Ida B. Wells Barnett (1862-1931)

The other day, I read about Ida B Wells.

"For speaking plainly about rape, sex and murder, Wells lost her home and her livelihood. For the rest of her life, she had to defend her reputation against both white and black people who called her a "negro adventuress" and "Notorious Courtesan." A black newspaper editor suggested that the public should "muzzle" that "animal from Memphis," and the New York Times dubbed her "a slanderous and dirty-minded mulatress." " [1]

(For those you who are wondering, a mulatress is the daughter of one white parent and one black parent.)

"Ida B Wells was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy. She was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862 and died in Chicago, Illinois 1931 at the age of sixty-nine," says Lee D. Baker. [2]

Like Gandhi, one of the incidents in her life which propelled her towards activism involvoed discrimination while travelling. She "became a public figure in Memphis when, in 1884, she led a campaign against racial segregation on the local railway. A conductor of the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company told her to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered her into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1875—which banned discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color in theaters, hotels, transport, and other public accommodations—had just been declared unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), and several railroad companies were able to continue racial segregation of their passengers." [3] When Wells refused to comply, the conductor dragged her out of the car with the assistance of two other men. She sued the railroad but although won in the local circuit court, the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887.

She criticised lynching and exposed the myth that black people were lynched only when they ravished white women or did something else along those lines for what it was: a lie.

She also travelled throughout America and went to Britain twice to speak against lynching. In addition to this, she worked was a suffragette and, along with Jane Addams, stopped the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago.

Today, she is remembered as a crusader for civil rights and democracy.

Links:
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041003101.html
[2] http://www.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibwells/ibwbkgrd.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells

A Woman, A Widow, and A Witch

If

• you're a woman
• and a widow
• and belong to a lower caste

you could be

• stripped
• garlanded with shoes
• paraded through the village streets naked
• and accused of being a witch

should you attempt to enter a temple.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Widow_paraded_naked_for_entering_temple/rssarticleshow/2927206.cms

There's much to be said about the abuse of people from low castes. There's just much to be said about discrimination against women in general and widows in particular. But I'm not going to say it here. I'm going to focus on the fact that, in this case, this one woman was, of all things, accused of being a witch.

It happens. Say something you're not supposed to say. Stand up for yourself. In an urban setting, you'll probably be called either a slut or a ball-breaking bitch but chances are, you won't be called a witch.

The rationale behind the reactions in urban and rural settings is very similar though -- to denigrate what you cannot control hoping, in the back of your mind, that the self-confidence and assertiveness in the woman will disintegrate. And at the very least, if that doesn't happen, that you'll scare other women enough not to have them act similarly.

Witch-hunting is still prevalent in various parts of the world including some Indian states such as Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Between 1991 and 2000, over 522 cases of witch-hunting were registered in Bihar alone.

What's frightening though is that nowadays, being branded a witch is often just a device for people to do such things as settle property disputes and ensure that women do not stand up for their political and other rights. That seems to have been what's happened in this case: a woman who's three times as vulnerable because of not only being a woman but also a widow and a member of a lower caste was targetted when she entered a Kali temple in Dhanbad.

The persecution of so-called witches is sometimes due to Shamans who encourage such acts and due genuine ignorance and superstition while at other times, as I suspect is the case here, it's due to the need for a covert and 'socially acceptable' means of keeping women from asserting their rights.

It ranks among the most ignored crimes against women in Indian society today but many social activists say that legislation alone is unlikely to do much to help solve the problem unless there is a change in the attitudes of the people. And until attitudes do change, India will continue to have the dubious distinction of being, as someone once put it, 'a Nuclear Power engulfed in a Black Magic frenzy'.

References:
In the name of the witch : frontlineonnet.com/fl1723/17230870.htm
I've also quoted from an article I wrote ages ago here.

The Word 'Rape'

(Source: You Weren't Mugged, You Just Gave Away Your Belongings)

In 2007, a Nebraska judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, banned the use of the word 'rape' in Tory Bowen's rape trial supposedly because it was too inflammatory and prejudicial. He required that the words 'sex' or 'intercourse' be used instead to describe what happened between her and Pamir Safi.

Discussing ruling, Dahlia Lithwick said: [1]

"The real question for Judge Cheuvront, then, is whether embedded in the word sex is another "legal conclusion"—that the intercourse was consensual. And it's hard to conclude otherwise. Go ahead, use the word sex in a sentence. Asking a complaining witness to scrub the word rape or assault from her testimony is one thing. Asking that she imply that she agreed to what her alleged assailant was doing to her is something else entirely. To put it another way: If the complaining witness in a rape trial has to describe herself as having had "intercourse" with the defendant, should the complaining witness in a mugging be forced to testify that he was merely giving his attacker a loan?
The fact that judges are not rushing to ban similarly conclusory legal language from trial testimony—presumably one can still say murder or embezzlement on the stand—reflects not just the fraught nature of language but also the fraught nature of rape prosecutions. We as a society still somehow think rape is different—either because we assume the victims are especially fragile or because we assume they are particularly deceitful."

Indian courts have not used the word rape in a number of their judgments although I think that that has more to do with being conservative than to do with worrying about the word being prejudicial which is anyway a non-issue since jury trials do not exist in India.

Their mindset is revealed in statements like this one made by the Rajasthan High Court in the case of Babu v State of Rajasthan [1984 CrLJ 74 : 'virginity is the most precious possession of an Indian girl and she would never willingly part with this proud and precious possession' ...if not anything else, that statement in itself could just as easily have been written by a Victorian judge in the 19^th century.

Link:
[1] http://www.slate.com/id/2168758/pagenum/all/#page_start

Non Violent Rape = Being Forcefed Chocolate Cake

Nick Erikson who was to stand for election to the London Assembly representing the British National Party wrote in his notorious rightwing blog:

"I’ve never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime.

Rape is simply sex (I am talking about 'husband-rape' here, for those who deliberately seek to misunderstand me). Women enjoy sex, so this type of 'rape' cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal. To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched. ... Again, for those who are seeking to cause trouble by deliberately misunderstanding me: yes, violent rape by a stranger in the street is a terrible crime, but I am not talking about that -- I am talking about 'husband-rape'.

The demonisation of rape is all part of the feminazi desire to obtain power and mastery over men. Men who go along with the rape myth are either morons or traitors."

This is what the same politician had to say about domestic violence:

"Take domestic violence for instance. The truth is that Home Office figures have shown that there is an equal amount of violence perpetrated by men and by women, but the feminist media keep repeating the myth that virtually all domestic violence is men attacking women. The Sun has recently launched a campaign against domestic violence - just another excuse by its female editrix, Rebekah Kemp (nee Wade), to vilify men.

But now the full ugliness of Rebekah's misandry has - it seems - been revealed. She has been arrested on suspicion of assaulting her husband (the actor Ross Kemp)! Eventually released without charge - remember that the police are also committed to the feminist agenda - Rebekah has been keeping very quiet about this incident. It was Noel Coward who said that "some women are like gongs - they need to be struck regularly". It would seem that the editor of the Sun fits this description perfectly! Come on Ross, let's see if you're as tough as your on-screen persona - give your wife a good slap!

As an aside, unprovoked male violence against females is, in fact, extremely rare. The vast majority of domestic disputes are initiated by the woman. What often then happens is that the man defends himself and the woman, being generally smaller and weaker, comes off worst. She then calls the police and the man is arrested and convicted, even though he is the innocent party who was merely acting in self-defence!"

I don't even know how to respond to this.

Sources:
[1] thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23470426-details/Women+more+troubled+by+bag+theft+than+rape,+BNP+candidate+claims/article.do
[2] salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/04/02/brits/
[3] reddit.com/info/6ef6d/comments/

Castrating Sex Offenders

Every time there’s a conversation about what an appropriate punishment for rape is, someone is bound to talk about how castration is the answer.

A Louisiana Senate Committee seemed to agree when it considered castration to supplement (and not to supplant) punishment in cases of ‘aggravated rape, sexual battery, selling pornography that shows minors under 17 years old, incest, simple kidnapping of children under the age of 14, and child abuse’. [1]

The castration envisaged is through the use of a drug called MPA (medroxyprogestrone acetate) although an offender may choose physical castration.

The bill is by Senator Nick Gautreaux, an Abbeville Democrat, and will now go to the full Senate.

Links:
[1] 2theadvocate.com/news/17412114.html
[2] nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/senate_panel_approves_bill_req.html
[3] foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348171,00.html

IMBRA

Here’s an article about immigrant women which is also a case of plagiarism that has been called out by Sylvia in a way I’ve never seen before. Apparently, the author of the article appropriated almost all her ideas from someone else.

“If you ever want to despair of the human condition, Google the term “IMBRA” — the vast majority of the results returned are authored by men outraged at these entirely reasonable measures that keep men from beating their immigrant wives and using green cards as leverage to perpetuate the violence. Strangely, few of these websites argue that men should be given the direct right to beat women, but it’s hard to imagine what other worldview they could be operating under, when they think that it should be perfectly legal for a man to threaten his wife with deportation if she leaves him after a round of beating. If you are under the incorrect impression that sexism is dead and feminism isn’t needed anymore, I recommend listening to the howls of men who think the government owes them the right to treat immigrant women like a population available for their punching bag and sexual assault needs. That goes double for you if you’ve ever sneered at the term “intersections of oppression,” because I can’t think of a better example myself.“

Sylvia says that all original ideas in this excerpt from an article called ‘Sexual Abuse Fueled by Abusive Immigration Language‘ remain unlinked. She’s given the same treatment to the whole article in her blog.

I’d never heard of IMBRA so I googled the term. It turns out that it’s the ‘International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act’ — a federal Act which became law along with VAWA in 2006 and is designed to protect non-American women from American men by requiring men’s backgrounds to be disclosed to women whom they approach through paid international marriage brokers.

Source: Problem Chylde: Nerdy but Mighty (and Still Learning)

What (Some) Judges Say About Rape

“A raped woman is framed socially and within the law as something broken. Neither Madonna nor whore but somewhere in between. The carrier of bad luck. There is a general but grudging acceptance that it isn’t really her fault, but if she had done something else, gone in another direction, not had that drink or worn that dress or smiled that way, it might never have happened…”From ‘The Story of Jane Doe: A Book about Rape’ (Random House, 2003 at 118)

1982: Judge Bertram Richards said that a teenager who had been raped was “guilty of a great deal of contributory negligence” by hitchhiking home late at night. www.newint.org/issue187/death.htm

1983: Judge Brian Gibbens, 76, said he had “considerable sympathy” for a 35-year-old builder who had sex with a seven-year-old girl, and added: “It strikes me as one of the kinds of accidents which could almost happen to anyone.” justice.org.nz/pubs/reports/1999/family_conference/author_24.html

1986: Mr Justice Leonard, the High Court Judge in the Ealing Vicarage rape trial, said, “the trauma suffered by the victim was not so very great.” He gave the burglar who organised the raid a much harsher sentence than the two rapists and was later hauled up for placing more value on property than on person. telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/08/nsaward08.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/08/ixhome.html

1988: Judge Sir Harold Cassel QC said that an ex-policeman was driven to indecently assaulting his twelve-year-old mentally-retarded stepdaughter because his wife’s diminished desire for sex during her pregnancy had caused “considerable problems for a healthy young husband”. He accused the woman of ‘encouraging’ the assaults although the she said, “As far as the sexual side, my husband did not go without the whole time through my pregnancy, so I do not know where the judge got his information from.” bunker8.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Sue/body.htm

1991: Sir Arthur Myerson reduced rapist Brian David Huntley’s sentence because he “showed concern and consideration by wearing a contraceptive.” news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1263875.stm; http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~spaf/Yucks/V1/msg00061.html

1993: Judge Ian Starforth Hill described an eight-year-old victim of a sexual attack as “not entirely an angel”. business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2876160.ece

1993: Judge John Prosser let a 15-year-old rapist go free ordering him to pay his teenage victim £500 “for a good holiday”. business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2876160.ece

1993: Judge Smedley in a case heard at the Old Bailey explained why evidence of the victim’s distress should be disregarded: “A word of warning. If the account the complainant is giving was completely fabricated you may think she is clever, then clever enough to act out distress”. bunker8.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Sue/body.htm

2003: Judge Richard Benson, a circuit judge, gave a 58-year-old father a three-year community rehabilitation order for repeatedly molesting his daughter while her mother was shopping when she was seven and eight since he thought the case was at “the more bland edge of the spectrum”. guardian.co.uk/world/2003/dec/16/law.ukcrime

2006: Judge Addison passed a suspended sentence of nine months on a swimming instructor, Ross Sweet, who sexually assaulted two eight-year-old girls on two occasions and praised him for being a good and caring teacher. thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article65397.ece; news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6288819.stm; telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/23/njudges123.xml

2007: Judge Julian Hall said to Eric Cole, 71, who had sexually assaulted a six-year-old: “In criminal terms, what you did was quite mild.” He ordered Cole to pay his victim compensation of £250, adding: “If it buys her a nice new bicycle, that’s the sort of thing that might cheer her up.” dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=433514&in_page_id=1766

2008: Judge Julian Hall of the Oxford Crown Court said a ten-year-old girl had dressed provocatively while letting her rapist, Keith Fenn, 24, and his accomplice Darren Wright, 34, off with astonishingly lenient sentences. news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21969117-663,00.html

Incidentally, rape is apparently not illegal under Nigerian law. worldivided.com/2007/12/07/when-submission-becomes-a-routine/
In 1913, Rebecca West said: “I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”Edit this entry.

Damini

I’ve got a film called ‘Damini’ playing on the TV next to me. I read a review of the film and have absolutely no desire to watch it although I suspect I’m going to watch it anyway. The basic story seems to be:

• poor village girl named Damini marries rich urban man
• taunted by her mother-in-law, she makes friends with the maid
• the maid is raped by her brother-in-law and three others in her marital home
• Damini initially unwittingly helps to cover-up the incident
• she later fights for justice for the maid
• while doing this, her in-laws buy everyone in the system who can be bought, she herself is declared mentally unstable and the maid is killed
• she somehow escapes from a mental institution in which she has been dumped because of being supposedly mentally unstable and goes on to continue fighting for justice with the help of a lawyer who’s given up on justice
• she ultimately succeeds primarily because her husband has a change of heart and supports her

Apart from the fact that it’s a little too easy for the story to have been true for me to have any desire watch it, I can’t help but wonder if — as inappropriate as this is to say — it’d have been smarter not to fight for justice. Damini would not have had to go through all that she did go through and, even more importantly, I can’t help but suspect that if there was no such fight, the maid would not have been killed (since she seems to have been killed primarily to ensure that the rapist’s family’s ‘honour’ was not denigrated).
The film ends very neatly with the criminals getting their just deserts but that hasn’t stopped me from wondering if there are times (in real life) when it’s a good idea to cut one’s losses and leave vengeance to God?

Sisters in a Circus

I know that they said that circuses with animals violated animal rights but … am too tired to say anything coherent. Just came across a story about two Bulgarian sisters in a circus which left me stunned:
One was forced to swim in a tank with flesh eating pirhanas and the other was forced into a container where snakes were tossed at her.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080326/od_nm/circus_dc

A Walk

“Don’t hitchhike.

Don’t sit alone by the sea for more than ten minutes.

Stop thinking about watching the sun rise over a field, all by yourself.

Stop thinking about long, leafy walks that lead nowhere.

Stop wondering how the streets looks at midnight, after a drizzle.

Stop…”
I just came across these lines in an old post by Annie Zaidi [1] about street harassment euphemistically known as eve teasing for some reason I’ve never really understood.
There’s a path I love to go for walks along: it’s not out of the way but it is entirely secluded and can give you the feeling of being not in a city even if only for brief moments. Annie’s comment about not thinking of long, leafy walks that lead nowhere reminded me of it.
I love the path but I don’t feel safe walking along it by myself which means that if I am to walk along it, I need to coerce someone into coming along with me (which tends to destroy the feeling of being entirely alone).
The last time I went for a walk there, feeling the way I do, I asked to be accompanied. At the beginning of the path there were about half a dozen watchmen and all of them stared when we approached. The chap I was with seemed a bit unnerved and asked if the area was restricted.
It wasn’t.
It turns out that you can be physically safe by ensuring that you’re not alone. Or you can safeguard your reputation by not being seen heading towards secluded areas with a man. But you can’t do both (even though, in this particular case, even if one was so inclined, I don’t know what in God’s name one would do in an area such as that considering how messy, thorny, and, quite probably, snake-infested it is).
And, no, the solution isn’t to avoid secluded areas altogether because it isn’t just secluded areas which require one to be careful. How many times have you heard of women being ‘eve teased’ on a public road, on a train, in the market, on a bus…
Being safe is not solely about dressing conservatively or about avoiding the stereotypical dangerous places. In fact, as bizarre as this sounds, I’ve had more men stop on streets to ask if I want a lift, to inform me that they want to make ‘fraanship’, or to grope me when I’ve been dressed conservatively (in a sari or a salwaar kameez, my hair pulled back into a neat chignon, and a large bindi on my forehead) than when I’ve dressed in jeans and a shirt.
I’m quite certain that there is no such thing as a place which is inherently safe.

Link:
[1] http://www.anniezaidi.com/2006/03/streets-stories-strategies.html

Libel in Fiction

The most famous libel in fiction case is that of Princess Irina Youssoupoff v. MGM [1934] 50 TLR 581 (CA) in which the Princess successfully claimed that she had been defamed in the 1932 movie ‘Rasputin and the Empress’.
The film showed a Princess in it called Natasha having been seduced. The Princess in the film was, however, clearly ‘identifiable’ as Princess Irina Youssoupoff who had in fact been raped and not seduced. One of the defences MGM used was that the Princess had indeed been shown to have been raped and therefore could not be blamed which in turn meant that she had not been defamed. (While this does demonstrate the attitudes towards women which prevailed at the time, that’s something I’ll leave for another day.) Slesser LJ held that the test should not be whether the plaintiff had been exposed to ridicule, hatred and contempt but if — expanding the Parmiter v Coupland definition – the defamation had caused the plaintiff to be shunned and avoided. He thought that the film was defamatory whether it suggested rape or seduction and said:

“I, for myself, cannot see that from the plaintiff’s point of view it matters in the least whether this libel suggests that she has been seduced or ravished. The question whether she is or is not the more or the less moral seems to me immaterial in considering this question whether she has been defamed, and for this reason, that, as has been frequently pointed out in libel, not only is the matter defamatory if it brings the plaintiff into hatred, ridicule, or contempt by reason of some moral discredit on her part, but also if it tends to make the plaintiff be shunned and avoided and that without any moral discredit on her part. It is for that reason that persons who have been alleged to have been insane, or to be suffering from certain disease, and other cases where no direct moral responsibility could be placed upon them, have been held to be entitled to bring an action to protect their reputation and their honour. One may, I think, take judicial notice of the fact that a lady of whom it has been said that she has been ravished, albeit against her will, has suffered in social reputation and in opportunities of receiving respectable consideration from the world. …. When this woman is defamed in her sexual purity I do not think that the precise manner in which she has been despoiled of her innocence and virginity is a matter which a jury can properly be asked to consider.”

The WSJ Law Blog [1] speaking of another case on the issue which has just been filed says:“To make out a libel-in-fiction claim — a somewhat counterintuitive theory in which a plaintiff claims that something that is fictional is not factually accurate — Batra [the plaintiff] must demonstrate that the identities of the real and fictional characters are “so complete that the defamatory material” becomes a “plausible aspect” of the plaintiff’s real life.”
Links:
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/03/20/libel-in-fiction-claim-rarely-successful-survives-summary-judgment/?mod=WSJBlog
[2] http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/364/

Guest Post: Real Nightmares

This post was written by Aban Mukherji in 2006. It speaks of a domestic violence incident which involved an acid attack and describes the author’s reaction to it.
How can one deal with experiences that cross the borders of language?
Yesterday my friend Vijaya, an experienced medical social worker at the J—- Hospital, baldly described the trauma of a patient. The ’sweet-looking young girl’ was brought from Pune to the J—- Hospital in Mumbai in a Sumo, crouched on her hands and knees on the floor of the vehicle for four hours. “She couldn’t sit,” said Vijaya, matter of factly, “because her buttocks were on fire.” I felt a band of steel grip my forehead, even before Vijaya started narrating the sequence of events, which brought this girl-wife across the threshold of the hospital. “A few weeks ago, her husband, who periodically tortured her, threw acid on her private parts, then inserted a bottle of Vicks VapoRub into her vagina before having sex with her. You should have seen her condition two weeks ago. It was horrible!” and Vijaya’s face puckered in a ghastly grimace. “Her pelvic region and buttocks are covered with huge sores and boils. But today she seems a little better. She will pull through”.
“Her pain was so great that she barely remembered crawling out of the house on her hands and knees. Her neighbours refused to come to her aid. How she reached her sister’s home is anybody’s guess. The police refused to register an FIR and S—- Hospital closed their doors on her.
In desperation she was brought all the way from Pune to J—- Hospital – her private parts, a mass of burnt flesh.” “But her face is so pretty and untouched,” she concluded. “And nothing has been done to arrest the husband. That psychopath is still at large! Dr. D—-, the head of the Gynaecological Dept is reluctant to allow reporters to interview the girl though the —- correspondent has managed to see her in Ward 32 of the hospital!”
After Vijaya left, my mother and I watched part of Schindler’s List. How could one put into words what the victims of brutality on such a vast scale had suffered? Even personal suffering, on a very modest scale, seems to freeze one into silence. Perhaps Vijaya’s tale, and Schindler’s List together proved too strong a dose for me and the horror brought on the old, familiar, nightmare which used to haunt me a few years ago, when I had come face to face with a woman whose face was a ghastly mesh of scars, eyeballs bulging out of their sockets, a mouth without lips with protruding teeth, cheeks, neck and shoulders a mass of raw, burnt flesh—the victim of an acid attack. She was standing on the overbridge spanning Queen’s Road. As I hurried past her, our eyes interlocked. I could not fathom their expression as they bored into mine. Was it pain, despair, detachment or utter numbness? I stumbled down the steps, feeling giddy and nauseous.
That night I dreamt that acid had been thrown on my face. I could not recognize myself. I knew I was me, but who was I? ” I know who I am.” I went on proclaiming to myself, hysterically. But I could not identify myself with that ghastly image and if I could not accept that image as myself, then, I was not ‘I’. In my dream, I distinctly remember covering myself with a sheet from head to foot. If I could not see myself and no one could see me, then, perhaps, I could be me. I awoke feeling hot and feverish, grateful to see my face unscarred.
Last night, I again dreamt of an acid attack. This time I was given a choice—your face or your vagina. I shielded my face with both arms, screaming, begging, pleading to spare my face. If my face went “I” would be snuffed out. I woke up with the shrill ring of the alarm before I could clearly articulate my choice. I lay quietly in the dark, knowing I would protect my face at all cost because I would not be able to bear the rejection reflected in the eyes of others. What could be covered and hidden could be denied but the denial of oneself by others would be unbearable.
Published with the author’s permission.

Personal Safety for Survivors of Rape

Excerpts from a post by Marcella Chester at abyss2hope:

“[S]ome rape survivors unfortunately become repeat rape victims with different perpetrators. …. This is more than random bad luck. …. The trauma of rape can leave victims disoriented and defenseless.

…. My safety is a higher priority than some man’s hurt feelings. Any man who demands that I put his feelings above my safety is only reinforcing my reasons to distrust him. ….

Reliable allies don’t undermine a survivor’s hyper vigilance or ask to be exempted from those viewed with less trust than before a rape. ….

Because of the trauma rape victims have experienced and the muddiness that can come from that trauma many rape victims may question their perceptions. Their rapists have a clear motivation for trying to distort reality and they have the benefit of not being traumatized. ….

[A]fter my first rape … [s]everal men told me flat out that they wouldn’t touch me even if was consenting as long as I was jail bait. Some men didn’t have this level of ethical behavior and took my passivity which came with ineffective coping mechanisms as permission to use my body. …. Also I had learned that rape didn’t hurt as much if I didn’t try to fight it.

During my teenage years there was only one guy who required enthusiastic consent and verification with a clear opportunity for me to safely change my mind. Now I won’t settle for anyone less respectful or less ethical. ….

It is the vulnerability due to trauma which brings out so many predators. …. Because the rape survivor may still be lost in the trauma which follows rape, alcohol and overt violence may not be needed.

Quietly raping a sober survivor who barely knows which way is up is real violence."

Read the whole post: abyss2hope.blogspot.com/2008/03/advice-for-rape-survivors-personal.html (It’s worth it: these excerpts constitute only about 1/8th of the original.)

Surviving rape is difficult. Surviving it a second time around can be devastating not just because of the rape in itself but because it can make the victim wonder, on one hand, if there is something inherently wrong with her to cause her to have been raped, if she provoked the attack in some way, if she was to blame.
And on the other hand, the fact that the second rape may not have been as violent as the first because of her being relatively passive possibly due to being too disoriented or too frightened to fight back could, in a culture which treats only violent rape as rape, quite easily cause her to begin to question whether she’s making a mountain out of a molehill, whether she has been raped at all.

Colin Read

This picture was uploaded on to Flickr August 27, 2007 by IreneKaoru and published under a CC Licence.
Related reading : http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/24/ukcrime.gender

About Judging Women …and Rambling On

This post began as a response to Nita’s comments…
Thank you for your comments.
I’ve never understood why women are sometimes so nasty towards each other either. In fact, in my own life, many of the cruelest things I’ve heard said about women are by other women in situations where the men I interact with quite simply wouldn’t say anything simply to avoid being rude / inappropriate –- many of my male acquaintances, for example, do not use language which is ‘coarse’ in front of me and certainly wouldn’t dream of using words like bitch / slut etc. within my hearing (although there is no doubt in my mind that they do use them when I’m out of earshot).
I too doubt that men are as judgmental about other men although I think that that may have to do with men being allowed more leeway in general. So even if most men allow other men the ordinary liberties which all men are allowed without making any special exceptions, what it amounts to is men being able to ‘get away with’ more, so to speak.
It seems to me that most men very clearly divide women into categories; two categories to be specific: one of sluts, whores, etc. and the other of sisters, mothers, etc.; one category which they fail to treat with even the most basic courtesy and the other which they respect (or claim to respect).
One of the explanations I’ve come across to explain why women are so harsh on each other is because they know that it is extremely easy to go from being treated with respect to not being treated with respect — all it could take is something like having one partner too many — and it is this knowledge that not only makes them realize that their own position is precarious but also encourages them to do whatever it takes to maintain it and denigrate those who fail to do so. After all, minus financial independence, in practical terms, the difference could quite easily determine whether or a woman has a roof over her head.
As far as feminism goes, I dislike having the term ‘feminist’ with all the negative connotations associated with it being applied to me because I don’t see myself believing in anything other than that which the legal and social systems in most parts of the world profess to believe: that people — whether they be men or women — should be treated equally, non-abusively and with respect.
I don’t know if feminism has got a bad name simply because some feminists tend to be, well, rabid, or if speaking badly of both feminism and feminists is simply how many men have chosen to respond to women who assert themselves.
Personally, I’ve got a lot of really nasty mail from people who simply don’t like what I think because they believe that women should necessarily stay at home, cook, clean and have children. Also, one thing which once got me a little worried is seeing some of these people coordinate with each other online, discuss what they’ve each been saying to people they disapprove of, create formats in which to send mail to such people and encourage each other to mail them. Seeing that happen was the first time I realised what it must be like to be a child and have pedophiles coordinate with each other in reference to one — I’m not equating myself with a child in that position in any way or saying that any of men who’ve mailed me are criminal, I’m only saying that they can be very well-organised and that their organisation can be overwhelming (not to mention intimidating).

Related reading:

[1] Judging a Magazine by its Cover: How Women are Defined : http://mediacrit.wetpaint.com/page/Judging+a+Magazine+by+its+Cover:+How+Women+are+Defined?t=anon[2] What Women Lawyers Really Think of Each Other : http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/what_women_lawyers_really_think_of_each_other/

Why Does She Stay?

The Navhind Times [1] reported that a man named Motiar was sentenced to just eight months in jail for attempting to murder his wife, Tumpa Bibi, ostensibly because she pleaded that he be let off and the court believed that there existed the possibility of their living a happy life together. He had set her on fire and left her with 36% burns just 28 days into their marriage according to the paper.
Personally, I think that every time a woman decides to stay with an abusive man, it’s an example of hope triumphing over experience (though not in the sense Dr. Johnson meant it). In one of the books in the Princess series, Jean Sasson and her anonymous collaborator had said something to the effect of: Once a dog’s let you see its tail crooked, don’t expect it to straighten it out because it won’t. I couldn’t agree more.
In an article by Evan Stark called ‘The Entrapment Enigma‘ [2] in the OUP USA blog, the author said:

“The psychiatric establishment in the 1970s believed women brought abuse on themselves because they were “masculine,” “frigid,” “overemotional” with “weakened ties to reality,” or had “inappropriate sexual expression.” But by the late 1980s, the “myth of masochism” and other transparent accounts that blamed the “wife-beater’s wife” for her abuse had been widely discredited, in no small part because of the work of feminist mental health professionals . Empirical work by psychologists and social workers had demonstrated that battered women had a better sense of reality than their assailants and, compared to nonbattered women, were actually more “social,” more “sympathetic,” less “masculine” though not necessarily more feminine, exhibited greater ego strength, and employed a greater range of strategies to change their situation than nonbattered women in distressed relationships.”

The question which has remained, however, is why battered woman stay in an abusive relationships. In her book ‘Trauma and Recovery’, Judith Lewis Herman wrote, “Prolonged, repeated trauma, by contrast, occurs only in circumstances of captivity. When the victim is free to escape, she will not be abused a second time; repeated trauma occurs only when the victim is a prisoner, unable to flee, and under the control of the perpetrator.”
Being unable to flee, to use the author’s words, I suspect, is a result of four factors:
1. Practical Difficulties
such as being financially dependant on the abuser and having nowhere to live
2. Social Conditioning
such as believing that a woman’s value as an individual is derived from her ability to ‘keep’ a man which is reinforced by living in a societies where women will be looked down on for supposedly failing to do so
3. Personal Beliefs such as those where a woman is unable to believe that she is worthy of being treated with either respect or kindness as a result of having had her self-esteem torn to shreds by being abused
4. Institutional Responses
such as finding it difficult to convince police to file charges against the perpetrator, not having access to shelters, knowing that courts are unlikely to convict the perpetrator.
Knowing that women may have reasons (which seem entirely sensible) for staying in abusive situations though doesn’t stop me from feeling ill every time I hear about a woman who has actually done so.

Links:
[1] http://www.navhindtimes.com/articles.php?Story_ID=031755
[2] http://blog.oup.com/2007/06/violence/

Recognition to Transsexuals

I just came across a piece in today’s Times of India which says that the Government of Tamil Nadu’s Civil Supplies Department has decided to allow transsexuals to identify themselves using the letter ‘T‘ while applying for ration cards. I couldn’t find a link to the article on their website although I did find an article which deals with the response to the government’s action. [1]
While looking for the link, I discovered that in 2004, the Madras High Court had directed the Government of Tamil Nadu to inform it ‘about the action being taken on a circular from the Election Commission about issuance of identity cards to ‘aravanis’ (eunuchs)’. [2]
I don’t know much about about the rights (or lack thereof) of sexual minorities but I was nonetheless very surprised to see this news come out of Tamil Nadu since I’ve always thought of it as a particularly conservative state. However, when I thought about it, I realised that that opinion is based on what little I’ve seen of people from the state, and every single person I know is from just one caste.
(The reason I know their caste is because, amazingly enough, they’ve all told me their caste within days of my first meeting them. They’re all educated and they’re all phenomenally proud of their caste. So much for social integration!)

Links:

[1] timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Response_to_TN_govt_scheme_overwhelming/articleshow/2870041.cms[2] timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/540464.cms

Crime Against Women

Incidentally, I’ve revived the NotJustStatistics blog which I ran till 2006. I’m not entirely certain why since it seems like an exercise in fultility but here it is anyway:

Four Dimensional Vertigo

at http://4dvertigo.wordpress.com/

For those of you who’ve never seen the blog, it primarily contains links to articles which deal with crime against women in India although it focusses on cases which involve Sections 498 A and 304 B of the Indian Penal Code. I try to include the name and the age of the woman involved in each case.I don’t update it very frequently but if you come across a story you’d like to see included, please mail it to me. And if, for some reason, the blog annoys you, please do not mail me. Just to be clear, I don’t want to hear from anyone who belongs to a group that calls itself ‘Saving Indian Family / Society / Husbands / Marriages / Culture’ , ‘Injured Husbands’ , ‘NRI Victims’ or anything else along those lines.While I do realise that the Section i.e. 498 A contains no provision to ensure that women don’t lie, I don’t see that in itself as a reason to do away with the law entirely.

Memory

I’d written (and published) this ages ago:

The Girl in Hyacinth Blue. There were those who called her ‘Morning Shine’. She sits by a window with sunlight gently sweeping over her. Her serenity as the world passes by her seems overwhelming. Can anyone ever do that in real life? Blood seeping on to the floor; thicker than water, it does not spread out, only to merge again to form grotesque but interesting patterns as it spills over. Distorted reflections make their appearance in water like that. Hoping to be able to decipher a meaning which, in your heart, you know doesn’t even exist in the strange aberrations strewn on the dark black granite around you, you stare at them for what seems like an aeon and thank God for them. You do not want to see reality: it is too bleak. Hallucinations and lies are your respite from pain. Anything seems easier than the truth, and almost everything is.The patterns look like modern art if you stretch your imagination far enough except for the fact that you’re certain that they’ve been randomly created by a lunatic. You can almost hear his raucous laughs echoing in the background.The laughter doesn’t stop and you begin to realize that it isn’t your imagination playing tricks at all. You have to go back and face them: after all, they personify what your life has become. ‘The Girl in Hyacinth Blue’ never was anything more than a novel. There still is blood mixed with water on the bathroom floor as you begin to make your way towards the door.

Also, here’s one of my favourite pieces on relationships: http://www.authorzone.com/view_stories.php?storyid=

Hinduism and Homosexuality

I just came across a post [1] by a lady imagining what her life might have been like had she been gay. She also speaks of a friend whom she calls Stella saying:

“Stella, at least, had to have really believed that was who she was meant to be.She still believes in God, the last I heard. She just has a lot of questions. It’s just too bad that there aren’t very many churches where they’d let her in long enough to ask them.”

It made me wonder what Hinduism says about homosexuality –- I’ve never heard anything at all being quoted against it from any Hindu scripture. However, a quick search reveals:

• There is a lone verse in the Manusmriti that reads: “A twice-born man [from an upper caste] who commits an unnatural offence with a male, or has intercourse with a female in a cart drawn by oxen, in water, or in the day-time, shall bathe, dressed in his clothes.” [2]
• The Arthashastra too apparently imposes a minor fine on a man who has ayoni [non-vaginal] sex (4.13.236). [3]
• The medical text, Sushruta Samhita mentions two different types of homsexual men: kumbhika and asekya.
• And the Naradsmriti apparently says that a homosexual man is unfit for marriage to a woman. [4] Well, obviously!
• Although the Kama Sutra states that homosexual sex is to be engaged in and enjoyed for its own sake as one of the arts. [5]

In addition to this, Hindu religious art and mythology have several depictions of and references to homosexuality right from in the temples of Khajuraho to the tale of Bhagiratha Maharaja, an Indian king born of two women.
That being said, most Hindus I know are deeply homophobic; it’s not a subject I can claim to have any knowledge worth speaking of on but I suspect that that’s one of the effects having had the British make homosexuality a criminal offence during the Raj and never having had the law changed (even though the Brits changed a similar law in their own country in 1967 [6]).
The law in question, Section 377 of the IPC says:Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.
After all, Hinduism in itself doesn’t seem to deeply disapprove of homosexuality: the religion may not be particularly enthusiastic about it but it doesn’t unequivocally prohibit it either. And this is not the only instance where British laws have left a legacy in India of misgivings such as these in what are essentially personal matters …think of the restitution of conjugal rights, a concept alien to India which was introduced by the British and which has caused much hardship over the years.
Links:

[1] http://shushnow.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/what-if-i-were-gay/
[2] http://www.slate.com/id/2102443/
[3] http://www.galva108.org/hinduism.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_Hinduism
[5] http://www.religionfacts.com/homosexuality/hinduism.htm
[6] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=187403