Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Crimes against women

India has always been a land of hypocritical morals when it comes to women. At one end, we see men worshipping goddesses such as Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati, etc. On the other hand, we see heinous crimes such as rapes taking place in apparently safe places such as public transport.
Women in India must not be new to eve teasing, staring, inappropriate touching, etc. But we learn to deal with it. Since it doesn't kill us, it obviously makes us stronger. But where will this stop? What will it take for it to stop? It started from the days of Draupadi when she was shared among five guys. I mean c'mon. Even our mythology isn't bereft of misogyny.
With politicians blaming the intermixing of girls and guys for the increase in sexual crimes to lowering the age for marriage for girls as a solution to an end these horrible acts, the blame is always put on the female. I mean, how will lowering the marriage age for girls help prevent this act? It is not a question of whether girls are horny or not. A rape within a marriage is still a rape. It is still against the wishes of the woman. The girls are not the perpetrators of these obscene acts. They are just the victims.
I think a major reason for this state of affairs is the huge taboo associated with sex. While everyone in the country is doing it, it is still not a good thing to talk about it out of the closed doors of the house. Why the huge silence when it comes to these things when we are where Kamasutra took birth, something that is celebrated worldwide? This taboo is making sex a dirty word and as a result a dirty act, when actually it is supposed to be something beautiful.
But, I am not here to comment on how the society works and why it does what. I am just mad. As a female I take offence when society refuses to respect another woman and her body. I do know that people will say that this one act is not representative of the entire society. But what the hell! The society isn't doing anything to protect the Indian woman either.
I am an only daughter. My parents are afraid to let me out. And I don't blame them. Which parent wouldn't be in the current state India is in. In doing what the Indian society is doing, it is actually curbing the rights of the Indian woman to move about freely, dress as she likes and do even something as simple as get a drink at a pub.
I would like to point out that in the whole Indian society, Bengal and Kerala stand out. Bengal, barring madam Mamta's statement, has always been a progressive society. Maybe it is because of our excessive emphasis on the development of the mind. But never in a Bengali household will you see a woman fasting for her husband or putting her husband on a pedestal and touching his feet. A wife is an equal life partner. All the hindi serials that you see will show the wives worshipping their husband, keeping that inane Karva Chauth fast and all other kinds of bullshit. I have a whole post on how asinine those shows are. But thats for another time. But bengalis truly adore their daughters and wives. Another household is that of a keralite. Kerala is a matriarchal society, so that's a whole different ball game. But my basic point is, much of the Indian society's perception of woman is based upon the fact that women are generally not treated as equal life partners. And that needs to change. Fast.
One last thing. I am just at a failure to understand the logic behind carrying out such abominable acts. Do these men really think they can get away with something like this? Do they think a woman is going to keep quiet once you have completely ravished her modesty and left her humiliated? Do you really think women are that weak?
I know I have said a lot in this post and I know there will be lots of people who might not agree with everything I say. But then, I am just some unknown blogger in the world wide web. And this article is just my view. But I do hope, that I get a chance to just be my free self, sometime, very early in the future. And these hypocritical standards to which women in India have to adhere to is done away with.
My thoughts with all the girls who have endured men and their atrocities. If I had a choice, I would have them castrated. But then, I don't think I would ever get elected into a position of power. Because, we are a country of men. And men will do anything to keep women from getting into power. Because, they are afraid of becoming redundant (especially with stem cell research which shows that we don't really need men to reproduce) The only reason men are relevant today is because women still keep them relevant.
The men who were the perpetrators of this crime will in most probability be punished. But imagine the same crime being committed by men or boys coming from the upper strata of the society and being well connected. Would the nation be crying out with the same outrage? Would the politicians be denouncing it loudly on public forums? Would we even get to know about it? There are thousands of sexual crimes committed against women all over India. And yet, we get to be up in arms about only the ones which the media tells us about. The hue and cry will persist till the media finds something more sensational to report about. And then what? All of us will go back to our lives. And she will have to live with the agony of what happened.
A final word though, maybe in India, the lack of respect for women is in your face. But it exists elsewhere too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZAxwsg9J9Q

If you find this post feminist or sexist or racist, its fine by me. I am an Indian girl. And I get to be all of them.
Peace

The Rambler

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your post is sexist and full of BS feminist talking points. I don't blame you, I too used to think like that. But I'll give you a way out of it: Stop thinking your sex to be an ideology. It is an accident of birth. There is no pride nor any shame in being born of a certain gender. Crimes are committed by individuals, not by the entire gender, race or religion.

I'll give you some points to think about and you can decide for yourself.

- Religions/spiritual movements also teach not to harm men too, not just women. Yet people hurt each other

- Draupadi was shared, but so have a lot of kings who were shared by many queens.

- Till just 3 generations ago, for 1000s of years, we had a very low marriage age all over the world. Only recently has it gone so high.

- Yes sex shouldn't be demonized

- Yeah society is to be blamed.Men and women both are a part of it.

- Yet rapes occur in those states as well.

- And finally the feminist BS. Men are not a homogeneous group. They aren't a team. They don't always work together and for each other.
Men also keep other men from gaining power. Men abuse their power against other men too. The vast majority of violent deaths(think of the military , the police etc.) have been inflicted by men against other men. And women have always supported their fighting husbands and sons, be it WW2 or our own wars.

And regarding men becoming redundant, most of the R&D is being done by men. If men become redundant for reproduction , it won't be long before women too will become redundant.

- Almost half the country is populated by women who have voting rights. Yet women keep voting evil male politicians into power. But then so do men keep voting for them


I understand you are upset over the recent rapes in India. But India has an low rate of reporting rapes compared to many developed countries.On a per capita basis, it is more than 15 times LOWER than in the USA and 30 times LOWER than Sweden. A lot of rapes go unreported and the must be reported. But in doing so, we will be seeing volumes of more rape cases being reported in the media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics

Sorry to say but we are going to have to live through all this. Blaming an entire gender isn't going to help. Stay safe and have a happy new year.

Anonymous said...

dese lines u wrote are really sickeningly sexist and misandric. it really hurts :'( i love my mother n sis and my girlfrnd a lot and i never knew women cud think like dis

i agree wid da above anonymous dude when he called it feminist BS. i dnt think scientists n all do research for only men or for only women. u rlly shldnt have written dis :(

"Because, we are a country of men. And men will do anything to keep women from getting into power. Because, they are afraid of becoming redundant (especially with stem cell research which shows that we don't really need men to reproduce) The only reason men are relevant today is because women still keep them relevant."

pandemonium said...

Erm. I don't care if it hurts your feelings. I wrote what I felt. My blog. my rules.
Also, I do wish people would stop posting as anonymous.

Anonymous said...

i wud like to be anonymous only becuz it allows us to speak our minds freely without having to face the persons wrath. i think ur article is wrong on many counts and i agree with the other anonymous ppls comments

if u think men r gods then how come they r the 1s who have been getting killed in wars and in violent crimes much more then women. and the police force is mostly male yet it does a bad job of protecting men.
how come parents allow the son to join police and army when they r deadly professions?
be it the pakistani forces or maoists, it is almost always men who get killed while defnding the whole society

and dont say oh its men killing other men, so its ok. thats just crap

srry i'm such a coward but i dnt wanna fight with u in real life -_-