Human fear and courage are selfish by the definition and
they are always balanced to protect personal integrity. Motivation to protect
own safety usually makes us follow fear and we tend to not speak publicly or
engage. Excuse is that ‘we can not do anything about it anyway so why expose
ourselves unnecessarily’, isn’t it so? It takes sometimes a very strong message
to motivate us to act courageously. But in the end, our courage to react is
motivated by a fear from seeing again, closer to us, what we have seen happen
to one of us.
…Do we have a right to wonder why the gang of man thought
that it is acceptable to grab and violate random woman? If they have been
exposed to a social teaching and dominant opinion that woman is a property of
man, therefore can be treated in what ever way he chooses to treat his
property? Add to it hormones doing their job like in all young people, ‘boy’s
talk’ and sharing their sexual desires and frustrations that can leave the
group highly eroticized, and sex is not accessible…
Without any intention
to excuse rapists for one second, but aren’t we all product of social
psychopathology that we are exposed to?
On one we agree: we DO chose our behaviour up to certain
extent.
But think about this if you are, for instance, white male, who
is proud of the rights your grandfathers already granted to women, and who
thinks that he deserves credits and awards for not beating your wife or cutting
off her nose and ears if she tries to escape from your tyranny:
If you by chance happened to be born and raised somewhere
else, and thought from childhood that it’s your duty to discipline woman when
she is disobedient, ask yourself how easy would be for you to behave
differently? Furthermore, how many of you guys who think that you are treating
your wives equally is really not abusing any social advantages available for
you? Objectively, advantages are available for you to take them if you want
them, social advantages and opportunities to take more and better of life for
yourself, and you can, without problems, get away with it. In every culture, in
every continent, you still have to choose not to abuse. Yet, you do have that
choice. As you will not be disrespected socially if your wife goes out in a
mini skirt or if she leaves you and divorces you. You will still have a respect
from other guys in your gang and no one will despise you if you’re cooking or
washing dishes. Even opposite – people will see you as a correct person. But
remember, just some 30 years ago you would have been teased and called a wimp
for doing “woman’s jobs” or not displaying your macho authority over your
woman.
In the end, if you are completely honest, how many of you
who are openly pro equality still say sometimes, packed into a theatrical tone
like you are joking, but not very clear of what position are you sincerely
holding, how many of you sometimes say, with a theatrical nostalgia, something
about ‘good old times of undisputed male domination’? Not that it’s really
behind us yet, is it?
But here, in India,
we LIVE in the ‘good old times’.
In some schools that are considered desirable, I heard, they
admit only children whose mother is a home-maker, as they want to assure that
homework will be supervised. “Your mother has to work? It’s not good for you
and you are not good for our school, my boy.” That’s the social value that they
promote in their classrooms as well, I guess.
Girls who are attending that school are being as well educated to become home-makers when they grow up.
Girls who are attending that school are being as well educated to become home-makers when they grow up.
If we put too much
poisons into our body it can develop cancer, a malignant tissue. Available
treatments are chemotherapy and operation. When we put too much poison in our
mind, what do we do with malignant ideas?
In all events and gatherings following this monstrous
attack, in all public and social media, we see people in rage, demanding death
penalty, chemical castration and suggesting many other kinds of physical
punishments for men who participated in this act. Violence we learnt about gives
birth to the violence in us. And we feel like they should experience same kind
of pain and fear they made another human being experience. But if we decide on
that, whose job is then to perform that violence on the convicted ones? Would I
be the one? And who is then supposed to punish ME for inflicting harm to
another human? Or shall we collect and employ a bunch of psychopaths to execute
the dirty work that we (as no one in particular but as a ‘society’, everybody, which
means not me) decide to perform on a member that most of us agreed deserves it?
Before crucifying these men we have to give ourselves an
answer are we crucifying them for the rape or for an example? Example that is
supposed to make us see own hands as little less dirty in this case?
Those men should, of course, be removed from the society and
locked down in prison for the rest of their life. They took away life and
future of a human being. They should not get a chance to ever live free and
fulfilled life. Furthermore, it’s an act of ferocious misogyny which reveals
that those people have unacceptable social views and society has to make a
clear statement about it. Social influences can not excuse what someone has
done with own hands.
But to prescribe harsher punishment to set an example, and
therefore intentionally ignore responsibilities of the society in large and
it’s ruling government in this case, would be again setting the same example of
public uncritical cruelty to what someone finds socially unacceptable?
Next thing will be to promote cutting off tongue for using
inappropriate language with the woman. No one should use inappropriate language
with anyone, but are we going to start cutting off tongues? Shall we cut off
hands for stealing and noses for mixing in others’ personal affairs?
Rule no 1 in
diplomacy: What ever happens – use it to strengthen your position of power.
Rule no 2: If nothing
is happening that you can use to strengthen your position – make it happen.
In some weird way, a punishment that would be harsh beyond
what we humans should feel that we have a right to impose on each others, in
some weird way that kind of punishment would give even more legality to what is
happening on daily basis to millions of women. Punishing culprits in this case
as they are some strange alien monsters that come straight from the universe
with their ultra right ideas (hence the society has taken it’s action by
prescribing harsh punishment for this and future cases of this kind), will not
eliminate the fear as it will not eliminate gang rapes.
By presenting and promoting it as a necessity to protect
them from those and such kind of gangs and individuals, society will claim the
right to expect from a woman even grater submission to social oppression. That
in result will provide even more privacy to what is happening behind closed
door. And that seams to be a goal of some people who hold significant power in India , at least
according to their social views presented in their public statements.
Culture of Rape
And guess who is to
blame?
The worst thing is that these are not the worst.
Yes, we all agree that rape is unacceptable. At least
publicly. (Except in some extreme views, if you read quoted article) But it is
happening every day, under which ever name those who are creating social
approval for it can invent in order to give themselves right. Violence and
abuse are being approved socially in so many cultures, under so many
self-proclaimed authorities, and rules on indefinite basis re-affirmative for
those in power. Women can only beg for mercy and hope that it it will be granted. She basically has to prove that she wasn't provoking the rape, which is close to impossible considering that showing one's ankle is considered a provocation.
Around here every man has a possibility to rape and molest
SOME woman (maybe not every woman, but if he wants, he can find more then one
available and unprotected) without social consequences, which is basically a
definition for the right.
Right – social consensus on what you can do with yourself
and to other people, without negative social or legal attitude towards it and
without legal consequences (with rights, we were thought, come certain obligations. And obligations that follow this right are unheard of, to which we will arrive later)
We are all screaming loudly around the case where a group of
young man took that right (right of a man to impose himself sexually to a
woman) in a little bit wider meaning then socially accepted. We needed to see
the extreme of what we are all closing our eyes to, before starting to freak
out as it finally applies to us as well (without trying to promote the concept
of necessary sacrifices and their social consequences which is disgusting as those who are abusing it).
Do we have a right to wonder why the gang of man thought
that it is acceptable to grab and violate random woman? If they have been
exposed to a social teaching and dominant opinion that woman is a property of
man, therefore can be treated in what ever way he chooses to treat his
property? Add to it hormones doing their job like in all young people, ‘boy’s
talk’ and sharing desires and frustrations that can leave the group highly
eroticized, and sex is not accessible…
So when you see nobody’s property (especially if ‘you’ means
plural, which adds a feeling of no individual responsibility for the act, which
again makes it easier to a human mind to see it as acceptable), available in
the open wildness after the time that decency prescribes for a woman, without
presence or sufficient protection of her ‘owner’ (it’s enough to be unmarried
to qualify for the victim), it is your right to claim her as your own property.
(Like a bench in the park) Yet, as chances are bad that she will anyhow became
your permanent property (you can sit on it but can’t take the bench home, someone
will come and claim it), you have a right to use it and then devastate it, as
after you have used it, it (the woman) anyway becomes useless for anyone else
as a property. And from your point of view which makes it OK to do that to a
human, is the fact that that human is a woman, therefore her life doesn’t
count. Not to mention that hurting her can not turn back to you. She has no
means to defend herself, so why wouldn’t you take your frustrations on her
life? She was anyway testing her destiny by staying outside without enough male
escort after decent time.
It happens every day,
to the enormous number of girls. And how does society deal with it?
To be continued…
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