Freedom Or Obscenity: Where To Draw The Line?

Express digs deeper into the issue of arrest of three YouTubers

- CP Balasubramanyam

It's a thin line that separates freedom of expression from offensive remarks in our highly sentimental society. In the recent arrest of three YouTubers, over charges of creating and sharing “obscene videos,” activists feel the State police have transgressed that line in dealing with a subjective concept like morality. The issue began when they released a video featuring a young woman, talking about her sexual preferences and having multiple partners. Following the arrests, all the videos in that YouTube channel were taken down. The Chennai Police went to the extent of sending out an informal warning to all content creators, asking them to remove such “indecent content.”

A sizeable section of society feels the police action is problematic on multiple levels. “Aren’t their thousands of such videos online where men say similar things in the very same tone?” asks Radhika Ganesh, co-convenor of Young People for Politics. “The content came across as being exceedingly explicit because it’s a woman saying it,” she says.

Gender-rights activists, too, feel the reaction is disproportionate to what is seen when male actors mouth expletives on the big screen. They see the reaction to this particular video as nothing but patriarchal conditioning.