminal charge on foreign soil.  How many of us have asked ourselves the question: If it were Colombo instead of Sydney, would we see it on a headline? What of the rumours about cricketers, current and former, creeping on young women on social media? Did we ever learn if there was truth to the rumours that former national cricket team captain T.M. Dilshan was allegedly banned from entering Zimbabwe? The pocket conversations on which blue-and-yellow jerseyed men had made unwanted sexual advances are added to the ever-expanding list of national secrets we all know of, but do not talk about.  During a media appearance on Tuesday (8) night, former national cricket captain and incumbent National Sports Council Chairman Arjuna Ranatunga stated that it was “impossible to think of the case from one side” and that the SLC has a responsibility to “shape the minds of players” in order to prevent any future faux pas.  “We are only looking at the mistakes made by that child.” Does Ranatunga know that mollycoddled children make terrible adults? The currency of national pride converts generously to infantilising grown men – our boys, our children – as capable of making only mistakes, and not informed choices. Gunathilaka’s arrest is not an exception to the rule of the cumulative effect of power, popularity, and reverence that cricketers (and other sportspersons) enjoy. Cricket is an unparalleled unifying force for a country whose other legacy is unbridgeable fault-lines. These last few days were no different when institutions and fans of the sport alike presented a unified front to endorse misogyny and victim-blaming. Abusive behaviour being written off as misconduct, and invisible forms of predatory behaviour remaining conveniently obscured from the public imagination, are by design. The power vested in these institutions and the men that make them cannot be neatly siloed in hopes of extrapolating the ways in which this power is abused and misused to maintain public image, to protect favourites, and enable repeated misbehaviour.  For years, cricket has retained its reputation as the gentlemen’s game, partly because problematic behaviour is written off, becomes conversation and meme fodder, and the news cycles move on. Gunathilaka’s arrest, however, is being coined a national disgrace. The real national disgrace, perhaps, is the culture of protecting and enabling people with histories of abuse until it makes a headline.   (The writer is a social media specialist working on sexual and gender based violence at Hashtag Generation) …………….. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.  


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