And in Pakistan, seven Pakistani teachers and health workers, six of them women, were shot to death in the Swabi district of the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

India needs rape jokes in the form of cocktails, and Pakistan needs fewer teachers and health workers and women. That’s the way to make a better world.

The attack on Tuesday, near the village of Sher Afzal Banda, was conducted by two men on a motorcycle who followed a van taking the workers home and then opened fire on it with assault rifles, the police said. The victims worked for the private Pakistani aid group Support With Working Solution, which works in the health and education sectors.

…

The aid group was founded in 1991 and, in conjunction with other aid groups, has focused on Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and on South Waziristan in the tribal region, both deeply affected by poverty and militancy.

Five of the dead were young women who worked as teachers at a primary-level school the charity ran in the area, Mr. Akhtar said. The other two were health workers.

Teachers and health workers. People who work in a region deeply affected by poverty – killed by people who want more poverty and disease and ignorance and murder.

Perhaps humans were a mistake.

Good thinking, Bonobo bar in Bombay: selling a cocktail called “the rapist” is a brilliant idea. It’s so convivial and amusing, so jolly and sociable. Rape is such a funny joke, and it’s so hilarious to encourage people to find rape and rapists a source of humor.

Rape culture? What rape culture? Don’t be silly.

 

Taslima has been writing about the Delhi rape since it happened.

She wrote about the patriarchal mindset.

About India, the land of eroticism, sexism and rapism.

She wrote about saying a woman who was brutally gangraped, tortured, mutilated and killed has “died peacefully.”

And she wrote about the fact that this kind of thing doesn’t just burst out of nowhere.

For the very first time, folks were angry. Or did it wake them up? Does wakefulness appear so easily? It is true that for the first time, thousands of men and women of all ages took to the streets demanding from their government the safety and security for the womenfolk. It has also been demanded that the perpetrators should be hanged by the neck till death. Capital punishment by hanging is not a major issue to this government – it is a rather easy, hassle-free solution. But it is a lot more difficult to take measures so that men cease to see women as sex objects, so that from a tender age, human beings learn to recognize and treat other human beings as human beings.

This is what I was saying yesterday, only to receive a barrage of stupid vicious comments shouting that I was making it all about me despite the fact that I said the precise opposite in the post.

Taslima is making the same basic point. What happened to the Delhi woman was a hate crime. Where do hate crimes come from? A culture that fosters hatred.

Married women bear various marks on their bodies to advertise their marital status. Just as lifeless photo-frames are sometimes marked with a red mark as ‘sold’, the application of the vermilion mark on the forehead and the parting of hair suffices as a veritable purchase notice for married women; for them, from the hair on the scalp to toenails are considered property of their husbands. Married men, however, are never properties of their wives. If protests against the rape of women carry on while leaving such patriarchal traditions intact, would rapes ever stop? On one hand, ninety-nine percent of Bollywood movies portray women as sex-objects, television carries the same message, newspapers splash images of barely-clad women; everywhere the women are merely bodies – smooth, soft skin; only breasts, only genitalia; their brains are not brains – women philosophers are not philosophers, scientists are not scientists, intellectuals are not intellectuals, professionals are not professionals. Once they are within reach, are men going to discuss science and philosophy, or are they going to be more inclined towards rape? I don’t think men don’t know that whatever a woman might wear, be it a short skirt or nothing, no one has the right to rape her. I think men know it well. At the same time, they also know that they are the decision makers! Men have more muscles, more brains, more courage; they can take greater risks, and they are beyond shame and fear; men are brave, fearless, powerful, stronger both physically and mentally – there is nothing they cannot do. This is what they have learnt, this is what they have been taught every moment of every day since their birth. The act of rape, to these men, is an evidence of their virility. The truth is, however patriarchy has raped women’s bodies, it has raped women’s minds even more; it has raped their vitality, their lives and liveliness, their limitless possibilities, dreams and freedoms. A physical injury often heals, an emotional injury doesn’t.

We’re allowed to say this.