A Manifesto for Indian Males

I feel like I've lived these past few days with alternating bouts of frenzied activity and a rage-filled grief about the situation in India. First the news of the teen rape victim who committed suicide because she was being pressured by the cops to marry her rapist. Then the brave fighter who only wanted to live, died despite that will, in a strange land.

I want to hit something, someone. And I realize that these events reminded me of how close I've come to Damini's fate. I will call her this because that's what she was--lightning that flashed for a brilliant second and died away. But her name is immaterial. She is me. She is all Indian women.

I too was a twenty-something in Delhi. It was an unfamiliar city and I was brash, cocky, young, living in that state the young live in--infallibility. I got on to the wrong bus and there I was at night heading towards the U.P. border instead of to Delhi University. I had no idea where I was but I got down with a bunch of other people. It was pitch-dark and I managed to find an auto-rikshaw. Another woman got down with me and begged me to give her a ride because she was scared.

The area looked dodgy, seedy. She tried convincing me to stay the night at her place. I couldn't trust auto-wallahs. Why did I want to wake up my sister late at night when I could go home early in the morning?

Some instinct kicked in and I made her get off way before the place she wanted to go. I still don't know. Was she a procurer? Something worse?

I trusted the auto-wallah. Not because he was great but I had no choice. I could either be stranded somewhere unfamiliar late at night, be sold into something unsavory or risk being in a vehicle with a stranger. I made the right choice by chance that night. Damini did not. Could not. There was no right choice to make.

I know that feeling of desperation, of fear, of the million what-ifs. I felt it that night and many other times...but I was lucky. That's all. Luck!

Women can do nothing more in India but be lucky. This problem--this culture of violence and rape--is on the heads of Indian men. And perhaps on the shoulders of the mothers who bring up these little princes by telling them that all other women are fair game and if they are out there they are sluts anyway.

This is what men need to realize:

1. Women are are human. Take a minute, and think about this. Is the blood rushing to your head? Sit down then, and think. We are not exotic creatures no matter the books that proclaim our Venus heritage. And as humans we have the same emotions and feelings and dreams and aspirations as you do. And each unwelcome touch, each crude comment, each assault, each anything done without our consent grossly violates our human rights.

2. Not only are we human but we are fully equal to you. Whoa! Did that blow your mind? It's true. We have the same rights as you do. The right to walk the streets and go to any public place without hindrance. We have the rights to employment and life and liberty and the right to live our lives. Just as you do.

3. Any right of yours that infringes on ours is not a right. Is this a hard concept too? Let me explain. You too have the right to pursuit your happiness. But if your happiness comes only by molesting or touching someone without their consent it is not a right. Your rights (and mine) stop at the edge of our respective noses. Your pursuit of happiness stops being a pursuit when it only comes at my expense. See two equals cancel each other out and we are equal.

4. Rape is not sex: Rape is a sexual manifestation of many things. At the very least it is a lack of impulse control. At worst it is about violence, rage, control, domination and a deviant desire to hurt. There are actually women who will have sex with you...willingly. But for those who fail to see your charms? Just move on. Really, you might discover that sex is actually more enjoyable than rape. Sex is about pleasure--mutual pleasure. Rape is about stealing something--sometimes violently--that is not yours and is not about anything mutual.

5. You can change. Trust me on this. First of all, there many, many wonderful sensitive non-rapy men out there. They manage to live and love and prosper and do all the things they need to do without it being at the expense of women. Some of these men stood shoulder-to-shoulder with women in Delhi protesting the hideous crime in Delhi. If you too think of us people (not goddesses or princesses or any other label that diminishes our humanness) who are kind of like you then you can change. And it might even be fun. You might even make female friends. We're fun and stodgy and irreverent and stuck-up and funny and bitchy and nice and not nice: human. Judge us on our individual merits or de-merits, not just because we are women.

And mothers of Indian men? Stop making your sons into female-hating assholes. Just because women are not their mothers, sisters or wives and are out there in public does not make them whores ready for the taking. In fact--even they are whores they still have the rights to their own bodies. They still have the right to make their own choices about who can touch them and who cannot.

You are fond of bleating on about India being poised to be in the first world. Guess what? That is not going to happen unless and until this problem is addressed. It's a human rights issue stupid!

These are not radical rights. Most of these rights in some way or the other are already enshrined in the Indian constitution. Don't believe me? Read it. Nowhere does it say in that document that women are second class or that we do not have the same rights as men.

Even if not that: you can think the way you do...but you do not (and moms teach this to your potentially rapy sons)....touch anyone if they don't want you to. I don't believe in thought policing. I do believe in freedom of speech. But actions...they are another thing altogether. You say something crude to a woman in the streets or touch her or assault her...that is a crime!

See? That wasn't so hard right? Think of all the rights you legally enjoy and take as your birthright. We, as Indian women, have those exact same rights. You can think we are sluts, whores or whatever else. You *cannot* act on that. Just the same way that many Indian women might think most of the males around her are sex-obsessed, crude, assaulting assholes. But if we become vigilantes and start pre-emptively kicking random men in the balls or castrating them...that is a crime.

Did that make you cringe? Good. That was one-thousandth of what it takes for an Indian woman to go about her daily life, being prepared for a constant barrage of invasion and criminal assaults to various degrees.

Feel free to pass this along. And feel even freer to change and help others to do the same.

Crime and Punishment: A Rape in Delhi

Today the Delhi police arrested and blasted with water cannons those protesting the brutal gang-rape that sparked protests and social-media outrage. There are pictures too—of a young jean-clad woman being dragged away by cops. And of signs exhorting the death penalty for rape. And multitudes of young people protesting apathy or outright police and politician collusion with criminals in India’s capital.

This has been a media and social media sensation: the awful terrifying details of the rape, the petitions to make death penalty the punishment for the crime, the updates on the condition of the ICU-bound victim. No…not victim. The survivor. She was left for dead. She survived. She is no victim. A victim does not fight. She fought to live.

And that is why I am against the death penalty for rape crowd. Rape is an awful, terrible, horrific crime but it is not the same as murder. Anyone who is raped, , anyone who has been brutalized and lives is a survivor. If they do not, then by all means apply the penalty for murder. First figure out what rape is, what it really means before you start applying penalties. Penalties, which seem to equate rape with death. Rape is one of the most horrific things to happen to a woman. But it is not the worst. Not surviving a rape is the worst. No matter how much she suffers, dying is still worse. Because until there is life there is a promise of a future. And women do not need to be told that being raped is the end of everything good in their lives. That is giving too much power to the rapist, the men who feel like men only when they take by force what was not theirs to take. Equating rape to death makes women eternally suffering victims.

For too long has rape been akin to murder and to do so is to diminish the survivor. It feeds into the motivations between honor killings, as in the destruction and besmirching of some man's property.As if the one raped is forever tainted by being forced to have something that mimics sex. Being raped is not the burden of the survivor. The only one dishonored is the perpetrator. Being raped does not make a woman less a woman. It does not make her less alive. It does not make her less in control of her future.

Remember those old movies where the raped woman had only two options: to kill herself or to become a prostitute? That is how Indian society has viewed raped women. If you are a good girl, recognize your dishonor and kill yourself. If not, then recognize that the forced violation of your body has left you with only one recourse, to become a slut and a vehicle for men’s lust. 

Bullshit!

The best revenge a survivor has is to go on with her life. The only way is to go forward, to testify, to face her assailants and gain the courage to take her life back. Rape is a crime and it needs to be punished. But is death penalty the solution? Why?

The severity of the punishment is not the solution. Some kind of punishment is the solution. India has the lowest conviction rates around. Where is the outrage against that? Why is there no outrage that there are really no forensics or scientific evidence given in Indian courts? Even rape cases become a he said-she said scenario with eyewitness accounts and other archaic tools. So then if a survivor is left paralyzed or unable to speak how do her assailants get prosecuted?

If a rapist (as in this case) is from a lower socio-economic class he might get sentenced. This is still the Indian justice system right? Where the police catch a hold of the first poor person, beat the hell out of him and force him to confess to a crime even if the perpetrator was someone else—especially if that someone is rich of well-connected. This is also the India where cops believe that a woman who drinks or who has consensual sex has no business complaining about rape. It is also the India where the “what was she wearing to bring it on,” is still used successfully in court an where judges take moralistic stances against those who are raped and advise them to get married to their rapists.

So it doesn’t matter if rape gets the death penalty. Or if at the point of death we cut the man down, whip him and string him up again ten times. It doesn’t matter because the conviction rates for any crime are so low. It doesn’t matter because as a nation we still don’t agree on what rape is.

I’ll tell you what it’s not. Rape is not about sex. What is it about? It is about control. And violence. And rage. And domination. It is about inflicting physical, emotional and psychological damage. The fact that it takes on the parody of a sex act is incidental. Sex is about pleasure. And it is about mutual choice and consent. Rape is about pain and the lack of choice and the steamrolling of consent.

We might ask why Indian men have so much anger against Indian women? So much anger that makes them leer and touch and molest and assault openly. Rage that makes them rape and attack? What lets them worship a goddess and kill his female fetus or his already born daughter? There is something, something that is making our male-female ratio plunge to alarming numbers. Something that makes them want to annihilate women. Not all men and not all women but enough to make me wonder. Why? And how can we reverse this trend. Can we? Can Indian women get justice? True justice, not reactionary, bandaid justice.

So the Delhi Police might blast away protestors—men and women—but they cannot blast away the truth. Rape is an act of violence. And it needs an appropriate punishment. What that punishment is can be debated later. What we need are profound changes so that survivors can live with their heads held high and perpetrators get appropriate sentences and the justice system is indeed about that most elusive thing of all—justice.

Saudi rape victim pardoned: Update

Yes, the young woman I had written about has been pardoned by the King of Saudi Arabia.

While part of me grits my teeth at the pardoning of a victim, I realize that this was the only way for the young woman to escape her horrific victimization after an already harrowing ordeal.

And even though I know that there are probably others in S. Arabia undergoing the same or worse, at least one woman has escaped from it, even if it was because of intense media interest. Kudos to the woman and her lawyer. It doesn't happen often, but here's a rare victory for moderates in Islam.

Read more about it here

200 Lashes and 6 Months in Jail

Imagine you are a 19 year old woman and you sneak away from home. You sneak away because you are not allowed to go out by yourself. Then you are attacked and raped by seven men. Again, again, brutally, you are violated and you know that the worst is yet to come.

A 19 year old young woman in Saudi Arabia had just this happen to her. She was held responsible for her own rape--because she was out without permission from a male relative-- and was sentenced to 90 lashes. Oh yes, the rapists also got sentenced. Like they were all willing participants in a one-sided act of brutality.

Then she spoke to the media and the number of lashes were increased to 200 and she also got 6 months in jail.When the young woman's lawyer appealed the judicial decision he was disbarred and lost his license to practice.

This case made my stomach turn. I am feeling physically sick. What can one write or say about this atrocity. We know that Saudi Arabia is no haven for women and I am sure cases like this have always happened. Now we know about it...and I am still too disturbed to really digest this. But I know this is one brave woman to step out and actually talk about it. And kudos to her lawyer as well.

Read more about it on CNN.