Are men more or less the same everywhere?

Steubenville High School football players kidnapped, raped and urinated on a 16-year-old girl. But instead of blaming the rapists, former students blamed the victim. They were laughing as they were talking about her. Men love rape jokes. They verbally rape the girls who are already raped.

We haven’t finished protesting against brutal gang rape in India. Indian society is deeply misogynistic. If the boys were Indian, we could have said, ‘it’s their cultural upbringing and socialization’. But the boys in the video are North American. North America, we all know, is much safer for women than India. But the bitter truth is, misogynists are everywhere, they are in the North, in the South, in the West and in the East. And Men, unfortunately, educated or illiterate, rich or poor, young or old, black or white, are more or less the same everywhere!

A fatwa to rape!


A fatwa was issued.

A Wahhabi religious cleric in Saudi Arabia, Muhammed al-Arifi, who is very influential in Jihadi circles, has recently issued a fatwa (religious edict) that permits all Jihadist militants in Syria to engage in short-lived marriages with Syrian women that each lasts for a few hours in order to satisfy their sexual desires and boost their determination in killing Syrians. He called the marriage as ‘intercourse marriage’. It requires that the Syrian female be at least 14 years old, widowed, or divorced.

[Read more…]

We are raped to death.

Whatever little rights the women of the Indian subcontinent have gained till now, most of it has been because of men. Men have fought with the misogyny-laden society in favor of abolishing the abhorrent practice of Sati, and facilitating the acquisition of suffrage, the ability to walk beyond the household boundaries, the rights to education and jobs by the women. That said, the number of good men are still very limited. Although some men have time and again assisted the women in their quest for progress by parting the wall of hindrances, most men have shoved women backwards. In fact, the number of men trying to force women into retreat has always been rather large.

I have been living in India for a while, because my right to reside anywhere in this subcontinent, other than in India, has been severely violated by a so-called democratic government, which doesn’t believe in democracy. By virtue of living in India for a few years, I have watched closely this country – the oldest democracy in the subcontinent, far ahead of its neighbors in education, and equality. It comes as a great shock and surprise to me when, every morning, the newspapers bring reports of rape; rape of minors, cold-blooded murders following sexual abuse – men are slaughtering women by strangling, shooting, hacking, burning and stoning them to death. What surprises me the most is the resounding lack of protests against such horrors. Thousands take to the streets in protest if the price of onions or petrol vary a little bit, but the rape and abuse of hundreds of women doesn’t motivate a single man or woman to protest. People have become desensitized to rape after hearing about and encountering such heinous incidents on a regular basis; no longer is someone shocked by the news of rape. Even the news media are no longer interested in reporting about rape. It is not considered newsworthy unless a gang-rape occurs.

A young woman in Delhi was gang-raped in a moving bus by some men just this other day. Not just a gang-rape, something even more horrific. Hurting her with their penises didn’t adequately satisfy their blood-lust; inserting an iron rod into her genital organ, they ruptured her uterus and ripped out her intestines. But they didn’t stop there. Their rapacious merriment over, they threw the almost dead woman out of the moving bus. One could not expect her to survive; indeed, the young woman, after valiantly battling death for a few days in hospitals, finally succumbed to her irreparable injuries today.

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. The responsibility for this tough task should devolve upon the government, surely.

Of course, parroting lofty lines such as “men and women have equal rights; don’t treat women as subhuman beings; don’t hurt them, don’t rape them;” from an early childhood is no guarantee that the message would reach the brains. Even if it does, when children, adolescents and young adults continuously witness at home or elsewhere that men are vocal, men take charge, while women play the second fiddle and lurk in the background, that experience fills their brains to the exclusion of everything else. Experience at brothels in the youth also teaches them that anything can be done with women’s bodies, no matter if the woman is a child; that it is not largely considered an offence in the contemporary society. The same goes for one’s wife. Sexual abuse of the wife, also known as marital rape, may now well be a criminal act by law, but it’s not a culpable infraction in the eyes of the patriarchal society. This is similar to the way in which the dowry system – illegal and prohibited by law – still flourishes in the society, proving every day that women are rather inferior, powerless, voiceless, lower-order beings – that the entire lives of women are to be dedicated to bribing the menfolk into accepting them as slaves.

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 red 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.

This has been transpiring for centuries. All living organisms evolve. The human species has sustained for so long because it has adapted to evolving conditions and situations, from good to better, from better to still better. Within the same species, if one group continues to persecute another simply on the basis of different genitalia, that time may not be far when the entire species would become extinct. If men cannot control their proclivity to rape, if enjoyment continue to come from forcing oneself upon another, then the evolution of human beings would progress only towards destruction. Very few species consciously oppress or torment the female of the species. Gang-rape? No other species, barring humans, show such loathsome inclinations.

Humans are intelligent, as evidenced from their various endeavors. They have sent machines to Mars, but cannot create an equitable environment on their own planet for men and women to live together in equality, equal rights, empathy, understanding, peace and harmony – is it because they lack intelligence, wherewithal or a desire to do the right thing? I suspect the latter. Even if I accept that men rape because they are stronger, but society, state or the nation doesn’t run on merely strength. They run on intellect. Have the menfolk raped their own intelligence, conscience, and hearts to a comatose state? Ripping apart their consciousness, they are raping their own future!

Who will change the society, then? The powers-that-be. Those who made up the patriarchal society. Those who are powerless, oppressed, raped, and tortured, what can they do? The presence of the tormentor, oppressor groups at the anti-rape protests on the streets of Delhi are far more important than the presence of the tormented and oppressed. The torments shall cease when the tormentors cease operations and withdraw. If they stop for fear of retribution, the cessation may not last as much as it would if they stop because they understand, because their eyes have opened. That would certainly be a longer-term solution.

That India is the largest democracy in the world is true from the perspective of its population count. However, democracy is not restricted to mere arrangement of elections. Democracy encompasses equal rights and equal freedom of expression for men and women, rich and poor, everyone. Contemporary India has neither, let alone the entire subcontinent. In a true democracy, people live in safety and security. Would the expressed outrage of a subsection of the Middle Class be at all effective in bringing true democracy? Only solution, perhaps, is a mass uprising. Political maneuvers keep such mass uprisings in abeyance in the subcontinent. Watching and living with inequities and injustices day in and day out, human beings get used to these social evils. A majority of folks don’t know or understand what equality or equal rights means. Unfortunately, most of the deprived don’t realize they are deprived; most of the distressed can’t recognize their harassment.

Let them know, let them realize, and then wake up.

(My sincere thanks to Kausik Datta @kausikdatta22 for translating my Bengali write up)

She was brutally gangraped, tortured, mutilated and murdered. Don’t say that she ‘died peacefully’.

Dr. Kelvin Loh, the chief executive of Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, said the Indian gang rape victim who was brought to Singapore, ‘died peacefully’. How could she die ‘peacefully’? She was only 23, her dreams to work as a paramedic or a physiotherapist did not come true. Her whole future was ahead of her, she was supposed to live her life, but she was brutally gang raped, tortured, mutilated and murdered. There is no ‘peace’ in it.

A 23-year-old gang-rape victim died. A 17-year-old gang-rape victim committed suicide other day. Thousands of rape and gang-rape survivors are ashamed of being raped. They live in a male dominated society where men are megalomaniac and misogynists, and it is considered ‘manly’ to terrorize and torture women, half of their population.

The world now knows about a gang-raped woman who died today. The world does not know about millions of women who get oppressed,harassed,abused, tortured,trafficked, burned, raped, gang-raped,murdered everyday. Here women hardly get any opportunity to live peacefully or die peacefully.

India, the land of eroticism, sexism and rapism.

Once upon a time Indians had no inhibitions about expressing sexuality. They built numerous erotic temples full of magnificent art of erotic love.

Then the British brought Victorian conservatism to India. And then Gandhi, the great leader of India said sex should only be for procreation, not for pleasure. Like the followers of different spiritual leaders, Gandhi’s followers were influenced by deeply conservative understanding of human sexuality.

Now, for many Indians, sex is a taboo. There are people who do not eat meat, onion and garlic to control their sexual desires. It is not uncommon that a couple start sleeping in separate rooms soon after their child is born. Women’s pre and post marital affairs and an active role during sexual acts are socially unacceptable. Sex and spirituality, many people believe, can’t coexist. In today’s India, an unbelievable number of people believe sex is a male thing. Countless brothels have been made for giving pleasure to men. Incredible India is now facing an alarming increase in rapes and sexual abuse of women and children.

God could not save children in his ‘own country’.

Kerala is the most literate state in India. Everything is so perfect in Kerala that it is called ‘God’s Own Country’.The National Geographic’s Traveller magazine named Kerala as one of the ten paradises of the world.

But girls get sexually abused in the paradise, they get raped in god’s own country. Here are some recent rape cases. [Read more…]

Girls around the world. Warning: Violant Images

A Kurdish or Iranian girl was stoned to death for falling in love with someone who doesn’t belong to the same sect.

A girl was whipped in Sudan for wearing trousers.

A 17-year-old girl was flogged in Pakistan.

A 17-year-old girl was molested in India.

Girls around the world get molested, harassed, raped, gang-raped, trafficked, tortured, flogged, murdered everyday. Their only crime is they are girls. Shame on men!

Why I am a Feminist – Skeptifem

‘My feminism really began after reading The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf. The book is far from revolutionary by my standards now, but when I read it my world was changed forever. This was years after I had been involved in skepticism, and years after becoming an atheist, just barely into my twenties. The difficult questions being raised by her work felt awfully familiar to me, she sounded just like my skeptic and atheist friends who were critical of ideas that were supposedly too sacred to question.

The book didn’t just make me think, it made me angry. I had spent years suffering for ideas I found out were totally fabricated, and designed specifically to make me feel horrible about myself so someone else could profit from it. I suffered for ideas that elevated the status of men at the expense of women. I compromised my health many times to lose weight, and there was virtually never a time that I gave up constant vigilance against gaining weight. It is a pitiable, tiring way to live, and I had done it for about 7 years at that point. I didn’t suffer as badly as other women I knew, many abused themselves for weight loss but also put up with humiliating (and sometimes painful) cosmetic procedures to rid themselves of hair, wrinkles, and other normal human features. When I was a teenager my mother got acid poured on her face to sear the wrinkles off of it. A surgeon, someone who pledges to do no harm to patients, did that to her for money. It echoed so perfectly what popular culture told me about appearance and beauty that it wasn’t even remarkable to me, it was normal for women to hate their bodies and faces. It was so normal that the violence inherent in all of it was invisible. Such a hatred for my body meant seeing me, all of me, as a thing instead of a person. Other women had chipped away at their sense of self exactly as I had.

I wasn’t transformed over night, but I did change a lot about myself pretty quickly. Eating like a normal person actually resolves many psychological problems caused by starvation, so I felt much better in general. I grieved for the years I had wasted hurting myself. I grieved for women who were still hurting themselves. I began to see that I had worth as a person. I was worth listening to and nourishing. I got help from a friend in college and enrolled in some classes, something I never thought I would do. Feminism helped me feel like a real person. I thought to myself, “men get to feel this way all the time, they don’t even have to fight for it. Every woman deserves to feel like they matter.” I wanted more people to know what I knew.

The more I thought about and researched the way women suffer for beauty, and the way men gain from that, I began to see some interesting parallels with religion and scams of all sorts. I became eager to discuss feminism with people in the skeptics groups I frequented. I felt as though I had discovered some new interesting intellectual territory, and was excited to see what other people thought. So many friends had used their intellects to impress me in the past with analysis of various issues. Surely, a great discussion would ensue.

I could not have been more wrong. I was met at every turn with dismissal and embarrassingly fallacious reasoning. What had happened to the intellectual honesty, the curiousness, of the people I knew? Why was no one outraged at the poor quality of arguments being used to dismiss my findings outright? I never expected everyone to agree with me, but I expected the level of discourse afforded to creationists and homeopaths. It became apparent that most of the people in my circle were… men. They didn’t want to think about the things I brought up, and they all helped each other avoid confronting problems with sexism. I became disillusioned with these groups, even though I still strongly supported the stated principles of all of the groups. I still believe in those things, and believe feminism is inherent in critical thought about problems affecting women and girls.

It got much more troubling to me once I began to research things like rape and sexual harassment. I realized that I had either been subject to sexual harassment, witnessed it against another woman, at every job I have ever worked at. This was true of virtually every woman I knew. The ones who spoke up usually got in trouble or were ignore. I realized that sexual abuse was a common experience for women as well. I knew from personal experience how little the judicial system cares if you decide to report being raped. I reported having been raped as a teenager. I gave the police contact information for other women who I knew who had been abused by the same guy, and they never even called them to collect statements. They did question me repeatedly and gave me a card to call someone for psychological help, as if I wanted to discuss what had happened even more. That was all that ever happened. People I told outside of the police had mixed reactions, a lot of men simply thought I was a liar or a whore, and it made dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse much more difficult. I saw these attitudes mirrored all over society. Outside of feminism there was not much concern about these issues at all.

I got more involved with feminist groups, spaces that were much safer for women, and got introduced to feminism that dealt with more than the issues affecting economically privileged white women. I became interested in how racism and colonialism functioned. I am white and didn’t want to do to people of color what men had done to me. I wanted to listen instead. I made a point of finding people with experiences very different from my own, and trying to really understand their perspective. It was amazingly difficult but it helped me develop a lot of maturity, and to also see that social justice was a struggle for the majority of people in the world. I saw how we could all support each other. This is something I still try to do, something central to my feminism today.

Eventually I wanted to write, something that was outside the realm of possibility to me just a few years before. I had come a long way from thinking I was not worth listening to. Since reading The Beauty Myth I’ve discovered some troubling things about Naomi Wolf’s beliefs, but I will always be grateful to her for writing that book. I will always be grateful to other brave women who write, like bell hooks and Andrea Dworkin, for helping to expand my understanding of the world we women live in. My life had improved so much because of individuals who had decided that it was important to spread a message of truth. They wrote despite the ridicule and insults, they wrote because it was too important to let other people stop them. I want to be that person for someone else out there.’

(Dear fellow feminists, Skeptifem has shared her story with us, why she is a feminist. You can share your stories with us too! -Taslima Nasreen)