Being part of the Rape Culture!
And growing out of it!
The video began with a naked girl with her hands pressed together much like a Namaste gesture but in this case, those hands were clasped together while begging a boy, “please let me go, my mother would be looking for me. I’ll come back again.” The boy in his local-rural tone pointed to his friend, “let him do it (sex) once, at least.” The girl replied, “but he already did it.” The friend denied doing it.
In another one, I vaguely remember the man holding the camera phone entering the room. The naked girl was crying; her hands tied with a cloth, lying on a mattress clutching to a bedsheet trying to cover herself. The man pulls the bedsheet away, introducing the man he brought with himself to the woman. These memories are blurry in my mind, much like the quality of these videos, as if recorded on a Nokia 6600 mobile phone.
These were the first porn videos I watched in my life.
Much around this time, an MMS clip (a terminology hypocritically made synonymous with the “leaked personal videos” in India) of a minor girl from high social class, was leaked. It created a hype in the media, police got involved and boys got prosecuted. I was confused about the difference between this video and the ones I have seen earlier. But thanks to our highly “cultured” society, I decided to keep it to myself.
Now 15 years later, reflecting back on these memories made me realize if I haven’t evolved as a human being, I would have still felt these videos are “erotic” instead of feeling nauseated. But I am well aware of the fact that very few people are willing to change in a country full of a false sense of pride and self-glorification, and are still nurturing that perverted mentality which goes beyond the notion of misogyny.
After these videos reappeared in my consciousness, I did some digging. I went to the most visited porn sites in the world and search the term “rape”. To my amusement, it returned zero results for that particular query. It was a conscious decision taken at a corporate level (I guess).
One should ask, are individuals of this historic country capable of taking such decisions to fight their instincts of dehumanizing a human being? Especially the ones coming from a culture where boys tag a girl as a “Randi” (slut) for as little as refusing his proposal.
I know I am downplaying this one. The PRIDEFUL Indian is capable of throwing acid on a girl if she chooses to refuse his proposal.
“How dare she?” — Said pride
Even yesterday, a feminist-social-influencer posted a topless pic of herself with her boyfriend. She was degraded to a level which from my perspective showed the insecurities and misogyny of the harasser (accompanied by others), while from his perspective he would have been feeling pride for banging that girl (hypothetically), socially.
In defense of my absurd phrasing of the last sentence, these were his exact words.
He went as far as tagging the girl’s mother, pointing out how much he enjoyed the last night while pounding her (again hypothetically and I am trying my best to make it least degrading, yet give you the feel of disgust that I felt).
He used the entirety of slangs he learned from his patriarchal society, in desperation to prove his machismo by the means of degrading the girl, her boyfriend, and her mother.
The only difference would be that, he might be raping a girl from his own social class or a class lower than his because that won’t make the news.
From where I stand, I don’t see a difference in the people making those “MMS” clips and this misogynistic pervert. The only difference would be that, he might be raping a girl from his own social class or a class lower than his because that won’t make the news.
I am not saying that the rapes in India are always “class” sensitive. But the probability of a woman raised in rural India or belonging to a lower-middle-class filing for a complaint is almost negligible.
Girls and women are the reputations of the family. A slight whisper of the female talking to a person of the opposite sex would make the family “die out guilt”. Even if a girl decides to share with her family that she has been raped, there is a possibility that she might be burned alive.
What makes the situation even sicker are the priorities of our government. Having a 3 trillion economy or defeating the neighboring country in a hypothetical war is more prideful (and less painful) than having tackled misogyny or curbing rape culture.
Even if someone tries to have a rational conversation about this situation, they get back at you with a nihilistic answer like, “it has been like this”, or a classic political one which goes like, “what did the previous government do?”
Hypernationalist defends the situation by pointing out the fact that there are many more women taking higher and prestigious positions in the private and government sectors. They fail to acknowledge the fact that this situation is similar to India’s rich and poor gap. We have some of the richest persons in Asia and while a significant number are living below the poverty line.
Another factor perverting their consciousness is a bubble in which their own locality happens to be criminally immune. Official numbers don’t account for even 25% of the rape incidents happening in the country. Yet, most of the officially reported cases are committed by someone who knew the victim beforehand. And the fact is it’s easier to report a case against a stranger than against a relative because we are a society of rich culture.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau data from 2017, 93% of all rapes in India are perpetrated by people known to the victim. These could be family members, friends, neighbors, employers, and even online friends. And these are just the reported cases.
Our own society is perpetuating the rape culture, yet when it comes to treating a gruesome rape — those which happened to make the news — our solution is to kill the perpetrator, instead of tackling the situation on a whole. We don’t want to acknowledge our shortcomings because we are a culturally rich nation, (full of psuedo-pride).
Girls are emotionally (or literally) blackmailed or coerced, to “give it” (the pleasure or her vagina, terminology varies from which part of India you are referring to) to his friend once. The first video I narrated, was a literal example of that only.
Let me share another incident with you, this one is about a distant cousin from rural parts of an Indian village. He was having regular normal sex with a girl from his village who used to live near his house. Illegal in terms of the “village law”, but with full consent. A cousin of the girl visits the village. The boy demands they will copulate only after she convinces her cousin and brings her to him. The girl, deeply in love with the guy, manages to do so.
“She sat outside the room weeping, till I was doing her cousin.” These were the literal words the boy used, to brag about how much the girl is in love with him. He must have bragged about the incident with his friends in lieu of proving his masculinity, which is driven by a sense of pride in doing sex with more girls. I am not sure who is more wrong in this situation, the boy, the girl, or her cousin. The only thing I got out of this, she empowered him and had his false sense of achievement solidified.
It’s an achievement, nothing is wrong in mentally or physically harassing someone into coercion. Their sense of right and wrong is impaired by their false sense of pride, which has driven this patriarchal society beyond repair. Showing power over the weak is the achievement and bragging about it is natural.
Yet our society is culturally rich and full of pride. Governments nurture a sense of nationalism, with the help of deteriorated and lobbied media, which only talks about the positives of our society, repeatedly telling us we are a culturally rich nation of saints.
We can’t be at fault, because we don’t like acknowledging flaws in our society. If a foreign body or person points out a flaw in government policy or imperfections of our culture, we straight up discredit them or point out an irrelevant flaw in their own system. Our self-absorption is taking us distant from self-introspection, from being self-aware.
So I genuinely ask you, “what good the Feminism would bring to our flourishing rape culture?” Where we can’t even get to accept what’s wrong with our culture.
Acknowledging is the first step toward improving. It takes guts to accept our shortcomings and move forward by learning and improving. But that’s not how our culture works. We are a culturally rich nation, full of pride.
