Welcome (Back) to India’s Rape Culture

Serving up some chai to go with that misogyny

Photo by Thiago Matos via Pexels
Pyramid of the caste-based occupational hierarchy with Brahmins at top (priests) and Shudras at the bottom (labourers)
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So how do we define sexual assault?

“Everyone’s out to make it look like there’s something inherently wrong with [rapists]. But they are a part of our own society. They are not aliens who’ve been brought in from another world.”

What is rape culture?

Victim blaming is all too common, but isn’t always obvious.

  • Taali ek haath se nahi bajti hai.” (You can’t clap with one hand)
  • “Girls should be married by 16 so they don’t need to go elsewhere for their sexual needs; then rapes won’t occur.”
  • “Once a girl is 14–15 [years of age], you can’t call it rape [after that].”
  • “When girls wear jeans and pants, boys get attracted to them.”
“Rape is Consensual”: Inside Haryana’s Rape Culture (Source: The Quint)

Everything can be blamed for rape. Except the rapists themselves.

This normalisation of rape into a “culture” means using women’s bodies as battlegrounds to establish male dominance.

The supposedly intimate nature of sex (and sexual assault) means these cases go undocumented, conveniently sanitised from our history books, glossed over - and womens’ lifelong trauma is reduced to statistics people can shrug over and say “well, what can you do?”

This objectification of women isn’t a recent development.

Echoes of the brutal 2012 Delhi gang-rape case.

  • Expanding the definition of rape,
  • Making punishments on rape crimes more strict, and
  • Improving the standard of consent — lack of physical resistance is no longer considered consent.

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A Generation Z kid studying sociology and searching for the Fortress of Solitude.

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A. Sharma

A Generation Z kid studying sociology and searching for the Fortress of Solitude.