We vent and we vent and we vent, but it’s just so much hot air
blowing in the wind. The more we talk about the rapes, the more ludicrous the
“theories” get, and the more I find myself raging on people’s FB statuses with
long-winded comments. I realized, to make myself feel better, I should write
down most of what I feel about this issue and let it join all the innumerable
other blog posts, articles, tweets, and status messages about rape in India swirling
about the worldwide web.
First of all, we Indians need to divorce sex from rape. Very
often I see that people can’t see much of a difference, which is where all the
talk about whether SHE was drunk (the lady molested by a huge mob and
videotaped after she walked out of a pub), what SHE was wearing, what SHE was
doing, what her character was like (our honourable Chief Minister’s comment
that the victim was a prostitute) arises. Rape is rape. No woman invites rape
because it is, to make an understatement, mentally and physically acutely PAINFUL.
Let’s cut through all the “was she a good girl?” bullshit by
taking a woman on the extreme end of our moral spectrum. A rape of a prostitute
is still rape, because it has happened without her consent. It doesn’t matter
whether she was walking down a lonely street at the time, in an advanced state
of inebriation, and in revealing clothes. If a woman is attacked and raped, no
amount of harping on why she was there and how she looked at her aggressors
before the attack can change that fact.
A normal man might desire her, a disgusting man might
approach her for negotiations, but it’s only a man who is not quite right that
will think of raping her. Can you see the difference here?
I have seen a lot of ranting about how porn and the casting
couch and a culture of trophy wives all cause rape. The irony is these writers
are falling into the same trap as the extremely conservative, by confusing sex
(even the most unsavoury kind) with rape. I don’t deny that there is something
fundamentally wrong with a society that objectifies and commodifies women in this
way, and its woman-hating nature is expressed in its most extreme form as rape.
But I don’t see a direct connection: because in my mind, one is still the selling
of sex for money (gross as that is) and the other is rape.
Others (in so many words) seek to vilify men for desiring
women in the first place, to which I say can we please stop running around like
headless chickens and FOCUS.
Secondly, most people (shockingly—so many women I’ve spoken
to!) confuse a lapse of judgement (a woman getting into a car with three male
acquaintances, for example) with ‘getting what was coming to her’. “What could
she expect?” they say, and dismiss the rape off-hand. Are we then saying that
all men are potential rapists who are only waiting to be presented with an
opportunity by careless women? Is that how low our opinion is of our male relatives,
friends and colleagues? And are we saying that a woman is equally if not more
culpable in her violation, if she doesn’t cringe and look over her shoulder
whenever she is around men?
Which of us pass the test? Have we not all been out past ten
pm? Yes, on many, many occasions; often without male bodyguards to “protect our
virtue.” Have we not worn provocative clothes? Of course! Since anything a
woman wears is provocative to a rapist because he’s not looking at what the
woman is wearing. It is seriously time
our police stopped asking the question. The idea that a gang of five; who have
the criminal intent and savagery to rape a woman after tying up her male
companion, and then make her clean up the crime scene; would have walked away
if she was wearing a sari is preposterous. I don’t even know how people can
believe this.
Many women, in fact, are so sure they will be subjected to an
agnipariksha if they come forward, that they decide against further torture for
something as unlikely as justice. Women I know have whispered behind their
hands to me, doubting the motives of rape victims saying,” why would she
announce such a shameful thing to the world? She must want money and publicity!”
The result of which you can see n the most recent Mumbai rape case, where it
has emerged that the same group of men have raped before and had thought this
one would go unreported as well. Perhaps if the previous rape victims had not
feared social stigma and come forward, our brave photojournalist would have
been briskly going about her work today, finishing up on the assignment that
took her to the godforsaken scene of the crime.
So, you’re saying, you talk big, but what are you actually
DOING to change this culture?
Admittedly not much. Jeet and I tried to start a petition to
make self-defense classes compulsory for girls in schools – no one signed up, I
wonder what the problem was. I argue with
whoever expresses the aforementioned opinions to me. However awkward the
conversation is. If I have a son, I will not teach him that sex is bad, desire
is bad and thereby repress it in such a way that it suddenly expresses itself
in a horribly deviant way.
Of course, no parent wants a libertine for offspring but the
former must learn to acknowledge that normal young people will have sexual
feelings. If Indian parents carry on like having a girlfriend/boyfriend is a crime,
they will continue to confuse romance, sex, and rape in the minds of India’s
sons.
I have a daughter however, and I’m not going to lie, until I
see this shift happen – I will advise her to throw away all her fundamental rights
as an Indian citizen and cower at home, protected first by her father and then
by her husband; because society doesn't really care about her.
