One World, One Rape Culture

Protests in Steubenville, OH. Image courtesy of the CBC.

As the brutal gang rape of a 23-year old woman on a bus in New Delhi continues to outrage the women of India, sending shockwaves to the rest of the world, America is having its own gang rape controversy to contend with.

In Steubenville, Ohio, an old steel town hit hard by the financial crisis, a group of teenaged football players are being tried for the rape and kidnapping of a 16 year-old girl after pictures of her naked body surfaced on several social networking sites. Yet even though the images of the young girl’s unconscious body, which one of her assailants described in a video as “Deader than Trayvon Martin,” had spread throughout Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, convicting the teenaged boys has proven difficult in a town that protects its young football stars with blind adulation, with one local crime blogger being sued by one of the accused students and his parents for defamation. This sense of community denial is reminiscent of the Penn State community’s outrage by the charges against Jerry Sandusky, the college football coach who was eventually found guilty in 2011 of 52 counts of sexual assault of young boys over the span of 15 years.

From the Sandusky affair to the Steubenville assaults to the gang rape on a public bus in India, one thing is clear: the world shares a common culture; a common community that fails to protect its most vulnerable and lays the blame and responsibility solely on the victim. This is what second wave feminists in America call “rape culture,” and its boundaries are limitless.

According to Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, the conviction rate for rape prosecutions in India has fallen from 46% in 1971 to 26% today. Social critic Naomi Wolf notes, however, that this rate is higher than the conviction rates in the UK, Sweden and the US, respectively.

Little wonder, when the legal system in America is so disturbingly flawed, seeped in archaic notions of women as property. For instance, just last week, a man in Los Angeles who infiltrated a woman’s bedroom and had sex with her while she was sleeping was found not guilty to rape charges because the woman was unmarried. The court cited an 1872 law that states:

"[a]ny person who fraudulently obtains the consent of another to sexual relations escapes criminal liability (at least as a sex offender under tit. IX of the Pen. Code), unless he (or she)...masquerades as the victim‟s spouse ..."

Therefore, the law will protect a female rape victim…just so long as she is another man’s property. Such is the state of the “justice” system in America.

In a rape culture, as previously stated, victims of sexual assault are held responsible for the actions of perpetrators. Signs of victim blaming are everywhere in India (see: spiritual leader Asaram Bapu, who said of the bus gang rape: "Mistake is never from one side alone").

In Steubenville, assistant coach Nate Hubbard provides a classic victim-blaming stance. He told the New York Times:

"The rape was just an excuse, I think...What else are you going to tell your parents when you come home drunk like that and after a night like that?"

In fact, the 16-year old victim had no knowledge that she had been violated, because she was drunk to the point of being unconscious, until the pictures started to surface. But this is beside the point.
Other examples of victim blaming are more subtle. Across the United States, universities hold rape aggression defense (“RAD”) courses for students, rather than providing outreach and awareness programs for would-be perpetrators. Although a program that assumes rape is a very real danger and prepares young people for it is commendable, pouring college resources into possible victim education without possible perpetrator education could send a societal message to young people.

Education on all fronts should be a major step in eradicating rape culture. Another should be community involvement in protecting its citizens, since law enforcement officers and the justice system more broadly can never guarantee safety for a society’s most vulnerable.

Many in the US may have wondered, as I did when I heard about the New Delhi rape, why the bus driver didn’t act to protect the young woman as she was being beaten with a metal rod, brutally raped, and left for dead.
As Steubenville Police Chief William McCafferty said of the local gang rape that happened on his watch:  

“The thing I found most disturbing about this is that there were other people around when this was going on…Nobody had the morals to say, ‘Hey, stop it, that isn’t right.’”

The protests in India and Steubenville may help bring awareness of rape culture to their respective communities who have been torn apart by these unspeakable acts of violence. But the culture that binds us all should not be overlooked.

Sexual Harassment, Rape, and Indignity in Indian Society

The week before Christmas, many of us were picking our outfit for the upcoming parties. In Delhi, however, lay a 23-year student fighting for her life after a brutal gang rape. She died yesterday. Her crime: taking the bus home after watching a movie. Her rape has set India on fire, and protests are rampant. It seems that the public is no longer willing to sit back and accept the government's complacent policies towards women.

Delhi, the capital of India, has one of the highest rape rates in the country. India has been deemed by some surveys to be one of the most dangerous countries to be a woman. Sexual harassment on buses and the streets is widespread. Lack of protection for women traveling and walking the streets is further impacted by corrupt police and government policies that fail to protect women. In this case alone, when a Magistrate went to the hospital to take a statement from the hospitalized victim about her horrific ordeal, the Magistrate reported repeated inference from the head of police. Indian Government also actively ignores the safety of women. A report in the Guardian newspaper told of Indian men who had been accused of sexual harassment (and in some cases rape) who had been allowed to stand in Indian elections. Bribery is rampant, the Police turn a blind eye, and politicians blame women and Western culture for provoking men. In a city of 20 million, 80% of women complain of sexual harassment.

It is no wonder that both men and women took to the streets to protest India’s complacent attitudes to women, particularly rape. The victim was traveling on a private bus after seeing a movie with a male friend. She was brutally attacked by six men on the bus and subjected to horrific abuse. Her companion was beaten with iron rods. Both were dumped on the side of a street after the ordeal. Her injuries were so severe that she had to have part of her colon removed. She was on a ventilator in critical condition for days and was flown to Singapore for specialist treatment. This woman died--all for traveling on a bus.

The protests following her story are not a reaction to her specific case. Rather, they are an accumulation of anger and frustration at numerous attacks on women which have been ignored by the authorities.  Earlier this year, there was public outrage after 12 men outside a bar assaulted a teenage girl. The attack was filmed by an off-duty TV journalist for 45 minutes. The girl later asked, “Why did no one help me?”  The public protesting are rightly asking why it is not safe for women to walk the streets.  Their anger highlights corrupt police and a government that for too long has swept this epidemic under the carpet.

The people of India have spoken. It is time for the government to act.

Follow Ruby on Twitter: @rubysinghrao

Overcoming Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Hanna Rosin on the Rise of Women, via TED

In light of the many recent political scandals, and a story a dear friend of mine recently relayed, I wonder: how we can overcome sexual harassment in the workplace? Be it unwanted sexual advances by hotel employees, illicit photos sent through email, or passing disparaging or sexual comments to colleagues in the workplace, women are constantly subjected to a barrage of unwanted sexual harassment. How to effectively cease it is a question activists have been trying to answer for years.

There have been many gains for women's equality in workplace over the decades, most notably, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made sexual harassment a punishable offense. (In it, harassment was defined sexual harassment in the workplace as any conduct- verbal, non-verbal, physical, or visual- that is of a sexual nature and is severe or perverse AND/OR any harassment that occurs as a result of gender.) Census data has shown us that women have even surpassed men in education attainment.

Yet despite all of these legal advancements, women are still routinely subject to harassment in the workplace. While blatant acts of sexual harassment are unfortunately quite common, (all one has to do is tune into Politico to see what a select few of our Congressmen have been up to know that…), at the very least, more women are reporting these problems, and the courts are coming down hard in favor of women. However, it's the lecherous stares; the more subtle comments that women are forced to endure. 'Good to see you're so much more than a pretty face'- intended to be a compliment for a job well done. These comments may seem harmless, but in fact they represent an entire layer of harassment women are expected to accept, lest they want to be considered 'petty' and 'weak' by their male colleagues.

As women, we are forced to choose to stand up for ourselves and report such disrespect, and stand the risk of being criticized by colleagues, but if we don't say anything, we are only helping to perpetuate the problem by not saying anything in our own defense.

So how do we fix this? What is the right thing to do? Yes, there are laws meant to protect women for reporting harassment and most companies have specific policies in place for handling sexual harassment claims, but until more women start to report these ‘lesser’ transgressions, we will not begin to change this culture of disrespect.

Intervention in the Streets

A group of Blank Noise activists take over a bus in 2003. Image: flickr

In America, when a man directs unwanted attention towards a woman or initiates sexual advances, it's called sexual harassment. But in Northern India, the term is "eve teasing," and it's getting a strong backlash thanks to a coalition of female artists called Blank Noise. Last month, several women from various cities joined forces to share their experiences and walk the streets together. Calling themselves "Action Heroes," the women became both activists and performance artists.

Blank Noise began in Bangalore, as a student art project, in 2003. Mimicking the "Take Back The Night" movements in the United States, the group unites large groups of women and encourages them to walk the streets at night as a collective, making a statement to the men who could otherwise harass them individually. Participants "Reclaim the Streets" in other ways as well: from spray painting the testimonies of sexual harassment victims in public places, to wearing clothing bearing anti-harassment messages.