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Delhi Gang Rape - coverage by the western media:The guardian

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The Delhi gang-rape: look westward in disgust | Emer O'Toole | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk


The Delhi gang-rape: look westward in disgust

The coverage of Damini's death strikes a particularly ironic note following recent media controversy over a rape in Ohio.


There's something uncomfortably neocolonial about the way the Delhi gang-rape and subsequent death of the woman now known as Damini is being handled in the UK and US media. While India's civil and political spheres are alight with protest and demands for changes to the country's culture of sexual violence, commentators here are using the event to simultaneously demonise Indian society, lionise our own, and minimise the enormity of western rape culture.

A particularly blatant example of this is Libby Purves's piece for the Times. She says the Delhi bus rape should "shatter our Bollywood fantasies". For Purves, westerners enjoy a romanticised view of India, all heady spirituality and Marigold Hotels; and especially romantic in their views, for reasons Purves neglects to address, are the British. Thus, upright Europeans have sentimentally ignored the "murderous, hyena-like male contempt" that Purves says is an Indian cultural norm. Neatly excised from her account however is the relationship between poverty, lack of education and repressive attitudes towards women, and, by extension, the role of Europe in creating and sustaining poverty in its former colonies. Attitudes towards women in the east were once used by colonialists to, first, prop up the logic of cultural superiority that justified unequal power relations (the "white man's burden") and second, silence feminists working back in the west by telling them that, comparatively, they had nothing to complain about.

When it finishes calling Indian men hyenas, Purves's article states that westerners "have the luxury of fretting about frillier feminist issues such as magazine images, rude remarks and men not doing housework". Does anyone else see an unattractive historical pattern here?

Her article is not, by any means, the only one to report on this issue as if rape is something that only happens "over there" – something we civilised folk in the west have somehow put behind us. Elsewhere, the message is subtler, but a misplaced sense of cultural superiority shines through. For example, this BBC article states, as if shocking, the statistic that a woman is raped in Delhi every 14 hours. That equates to 625 a year. Yet in England and Wales, which has a population about 3.5 times that of Delhi, we find a figure for recorded rapes of women that is proportionately four times larger: 9,509. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal decries the fact that in India just over a quarter of alleged rapists are convicted; in the US only 24% of alleged rapes even result in an arrest, never mind a conviction. This is the strange kind of reportage you tend to get on the issue.

Owen Jones's excellent piece in the Independent is a breath of fresh air, asking people to acknowledge that rape, as well as gang rapes, happen in the west too. Similarly, Laura Bates's recent article on victim blaming should act as sufficient retort to anyone who thinks police chief KP Raghuvanshi's advice that women should carry chilli powder to prevent rape is symptomatic of a specifically Indian brand of misogyny.

The coverage of Damini's death strikes a particularly ironic note following recent media controversy over a rape, in Steubenville, Ohio, of a 16-year-old girl – allegedly by members of the high-school football team. The case is that the young woman was dragged, drunk and unresponsive, from party to party, where she was sexually abused. The brutal death of Damini has spurred Indian civil society to its feet, causing protest and unrest, bringing women and men into the streets, vocal in their demands for change. Sonia Gandhi has met the woman's parents. The army and the states of Punjab and Haryana have cancelled new year's celebrations. What happened in the US? In Steubenville, football-crazy townsfolk blamed the victim and it took a blogger – Alexandria Goddard, who is now being sued – and a follow-up article from the New York Times four months after the incident to get nationwide attention for the story.

Purves's article claims that we in the west are "looking eastward in disgust". I believe that disgusted parties would do well to turn their judgmental gazes on their own societies. Let's look east in solidarity and support for India's urgently necessary women's rights movement; let's keep talking about the social discrimination Indian women face, which affluent westerners do not. However, it is both prejudiced and completely fantastical to talk as though sexual violence is some kind of Indian preserve. We might have comparatively better women's rights in the UK, but this is due, in large part, to the social services that our wealth allows. Colonial history helped to create and global capital continues to sustain low standards of living in India. We would do well to be cognisant of our historically inscribed privilege before complaining that this horrific event has destroyed our pretty colonial fantasies.

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Finally some Western journalist decided to talk about the completely stereotypical , hypocritical and borderline racist coverage by the western media of this rape. They talk as if rape , under-reporting of rape and lack of conviction is not a problem in their societies.But when i read about it , it became clear that these problems are there in the west as well and in the same degree even though they are more affluent and educated societies.The author of this article brings this hypocrisy out and look how angry the inherently racist Brits are in the comments section.

may Allah save every soul from such wild animals living in human's skin...
may last day ruined after viewing that news any the victim girl who died....
well soo sad incident bro..
i hope no such incident ever happen again in any part of the world.....
 
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i always sum it up that "West had come a long way to accpet change whereas we subcontinentis love sudden change which is always short-lived"
You didn't get it, when a person from small town comes to metro and sees a girl in skirts and tight jeans, he can't adjust according to it and he is more prone to tease the girls. According to him, these girls are not good so its OK to tease them.

This is just one case. The problem is not girl's dress, problem is how a guy perceived it and become prejudiced.

If a westerner goes to African tribe, where women are semi nude, he will find it uncomfortable whereas the native men are normal with it.

So what is a norm according to each individual and according to society has to be studied. I have explained in detail in other thread. it will take hell lot of time to find it.

Note that I am telling you the psychology of those men. Don't shoot me.
 
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Good .for you guys woman is mere statistics on raped and other crime against women.

And for you what madam?? Another opportunity to bash Hinduism?? You are no better than any of those guys..
 
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But the laws in India are lax, and enforcement the same. Cases are lingering for 20 years, there is enough backlog to the consternation of general public, yet convenient for criminals to breath easy.

Lax is an understatement and enforcement is shame rather than same. I felt so only after I stumbled on a report of 16 years old case named Suryanelli from Kerala. The victim underwent sexual assault for 40 days from 42 people. Where are the law makers ? Where is the civil society ?

As @KRAIT said in one of his threads, the recent case in Delhi generated significant shock value and hence you notice people pouring on streets. Good reason to have this , without doubt advent of technology for people to share their feelings and emotions. Accumulated anger finally had its vent.

Seriously hope we witness some reasonable level of sanity amongst people and feel existence of big brother to keep the nuisance creators in check.
 
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You didn't get it, when a person from small town comes to metro and sees a girl in skirts and tight jeans, he can't adjust according to it and he is more prone to tease the girls. According to him, these girls are not good so its OK to tease them.

This is just one case. The problem is not girl's dress, problem is how a guy perceived it and become prejudiced.

If a westerner goes to African tribe, where women are semi nude, he will find it uncomfortable whereas the native men are normal with it.

So what is a norm according to each individual and according to society has to be studied. I have explained in detail in other thread. it will take hell lot of time to find it.

Note that I am telling you the psychology of those men. Don't shoot me.

i was also talking about the perception not dress. and i will repeat for changing perception one does NOT need sudden transformation.
 
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i was also talking about the perception not dress. and i will repeat for changing perception one does NOT need sudden transformation.
Exactly. Here comes social conditioning. The way guys get conditioned to see girls as an object, is not a sudden change, they undergo exposure to environment which makes them think so.

The solution lies in changing this environment too.
 
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Lax is an understatement and enforcement is shame rather than same. I felt so only after I stumbled on a report of 16 years old case named Suryanelli from Kerala. The victim underwent sexual assault for 40 days from 42 people. Where are the law makers ? Where is the civil society ? As @KRAIT said in one of his threads, the recent case in Delhi generated significant shock value and hence you notice people pouring on streets. Good reason to have this , without doubt advent of technology for people to share their feelings and emotions. Accumulated anger finally had its vent.

Seriously hope we witness some reasonable level of sanity amongst people and feel existence of big brother to keep the nuisance creators in check.

They were sleeping. they needed a dent and jolt which they got and now they woke up.

i say its a good change. taken time but resulted in first step towards right direction

Exactly. Here comes social conditioning. The way guys get conditioned to see girls a object, is not a sudden change, they undergo exposure to environment which makes them think so.

The solution lies in changing this environment too.

let me put it this way to decondition these guys when you subject them to suddent reconditioning (allow me to use simple example here) like ITEM Numbers and front page of juicey ToI images is in my opinion sudden attempt to glorify something that will not decondition but add to the shock resulting in wrong perceptions
 
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i feel you want more sacrifices from women than accepting that you men need to change yourself.

The West has come a long way to reform even if you look at the dresses although i consider it silly when subcontinentis consider abolishing of dress as sign of "liberation" anyway still if take this into cosideration their acceptance of right to a woman and ours even in this field well we want to see women naked but also want to rape them on the same pretext.

You are right in part. What needs to be remembered is that Indian society had been subject to enormous change in a very short duration. If you went back to the 19th century, most Indians actually probably lived with social values of the13th century. Some continue to live in the 13th century even today. The generational changes are so huge that what happened over a couple of centuries in Europe & America has been compressed to 5-6 decades in India. The last 20 years has seen society change like never before . If you have people living in the 13th,14th...20th centuries, they will all have problems(of different proportion) in dealing with the 21st century. The gap in cultural behaviour which usually undergoes change incrementally is now a huge chasm at places which some find very difficult to bridge. Wearing western clothes & having money does not necessarily translate into a modern level of thinking, change in social behaviour is heavily dependent on the immediate environment of an individual. Breaking free of those shackles will take some time and effort. Till then society will show a high degree of flux & some friction.
 
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Are you guys all nuts, this thread was to discuss the xenophobic coverage of the western media of the rape case and you Indians and Pakistanis started bickering with each other .Ruined my thread :hitwall:
 
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Take it easy man, and welcome to India!

Indian law makers worry more about their future indictment than others, if the stringent laws are framed. Despite civil society's public outcry, we dont have a lokpal bill at center, and separation of CBI from GOI.

2004 election: 128 of the 543 winners had faced criminal charges, including 84 cases of murder, 17 cases of robbery and 28 cases of theft and extortion. Many face multiple criminal counts—including one M.P. who faces 17 separate murder charges

Above is not possible in China, USA, Canada, Japan, only in India.
 
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Exactly. Here comes social conditioning. The way guys get conditioned to see girls as an object, is not a sudden change, they undergo exposure to environment which makes them think so.

The solution lies in changing this environment too.

agreed.

If Indian boys learn to respect girls from childhood, they will grow into men who respect women, girls.

Currently in large amount of households in India, girls are given second place, receive treatment of Paraya Dhan and denied facilities boys do enjoy. When boys see this from the childhood, they also start thinking about women in same way.

This needs to be changed. Because children learn most through their surroundings and behavior of their parents.
 
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Are you guys all nuts, this thread was to discuss the xenophobic coverage of the western media of the rape case and you Indians and Pakistanis started bickering with each other .Ruined my thread :hitwall:
Well there is already a thread running on same media coverage by other new agency. You ruined your thread by posting a new one rather than searching one and continuing the discussion there. People flock to new threads and repeat same post over and over again just to bash India.

Its due to lack of coordination at every level of society which is root of all evils. Every man for himself will result in division in society with different school of thoughts and no one will get enough majority to make the change.

Think over it. Anti-corruption drive and similar division has resulted in total lose of significance among the youth.
 
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agreed.

If Indian boys learn to respect girls from childhood, they will grow into men who respect women, girls.

Currently in large amount of households in India, girls are given second place, receive treatment of Paraya Dhan and denied facilities boys do enjoy. When boys see this from the childhood, they also start thinking about women in same way.

This needs to be changed. Because children learn most through their surroundings and behavior of their parents.

More complicated than that. We clearly have a gender bias (Kerala & the NE being the honourable exceptions) which values boys over girls. That created an automatic inbuilt feeling of male superiority as also having the effect (through selective abortions of the female foetuses) of having more men than women in the society, most in the 17-30 years age group. What do you think will happen?
 
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