Rape is about violence and domination. It is not – not – about sex. Now that details are emerging about the horrific attack in Delhi, anyone who thinks otherwise is being willfully blind. Beating a man and a woman into bloody unconsciousness with an iron bar is not sex. It is violence. And ramming that iron bar into a woman’s vagina so forcefully that it destroys her internal organs, requiring a multiple organ transplant as her only hope of survival, and ultimately killing her, is not sex. It is an especially hideous murder, carried out by violent criminals who were so certain they could get away with it that they even drove their rape bus through police checkpoints during their crime!
And where did they get that idea? They have had it all their miserable lives. They got it from a long-standing cultural and legal atmosphere that devalues women, making them easy targets for violence.
Brendan O’Neill, writing for The Telegraph, laments that there is something of a double standard in our perception: the UN Secretary General has called upon India to make reforms to protect females, while similar crimes that have occurred in Western countries like Britain merit no reaction from the international community. So why is India singled out for a crime committed by run-of-the-mill dregs of society? Because, O’Neill complains, other such crimes are not seen as “…indicative of British culture in general, as a sign that British society and all those who inhabit it are rapacious and repulsive, but the Delhi gang rape is being treated as the logical end result of the allegedly depraved culture and attitudes of India…”
Well, yes. When women are attacked in a Western country, they actually have a pretty good chance of obtaining justice; Indian women do not. Despite Mr. O’Neill’s defense of India, and despite the fact that we know most Indian men are not depraved criminals, there is a real, undeniable cultural and legal atmosphere that really does promote a sense of audacity or invulnerability among such criminals as the Delhi rapists. Women are seen as lesser creatures, and too few crimes against women are even investigated, much less actually punished.
Consider that Indian women are sometimes subjected to disfiguring, crippling and sometimes fatal acid attacks by men who they wouldn’t sleep with. That it is not uncommon for new brides to be burned to death by their in-laws over dowry issues (more than 8000 of them in 2010). That lovers or spouses from different castes are often assaulted and killed by relatives for “honor.” That wives are quite commonly abused and even killed by their husbands.
This is about culture, not law; laws exist, they are ignored, and therefore more laws will not help. The caste system is outlawed in the Indian Constitution, but it still thrives, and still inspires honor killings – which are too often dismissed as accidents or suicides, or just go uninvestigated and unpunished. Dowry was outlawed in 1961, but many women still can’t marry without it – and it still gets them killed. Fewer than 10% of those cases are even investigated. Acid attackers too often receive little or no punishment.
Well, rape and sexual assault are illegal too, but just like these other culturally-ingrained crimes against women, little is done to help the victims or punish the perpetrators. In fact the victims are often blamed for what others do to them, and their families are shamed. “They should not be out at night.” “They should not be dating.” “They had loose morals.” The goons who raped and murdered the Delhi woman and assaulted her boyfriend knew that. Women have legal rights on paper, but they are not enforced in reality, and that is a direct result of culture, attitudes, and beliefs. As Seema Anand writes, many poor and uneducated women do not even know such laws exist at all. We can bet that poor and uneducated men don’t, either.
No, not all Indian men are depraved criminals. But some of them are, and yes, in a culture where bride-burning and honor killings are routine – and carried out by otherwise ordinary citizens who go unpunished – where are the social or legal deterrents against rapists?
To prevent not only another Delhi rape and murder, but the thousands upon thousands of other crimes annually committed against Indian women, legal protections have proven insufficient. Only a profound and permanent cultural shift can improve women’s rights in India.
edgeledge
January 4, 2013
Very well written and it gets to the heart of the issue. I do feel though, that the western culture is still male dominated and that there are many more crimes against women than are reported or punished, though not as violent or depraved as the recent spate of these crimes in India.
The Color of Lila
January 4, 2013
Edge, I think most cultures are male-dominated and that is an artifact of ancient practice, springing from the facts that 1) women are smaller and weaker than men, thus inspiring either a protecting / patronizing reaction or a dominating reaction from the males; and 2) women are the ones who get pregnant and lactate, so the future of the tribe / clan / whatever depends on keeping the women and children safe. All of this tends toward a mental construct of “a woman’s place.”
The challenge is in recognizing that most of us no longer live in a world of sabertooth tigers, mastodon hunts and warring tribes or lawless wilderness. In a modern society, physical weakness or childbearing status has a near-zero impact on our survival rates or ability to function, so a “woman’s place” can be almost anywhere.
Lauriate Roly.
January 4, 2013
Very good article; very strong, but infuriating. I’ve been reading about such situations for years and it is unbelievable that these horrible conditions still exist. I am certain I will not live long enough to see an end to it, but at least more attention is being drawn to such facts and perhaps there will be some reasonable culmination, but it will still be a long time in coming.
The Color of Lila
January 4, 2013
Lauriate, India is the only country I have been to that I really have no desire to revisit, and this is only part of the reason.
Arab haters
May 15, 2013
It does not matter to us whether you ever visit our country or not. Just stay away from this site or you will face the same fate.
The Color of Lila
May 15, 2013
You have made my point, Hater from Kolkata. Chelo.
Chris Glass
January 4, 2013
This will continue to be a problem until those who lead India are willing to mandate cultural change within the country. The fact that all but the most heinous cases are rarely brought to trial is an indication that those in power give lip service to human rights but will not practice them.
The Color of Lila
January 4, 2013
Chris, exactly! It is a leadership issue. Cultures don’t change without pressure from somewhere…. India has the laws it needs already. What it lacks is the will to enforce, and that needs to be top-driven since it obviously is not embraced by the “grass roots.”
Blood Hawk
January 8, 2013
India is a religious driven country. Leaders are too greedy to change anything that goes against their interests. Majority of cops and prosecuters don’t give a damn about women there, hence only one sentence in the last year to convict one rapist – out of 22.000 reported (1 rape every 22 minutes). The figures for non-reported, if I recall my criminology classes are usually double or triple depending on the region and culture. The protesters there are a minority since everyone is on the side of the rapists and blaming the victim.
Robert Lipkin
January 15, 2013
Sometimes the need for immediate change is so critical that a society can’t wait for the culture and attitudes to evolve. Our Civil Rights movement, kick-started, in ’54, by the Courts, forced the changes that Congress refused to enact long before the South was ready for changes in attitude. As I am sure you know, rape laws in the U.S. and England evolved from the beginning of the seventeenth century where the crime of rape was a crime committed against a father or husband. Women, like slaves, were property. Sparing you the soporific list of changes in the law from 1600, real change came in the 1970′s when women’s groups were successful in having the rape laws changed. Though not totally successful, the major push was to have the rape laws abolished completely and replaced with tougher laws – and sentencing – for assault and battery. The intent was to take the sexual nature and details of the attack out of the crime and especially limit the testimony that could be elicited from a victim. In an assault and battery case, questions as to character and reputation of the victim are irrelevant. The Military Code of Justice, and most states, have evolved to where rape laws are prosecuted more as a crime of violence. My point is this: It is easier to change the law than to change the culture. This is not a truism obviously. If the Taliban is free to kill young girls in Afghanistan for attending school, than the law is meaningless. But in this country, and I would guess in India also, changing the laws to protect women from violent acts – not sex – would save lives immediately. I graduated law school in 1970 and for four decades have wondered whether the shame our society attaches to being raped – as evidenced by newspapers still concealing the name of the victim (even after an arrest and/or conviction) – could be eliminated – and reporting would increase – if the rape laws were repealed and replaced with tougher sentences for more serious assault and batteries.
The Color of Lila
January 24, 2013
Robert, I think the idea of taking “sex” out of the equation and prosecuting as an assault and battery is a good one.
On the one hand, it might be seen as a disadvantage, in that the victims would lose any special distinction concerning the crime against them, in cultures where a woman’s chastity is of great importance – i.e., the crime is seen as a more serious crime (even if it is against a husband or father, rather than against the woman) than mere assault.
HOWEVER, those same cultures that hold chastity and virtue in such high regard, tend to blame the woman for somehow “getting herself raped” and see it as a form of maybe-not-so-forced sex which tarnishes the victim, rather than blaming the rapists for doing the deed, and seeing it as the assault that it really is.
So, in the end – designating rape as somehow special or different from assault only helps the rapist and not the victim. I think classifying it as assault and battery might actually do a lot to help change the mindset and get better justice for the victims.