Why
is rape- RAPE?
National
dailies are riddled with coverage of people being murdered in cold blood, of
the elderly being robbed and killed, of the young being kidnapped for ransom
and of WOMEN BEING RAPED.
The capitalization of the last part of this
sentence is intentional. When compared, with respect to the gravity of all
these crimes, rape is viewed as the most heinous act against humanity. But why
is that so? Why is the act of raping a woman (and here, I stress on the rape of
women and not men to underline the uni-dimensionality of how the same is
understood) more shameful than the act of robbing and killing another?
The
recent instance of gang-rape in the city has led to a public outrage with not
just women’s rights groups raising their voice but social portals too teeming
with ‘posts’ on the need to ‘stop rape against women.’
This
development must be praised. People in the city are beginning to wake up to the
need for laws and institutions to be in place in not just Delhi but other
cities in the country that focus on protection of women’s rights.
As a feminist, however, I see this a little
differently. Graphic illustrations of a woman- blackened and behind prison bars
have cropped up in several newspapers symbolizing the gravity of what has
happened. This woman has been RAPED. She has been ripped off of her chastity,
of her normalcy. “Oh that poor girl! my mother says, shaking her head in
dismay, she was RAPED. This is why I tell you to not venture out of the house
at night.”
But
I could also be robbed at gunpoint. How is being raped any different?
Yet
RAPE is different, society tells me. It is different because I may survive
being robbed at gunpoint but I shall NEVER regain my normalcy nor my right to
partake in society if I were raped. Because I’d be too impure to lead a normal
life. So in a flash, I not only lose my right to say NO, I also lose the right
to be treated like an ordinary living being in this society. I lose much more
than I would if I were to get robbed.
We,
as constituents of this society, live by this fundamental distinction. So we
sympathize with THAT girl because of all she has lost and underline how savage
men are who have the power to render us- women powerless. We focus on the need
to protect women from becoming victims of this “grave,”“heinous” crime by
ensuring that women “dress appropriately” and “do not venture out late at
night.”
I
question the productivity of such debate. In fact, I cannot underline enough,
just how COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE such discussion is.
THAT
girl and all us women in not just this city but the world need to be told that
while being robbed of ones’ right over their body is terribly unfortunate, it
by no means suggests THE END OF ONES’ LIFE. What we need, firstly, is to rid
rape of the social stigma that comes attached with it.
One
of my closest friends was date raped at the age of sixteen and she didn’t
report it because she couldn’t cope with the thought of her family and friends
getting wind of how SHE had ‘wronged’ THEM by ‘allowing’ her ‘piety’ to be
taken away from her.
What
I want from the representative institutions in this city is CONSTANT assurance
that life shall go on. Instead of using THAT girl as a case-in- point to
trigger debate about how MEN are cruel, and how unsafe this city is for women,
what we need, as a society, is to provide women with a guarantee that rape
shall no longer be something that rips them of their right to be normal, to
live.
Maybe
then, my friend shall feel SAFE, in every sense of the word,to put that bastard
behind bars.
M.Phil (INP), CIPOD
This provoking piece is being posted in solidarity with the victim of the heinous and dastardly act of rape and torture, committed on a medical student which has rocked the conscience of common people in the city of Delhi and the entire country.
