dagblog - Comments for "Horrific Gang Rape in India is a Symptom of Larger Societal Problems"

The trial is going on. Some

artappraiser — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:55:52 +0000

In reply to Horrific Gang Rape in India is a Symptom of Larger Societal Problems

The trial is going on. Some of the news:

We are seeing the defense try the "she asked for it" ploy but not getting away with it.

The bus record was destroyed.

Bite marks on the victim's body have been identified with two of the accused.

One of the accused took the woman's phone and the man's shoes home.

There is continuing pressure about the necessity for police reform.

More coverage here via Google News.

I think that is a good point.

Orlando — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 15:28:58 +0000

In reply to To be fair, India's per

I think that is a good point. We should not ignore the larger problem. But also, rape statistics are tricky because of underreporting. There is underreporting in the US, but I read somewhere this week (sorry, I don't have the link) that it's estimated that for every reported rape in India, 50 go unreported. I would have to think that would be the case in South Africa as well.

To be fair, India's per

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 20:57:56 +0000

In reply to More news from Delhi about

To be fair, India's per capita rape rate is far below most countries, around 70th on this UN list. Of course New Delhi could be worse than other locations, and there are other issues about women's position in the society. But this particular grotesque rape-murder shouldn't be used to exaggerate India's problem or ignore the larger problem elsewhere. South Africa with 1/20th the population reports more child rapes annually than India reports total rapes (of course unreported child rapes are greater). The US has 85-90,000 reported rapes a year...

More news from Delhi about

A Guy Called LULU — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 20:02:41 +0000

In reply to Horrific Gang Rape in India is a Symptom of Larger Societal Problems

More news from Delhi about the sexual climate of India.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/04/the-cultures-of-delhi/

After writing the above, I

artappraiser — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:40:53 +0000

In reply to The problem with the purdah

After writing the above, I got to thinking again how India really is in the process of change on all of this. I did a quick google for "purdah India" and for the first result I got this March 2011 piece from The Globe and Mail:

The first time Mumal Barupal went to a meeting of her village council, she sat on the floor, off to the side of the benches occupied by the other members, in purdah - her face completely veiled by the end of her sari.

Then she ran the meeting: She was the newly elected mayor.

Back in 2005, Ms. Barupal won a tense local election; others in her low-caste group believed she might champion their causes, and used caste and family alliances to propel her to victory. But a few hundred votes did not change the social codes of rural Rajasthan, where no low-caste interloper seats herself up high, and no woman speaks when her face is covered or dares look at men without a veil.

Over the following months, though, she found a way to shift a bit at each meeting until she was sitting at the same level as everyone else. At first, she spoke from beneath the veil, but gradually drew her sari back inch by inch until her face was uncovered.

"Nobody wanted me there, but they couldn't stop me," she says, recalling the first days of her dominion in the dingy, cinderblock room. "You have to go and get your rights."

The story of this mayor - or sarpanch - is one of extraordinary personal achievement. But the gradual pulling back of her veil also represents a wider change that has occurred across India over the past 15 years, a change that is profound and yet so gradual as to have come almost unremarked . [....]

The problem with the purdah

artappraiser — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:21:55 +0000

In reply to Horrific Gang Rape in India is a Symptom of Larger Societal Problems

The problem with the purdah mindset:

Part of the policing problem is that less than 4 percent of India’s overall force is female, said Suman Nalwa, head of Delhi’s special unit for women, in an interview. She said she was working to improve police response to sexual assault.

“Earlier, women didn’t leave their homes, so there was no crime,” Ms. Nalwa said. “We are doing our best, but, of course, there is a lot more to be done.”

from

Indian Women March: ‘That Girl Could Have Been Any One of Us’ by Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipatti in New Delhi, New York Times, Dec. 30/31, 2012.

I am conflicted about "burka bans" and the like because of this. Required veiling of women does signify an underlying mentality that women belong in the home, protected by males, and are "fair game" outside of it.

My first instinct is to be as accepting of veiling as you (in your comment upthread,) that it's a cultural choice that often doesn't signify much at all. I grew up with nuns in habits as teachers during the Vatican II era, and the young ones were becoming more feminist at the same time, so they were strong models and I didn't grow up signifying wearing habits with weakness. But looking back now, and knowing how the Vatican is now, I realize the habits signified some very troublesome underlying attittudes that hadn't been dealt with and are taking decades to change. Habits initially signified purdah too, it's just that simple, habit = cloistered. and pure, not wearing a habit and out on the street = fair game for men.

On the "eve-teasing" you experienced on your trip, the NYT piece makes it clear that your experience on your trip is the status quo for urban Indian women as well as tourists, and note that reporting for it was contributed by Malavika Vyawahare, Anjani Trivedi, Niharika Mandhana and Saritha Rai.

Regarding your theme,

Nice boys they’re raising in India.

I found this in the article very interesting:

After years of aborting female fetuses, a practice that is still on the rise in some areas because of a cultural preference for male children, India has about 15 million “extra” men between the ages of 15 and 35, the range when men are most likely to commit crimes. By 2020, those “extra” men will have doubled to 30 million.

“There is a strong correlation between masculinized sex ratios and higher rates of violent crime against women,” said Valerie M. Hudson, a co-author of “Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population.” Men who do not have wives and families often gather in packs, Ms. Hudson argues, and then commit more gruesome and violent crimes than they would on their own.

especially because I do have a strong belief that gangs of young men cause much of the grief in attempting to create a civilization, whether it's a team of mercenaries, Al Qaeda, Bloods and Crips or rapists in India. It's kind of odd that most societies in history have tried to deal with this problem by putting many kinds of controls on the young women rather than controls on the young men who are considered to be just "sowing their wild oats." Sometimes it seems like the only control patriarchies have seen fit to try is to put them in rigidly disciplined militaries and use them as cannon fodder.

The most famous

artappraiser — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:28:44 +0000

In reply to Horrific Gang Rape in India is a Symptom of Larger Societal Problems

The most famous uppity-educated Pakistani girl speaks on the issue:

Delhi Gang-Rape Victim Dies: Malala Yousafzai Blasts Indian Government
BY Palash R. Ghosh, International Business Times, December 30 2012 3:22 PM

Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani women’s rights activist currently recuperating from a gunshot wound in a British hospital, has expressed her condolences to the family of the 23-year-old Indian woman who was gang-raped in Delhi two weeks ago and subsequently died.

According to the Daily Bhaskar newspaper of India, Malala also blasted the Indian government for mysteriously transporting the rape victim from a hospital in Delhi to Singapore, despite her weakened condition.

“The rapists dumped her on [the] road,” Malala tweeted. “The government dumped her in Singapore. What's the difference?” [....]

This from that piece is also quite interesting, my bold:

In an editorial in The Hindu newspaper, Ratna Kapur, Global Professor of Law at the Jindal Global Law School, wrote that the tragedy represents a “tipping point” and compared it to the convulsions of the Arab Spring revolt.

“The protests across the country that have gone viral in recent days represent how we as a nation have arrived at a moment of transformation that many young people have provoked across the world in recent years,” she wrote.

“The woman’s brutal rape and murder provides the spark to bring the culture of destructive masculinity, and the pervasiveness of rape and sexual violence in our society to the front and centre of the political agenda. Such violence cannot be reduced to a social problem to be handed over only to women’s police cells or departments in charge of women and children’s affairs. Its eradication is central to our self worth and integrity as a nation.”

Definitely what is going on

artappraiser — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:17:13 +0000

In reply to Orlando, I don?t know what to

Definitely what is going on here is caste/class/tribe-based, both with the epidemic of gang rape, and the massive reaction to an urban medical student suddenly being a victim of the same:

Our redemption as a people lies in smashing the hierarchy of sorrow
Why don't we seek justice for raped Dalit, Kashmiri and Northeastern women in the way we do for the horrific gangrape survivor?
By Ajaz Ashraf, December 26, 2012

What Indian women are in the process of discovering, mho, is that together, they hold up more than half the sky. Patriarchy has always taking great advantage of class distinctions, where they can have both their madonnas and their whores. Madonnas have to learn that there is something better than being kept in a gilded cage; sometimes when that gilded cage fails to protect like it's supposed to, the message finally sinks in about patriarchy and how they are not so very different from their sisters in other tribes as they thought.

The societal process of the reaction to the medical student's rape is not unlike what is going on here with the Sandy Hook case, including things like this discussion of Orion's re: "Dr. Cornel West: Politicians Only Talk Gun Control When ‘Vanilla’ People Get Shot"

I am of the opinion, though, that India is a special case, worse than many other countries in this regard. It's almost natural for humans in such a jam-packed mass of humanity, competing for resources, to associate in tribe/caste To simply get through the day, it's nearly impossible to care about every one of the thousands of other humans you pass by. So a Brahmim feels hurt when another Brahmin has hard times, but passes by Dalits in hard times his entire life without feeling a thing.

There's a place where these two problems intersect: women's education and family planning. For not just upper class/caste women but all women. For an example of what I am talking about, lots and lots more lives used to be extremely cheap in China until women were educated and the one-child policy instituted.

But in India and China, we still have partriarchal notions among women that still have to fade away about which sex is more valued, and mho, there India is far worse than China. But then neither is the horror for women that is, say, Afghanistan/northwest Pakistan, or many areas of Africa. I simply expect much more from India at this state in its development, they can do it, I know they can do it. They have shown the world the great talent of their people at adapting and adjusting many times over the last century. (On their massive infrastructure problems, too--on that, China should put them to shame. China still has terrible poverty, but they have at least sewers and clean water and nearly everyone learns to read and write, etc.....)

Once again, I am fascinated and hopeful about the consciousness raising going on over there because of this one horrible crime. Granted, it started with "tribe," but the reaction, it's good for their country. Sometimes empathy with a "vanilla" victim is what it takes to get a reformation ball rolling...

As a 43-year old in Malaysia,

cmaukonen — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 21:24:29 +0000

In reply to Horrific Gang Rape in India is a Symptom of Larger Societal Problems

As a 43-year old in Malaysia, when a 70-something gas station attendant groped me, I had, apparently, appropriately ranked the lessons because I went a bit, shall we say, mental on his ass. Very publicly and very loudly. I doubt he’ll be copping any feels from crazy foreign women in the future.

I'd of broken the fucker's collar bone. But then I can be a real sonofabitch when I want to be. Which is more often than I car to admit.

P.S. Their associated

artappraiser — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 21:06:55 +0000

In reply to This new detailed editorial

P.S. Their associated article, which the above is a response to, a compilation of 20 solicited short essays, is extremely interesting for those interested in the parts of Indian culture and society that have contributed to the problem:

How do we stop rapes? India looks for answers

Sunday's gangrape has left India shocked and scared. Twenty personalities — lawyers, activists, writers, filmmakers — suggest some real solutions to problem

Edit to add: This is the magazine's twitter feed where I found a link to the new article and where you can see they are currently focusing content on the rape issue; there's also comments from others there