Hot on the heels of the top cop in Andhra Pradesh, DGP Dinesh Reddy making a statement about rape cases rising because of women dressing provocatively comes this from a minister in charge of women and child welfare.
In today’s newspapers, the Karnataka minister of women and child welfare made this enlightening statement, “women should know how much skin they cover.”
The mind immediately thought about the children who are raped, boys and girls, the infants who are raped, the mentally challenged, the elderly, the bedridden, the fully clad, the ones in burqa or ghunghat. By these preposterous standards, these should have never been victims of rape.
They have not been the first. A Canadian police officer triggered off the global awareness movement called Slutwalk when he exhorted women to stay safe from rape by not dressing like sluts. The Delhi police chief told women in so many words to not step out of home unescorted at night, the Delhi chief minister apparently stated something on the same lines, and then apparently attempted a retraction.
This disgusts me not because this is reflective of the shift the blame to the victim mentality which plagues us, but because these are people in senior positions in law enforcement and policy making.
Let’s get some statistics and studies in right here to shed some light on the motives of rapists:
In India, a rape is committed every 54 minutes.
More facts: Uttar Pradesh topped the crime rate in the country in 2010, according to latest statistics released by the National Crime Record Bureau. The state registered 33.9% of the crime reported in 2010, followed by Andhra Pradesh (12%) and Tamil Nadu (10.4%), according to the NCRB report for 2010. Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of rapes while Andhra Pradesh registered highest number of crime against women, which included molestation and sexual harassment. (Read more here)
And let us not forget we have the dubious distinction of being at fourth spot in this global study on the most dangerous countries to be a woman in.
We did some fair amount of reading up and research during the www.vawarenessmonth.wordpress.com that we did during October 2011. And the statistics were frightening.
Most rapists rape not because they get provoked seeing a woman wearing provocative clothing. They rape because they have opportunity and believe they will get away with it. Most rapes happen not with strangers but with someone trusted, family and friends, in fact only six percent of rapes happen with strangers. The men who raped strangers through force and coercion looked for a victim who seemed vulnerable and uncertain. Interestingly, clothes were only perceived as a factor in terms of ease of removal. Not in terms of provocation. The provocation factor is all in the head.
Let’s get this clear right here and right now. Rape is not about the victim. Rape is about the rapist. Blaming the victim and shifting the blame on the victim doesn’t lessen the enormity of the crime.
Women have been raped when they have been wearing most unprovocative clothing. Pushing the guilt of being raped onto the victim lifts the blame squarely off the perpetrator’s shoulders. Much like our innocent rishis of yore who were tempted and seduced by dancing apsaras. She asked for it. Remember the Jodie Foster movie The Accused?
Finally, this is what the truth is, from a victim. “I was sober; hardly scantily clad … I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt; I was at home; my sexual history was, literally, nonexistent — I was a virgin; I struggled; I said no. There have been times since when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn’t raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.“
The difference is not what the victim is wearing, and that she was ‘asking for it” it is the presence of the man with the intent to rape and who was prowling for a victim. Any victim. Regardless of what she was or wasn’t wearing. The fault is not in what a woman wears, but in the male gaze. Walk down any street in any Indian city, fully clothed, as a girl, as a woman, you need not even be very attractive, just being female will do. I have seen saree and salwar kameez clad women being ogled at and molested on the streets.
Jaclyn Friedman, author of “What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex & Safety” says, and she’s researched this long and hard enough to make this statement, “The reality is, there’s zero evidence linking how ‘sexy’ a woman is dressed with her likelihood of being raped. None.”
So let’s have some police who patrol better, conviction rates that are higher and sentences that are stricter as well as politicians who are more sensitive to women’s issues and rights handling these departments, because that is where the change will come from. Not from us women covering ourselves up from head to toe.
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