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. 

Anindita Bose
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.