Whilst India is still gripped by the ghastly gang rape attack by six men on a bus in Delhi on the 16th of December 2012, leading to the death of the poor victim, we in Britain on the other hand were also faced with some home truths about rape within British society. The daily’s around here had headlines like this as their front page, Rape: figures that shame Britain! Just a few days a go it was reported that teachers in London have suffered more than 4,000 assaults from pupils over the past five years! Shocking or what!? It mentioned that data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that councils recorded 4,372 alleged assaults by students on teachers at primary and secondary schools. The figures include incidents where teachers have been bitten and scratched, as well as those injured when breaking up fights or restraining unruly pupils.
Here is what the METRO Front page reported on Friday 11th January 2013: Nearly 99 out of 100 sexual offences go unpunished, official figures reveal.
An average of just 5,620 sex offenders are convicted each year.
Barely one in every 100 sexual offences committed in Britain ends with anybody being punished, official figures reveal.
On average, nearly half-a-million people a year say they have been victims of sex crimes, ranging from indecent exposure to rape.
However, just one in ten of those are recorded by police.
In these cases, about 16,000 suspects are charged or receive a caution and a mere 5,620 are convicted, a rate of just 1.1per cent. Jo Wood, of Rape Crisis, said: ‘Unfortunately, the findings are not surprising to us.
‘Every rape victim gets a life sentence, but too few attackers are being caught and convicted.’
The figures reflect the findings of a joint review by the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Office for National Statistics.
One in five women has been the victim of a sexual offence in the past, while 69,000 say they have been raped in the past year. However, just 15 per cent reported the most serious crimes to the police.
Women said they were too embarrassed, the offence was ‘too trivial’ or they did not think officers ‘could do much to help’.
This was despite nine in ten of them knowing the perpetrator.
1 in 5 women has been a victim of a sexual offence.
Holly Dustin, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said the conviction rate showed ‘there is clearly a long way to go in improving the criminal justice system’s response to these serious crimes’.
One particular incident was quite striking and indeed most shocking was the rape of a teacher by her pupil in the very classroom where she taught them. This was the most notorious of attacks in this report. This happened at Westminster City School in 2004 as she was marking books in a classroom!
So what is worst? Being gang raped by run of the mill street thugs who are strangers to the victim in downtown Delhi or being raped by a pupil who the victim is very well acquainted with and indeed a teacher to him, in London? Where is the respect and the honouring of the teacher gone? Or are these notions a bit too backwards for the 21st century?
Sadly societies across the world over it seems have become very tolerant to rape and similar types sex related criminal activities. People seem to have become very accustomed and apathetic to such type of misdemeanours instead of having zero tolerance to such heinousness.
According to Al-Jazeera, a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, and 24,000 rape cases were reported last year alone. The media outlet also reported that 80% of women in Delhi had been sexually harassed, while “The Times of India” has reported that rape in India has increased by a staggering 792% over the past 40 years.
So what is to be done, what can be done?
A former newspaper editor Praful Bidwai from Delhi blamed masculinity and commented thus:
Rape is an assertion of masculinity in a patriarchal society in which women are assigned a subordinate or inferior position. Masculinity is associated with traditionally ‘male’ traits such as boldness, manliness, bravery, muscularity, gallantry, machismo, stout-heartedness, robustness, being resolute, etc.
Unlike sex, masculinity is not a biological characteristic of men; nor is its opposite, femininity, genetically inherited by women. Both are social-cultural traits. As feminist theorist Ann Oakley puts it, “to be a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is as much a function of dress, gesture, occupation, social network and personality as it is of possessing a particular set of genitals.”
According to him this Delhi gang rape episode has produced three main reactions.
The first is to demand more stringent punishment for rape, such as hanging or chemical castration.
The second seeks to protect women paternalistically by forcing them to dress ‘soberly’, running special buses, installing more CCTV cameras, banning cell phone use, and bizarrely in Puducherry (Pondicherry), making them wear overcoats.
The third, and crassest, reaction comes from officials, politicians – especially of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, but also the Congress and Samajwadi Party – and so-called spiritual leaders like Asaram Bapu. This reaction blames the victim by accusing her of having crossed ‘red-lines’ such as not going out at night, or says the victim wouldn’t have been raped had she chanted sacred mantras or entreated the assailants to treat her like their sister (Bapu). RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat contends that rapes are alien to rural, traditional ‘Bharat’ and only occur in westernised, urban ‘India’, and that marriage is a ‘contract’ under which the wife is an obedient servant. This implicitly justifies domestic violence.
On the other hand the Muslims who propose a Sharia based society for the Muslim countries had a different take on this issue, as commented recently by one Sharia advocate, Dr. Nazreen Nawaz:
“The world’s largest democratic country has failed spectacularly to protect its women. The atrocious level of sexual crimes against women, the lax attitudes by police towards guarding their dignity, and the apathy of the Indian government in ensuring their security is the result of the routine, systematic devaluing of women by the liberal culture celebrated by the state and embodied in the Bollywood entertainment industry. This Bollywood culture, along with other entertainment, advertising, and pornography industries sanctioned by India’s secular liberal democratic system have presented the woman as an object to play to the desires of men, sexualized society, encouraged individuals to pursue their selfish carnal desires, and promoted extra-marital relationships, nurturing a culture of promiscuity and cheapening the relationships between men and women. All this has desensitized the disgust that should be felt towards the violation of women’s dignity in the minds of many men. It is therefore no surprise that the country is playing a close catch-up to other liberal states such as the US and the UK that are amongst global leaders of violence against women. The democratic secular liberal system under which half its population live in fear is no model for the Muslim world to embrace.”
She further argued that if Islam, implemented comprehensively i.e. as an integral part of society and state, then it offers what she termed “a robust, sound approach to safeguarding the dignity of women.”
She went on further to say: Islam rejects liberal freedoms and rather promotes taqwa (God-consciousness) within society that nurtures a mentality of accountability in the manner by which men view and treat women. It prohibits the sexualisation of society as well as all forms of objectification and exploitation of women’s bodies, such that the relationship between the sexes is never cheapened or the woman devalued. It celebrates a comprehensive social system that regulates the relationship between men and women, and includes a modest dress code, the segregation of the genders, and prohibition of extramarital relationships – all of which directs the fulfillment of the sexual desires to marriage alone, protecting women and society.
So it’s about getting our (both men and women) view about the woman right, i.e. she is not a sexual object or a slave to the husband regardless of her class or status in society.
It’s about having the correct perspective about the relations between men and women in society.
It’s about correcting certain negative cultural underpinnings (both in the west and east) about man’s view about women that facilitates rape.
It’s about zero tolerance to rape and applying the correct fitting punishments to the perpetrators.
What do you think?
What is your take on this?
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