Exposure, Sex, Rape and Sex-education - in Indian Context

Let us stop behaving hypocritically

Sorry, I refuse to be a hypocrite. I can not project myself as normal human and yet claim that I am not interested in the opposite sex. I can not ask others not to conclude the obvious even if I am in a live-in relationship. I would never ask anyone to believe in the honesty of my relationship if I prefer spending my nights with another. I can not be hypocritical in claiming that we are 'just' friends only to convey that we are not into any physical relationship but meaning thereby that so what as friends can also have a physical relationship.

I also refuse to stop advising women not to bother about their safety. I would prefer to be called as someone possessing a 'rapist's mentality' for expressing concerns for them and by asking them to take precautions if it can help saving even a single one of them. Those who are in a habit of provoking innocent women to participate in 'slut-walks' and other similar reactionary activities must be satisfying their sex-laced intents to see them walking like sluts but sorry, I will never approve this for the reason that these activities achieve little towards the real cause but serves enough to make many enjoy the show and thereby defeating the very purpose of organizing these 'shows'. I am also a male and so don't even dare to fool me by claiming that 'real men' do not feel sexually aroused at the glimpse of 'appropriately' exposed women. Even if the 'popular' Menaka-Vishwamitra episode is rejected by terming it as 'myth', the world-wide booming prostitution industry, success of 'peep shows' and 'relaxing massages' in attracting tourists to boost tourism in many countries, ever-increasing madness to attend 'rave parties' and an increasing popularity of porn sites on the internet are enough examples to expose these hypocritical claims hollow. It is patently dishonest and hypocritical to claim that an 'appropriate' exposure do not initiate 'a desire to have sex'.

Does 'exposure' invites rape?

But hey, hold on, both who think that 'exposure' invites rape and those who think that rape has nothing to do with how one carries herself need to wait and pause for a while. As 'a desire for sex' initiated by an exposure never gets automatically transformed into an 'intention to rape'. The fact is that 'a desire to have sex' is also an innocent human-reflex. However, one's background and upbringing then helps in preventing this 'desire to have sex' to get morphed onto 'forcing sex in an extreme way on other'. The reason for this transformation to occur are many including their acquired ideological understanding of a good/bad, moral/immoral and forbidden/acceptable sexual behaviors and past experiences. In many cases, statistically speaking, this transformation is also affected when the person is in a drunken state when their acquired sense of acceptable behavior, if any, through their background or the manner in which they were brought up failed to stop their natural beastly (read manly) reflexes. And come on, whom do we fool by participating in a candle march against a rape incident demanding police action to stop 'all' rapes? When in most of the cases the accused are known to the victims is it not hypocritical to still claim that it is possible for the 'police and government' to take care of them instead of them themselves.

Enough is enough

Enough is enough. Let us now at least, stop fooling women. we have fooled them enough – first by setting up a patriarchal system and now by creating a mirage-like claim that this system can be destroyed without actually showcasing a better alternative. First by forcibly trying to pull 'sari' off 'Draupadis' and now by making them shed clothes on their own in the name of 'slut walks' and 'liberation'. First by exploiting them at home only and now at all other places including home. Isn't it time now that 'women' must understand that males are males and will always remain beasts? Women are better species and they need to protect themselves and stop 'downgrading' themselves attempting to ape males. It is a crude fact that males with their beastly reflexes can find even an innocent openness in women's attitude as conducive of finding innovative ways to exploit them.

Need of sex-education with Indian perspective

Our society badly needs sex education. There is an urgent need to sensitize ourselves through an 'Indian-ized' sex education as our problems are completely different from other countries. Much before we start educating the youth on how to indulge in sex and yet avoid pregnancy we should first start with how to behave with the other sex. Sex-education weaved with spiritual/moral education is what should be prescribed for us. To start with, given our prevalent conservative attitude towards sex we can even think of providing online education on this aspect. In our country, parents would make the best teachers on sex-education if they can somehow be 'educated' to come out of their initial inhibitions in response to the need of the hour.

Conclusion

Believe me, it is 'males' who need to be reigned in while women just need to take their normal individual care. As a matter of fact, while women are family oriented by instinct males should be forced to become family-oriented. Our society further needs to be thrashed, reformed, shaken and turned upside down to make it accept rape victims only as 'victims' so that they do not face any rehabilitation problem that becomes absolutely impossible for them. On the other hand, the society must also be pushed to think of some extreme measures of tackling the accused too so that we do not have to witness another horrifying experience where the beast in males dares to attempt at 'enjoying' rapes with hapless victims. 
Instead of women asking to be treated as men, I see an immediate need to force men behave socially like women.

Isn’t it time to fix responsibility?

(This article is published at the site http://governancenow.com/news/public-reporter/rape-isn-t-it-time-fix-responsibility )

No I am afraid, it is not a time to talk of 'azaadi' and freedom. We do not deserve that. Instead, it is an apt time to be reminded of our responsibilities. Two persons lying naked in pool of blood crying for help but left unattended for hours together should only ignite a sense of responsibility among us who chose only to be passers-by and were not human enough to offer a helping hand to them. Undoubtedly we must put the non-performing police to task for being engaged in unnecessary issues when they required an immediate medical help, didn’t we also try to compete with them and also deserve to share the blame for behaving as spectators in many such cases of atrocities against women. Isn’t it high time to thrash up our conscience if we still think that even a prostitute does not have a right to decline our advances? Isn’t it time to kill our instinct that makes us enjoy our act of disrespecting others’ sensibilities, be it of women in general or a community in specific if we ourselves would not be ready to take the same? Isn’t it time to crush this attitude of ourselves that makes us feel victorious when we rape a woman or violate others’ notions of dignity and faith? Are we responsible enough to remain alive if we think that we can establish our superiority using either our sex or exposure as our tool to achieve that? Aren’t we making a case of prescribing terminal treatment for us if we are hell bent on proving that drunkards (males/females) have a right to enjoy at any cost? Are humans mature enough to gracefully enjoy a self-restrained regime of ‘pub-culture’? Isn’t it time to accept finally that while sexually females are only humane but men are just beasts. And moreover, isn’t it time to ask somebody to kick our butt as we are not shy of using these incidents to instigate females to organize slut-walks just for our visual satisfaction? Isn’t it criminal to use these barbaric incidents to justify our meaningless anti-patriarchal agenda in order to make these unaware females expose to provide us an optical treat?

Let us not fall into the trap of these expose-centric, overtly-sexual and irresponsible comments of some intellectual rapists who have actually made us fall prey to their clandestine visual desires of enjoying exposure-exhibitions of rare and unaware females who honestly believe in their ill-twisted arguments. These hypocrites make these females willingly expose themselves believing that their liberty and freedom can be measured only by their skin show. In fact treating sex as our weapon is actually falling into rapists’ mentality as this is the method that even rapists adopt. Let us be equal but not by following these sexist-rapists who want us to expose in a slut-walk to please them as men never go naked just to prove their superiority. We must urge these unaware females to stop relating female-empowerment with their dare to expose themselves. It is time to fix responsibility on all senseless males and force them to behave sensibly but not by engaging ourselves in any irresponsible act in reaction.

We all are aware that in no society patriarchal or matriarchal, rape is an acceptable act. In fact some of the severest punishments, now in great demand, exist only in an overtly-patriarchal society. However, what goes against this structure is that it is understood to be easier to get away with this crime in a patriarchal society. But instead of rejecting a system as a whole, can’t we correct the system by treating the society disease by disease and symptom by symptom. We must prefer this since no society-structure has till date been unanimously established as a model structure and an overwhelming majority in India still think that our family-based society structure has many a features that are preserve-able and a subject of envy for other societies where unwanted kids and olds are huge problem to tackle.

The entire issue asks us to behave and think responsibly. It is clear that we are still not mature enough to draw our own Laxman-rekhas. We need to be punished for crossing our Laxman-rekha just as a Kingdom was destroyed and it’s King, a Brahmin 'Ravana', was killed because he dared to violate the Laxman-rekha that was drawn for him.  And Sita who can never be blamed for serving food to a hungry must also observe a greater precaution since a law, howsoever severe it may be, cannot force a drunk and mentally-imbalanced male not in his senses, to weigh the consequences of his barbaric act just as no amount of punishment has ever successfully prevented any crime completely in any part of this world. As we must realize that law and order is meant to act efficiently after a crime that can at best serve as a deterrent but a crime can be prevented completely only by creating the 'correct' mental awareness in a society.

Let us Change our Mindset

(article published at http://governancenow.com/news/public-reporter/let-us-change-our-mindset )

The incident is simply too cruel to be true. It is like a narration imported straight from a bollywood movie where the scriptwriter exaggerates the details of a rape scene only to justify a series of blood soaked revenge to be executed by the victim after the incident. A typical Indian-film hero needs an entry just at this stage to teach a lesson to the baddie. But the real fight ends with the last breath of the victim. What followed the incident needs a careful analysis. A spontaneous cry for justice from a society that is often inappropriately applauded for moving on with their usual daily life was only humane just to prove that the world is not full of dead. A live society must react to all such incidents ranging from terrorists attack to these beast-like murders but the protest must be peaceful and to an extent it can sometimes be non-compromising also. The anger that ignored the unexpectedly quick response of the police in arresting the culprits was also not inappropriate since they are known for their lackluster approach that they generally exhibit after such incidents. Demand for fast track courts and death penalty for such incidents and also pressing for a better conviction rate in such cases was long overdue and the vociferousness for these demands should not have awaited such incident.

Perverted minds however jumped into the scene to use it as justification for exposure in public life. Posters with captions like ‘If I show my legs, it does not mean that I am ready to spread it for you’ ….. ‘If you want to know that a girl is ready to have sex with you then ask, listen and respect her decision’ ….. ‘Exposure does not mean invitation’ ….. etc serve as examples in this case. I am afraid, how the caption writer is going to defend a person who goes on asking each one of us whether I would like to have sex with him or not? To me, whether he respects my decision or not is not as important as his intention itself behind asking the question itself. Whether he asks for sex in lieu of some quick cash or in return of some emotional bonding or would like to have it just for fun makes a hell lot of difference for me. To me, if exposure does not invite rape then exposure also does not help in preventing rape. Showing legs also is not going to help our cause in any way. The two aspects are not linked and hence should never be discussed simultaneously. To me, just as rape is unpardonable crime on a day, unnecessary exposure is also another avoidable act that may not be a crime but undoubtedly it can never be a noble-intention inviting gesture. But, just as some rapists fail to justify their crime by taking shelter behind their self-presumed ‘rape-inviting’ exposure, other variety of rapists use these incidents to initiate and invoke a race for exposure among the farer sex only to feed to their rape-laced intentions. It is this rapists-mindset that has inexplicably made the exposure of fairer sex a measure of their liberty. Look at films, fashion shows, and sports and you will see exposure only in females. Male tennis players do not oblige these set of rapists by exposing themselves as much as their female counterparts do. Beach volleyball female players, sprinters, swimmers, gymnasts and actresses fall prey to their tactics and oblige only these rapist-mindsets.

Demand to have death penalty for such offences should not have awaited such heinous crime to occur although we all are aware that even death penalty has not stopped murderers to commit murders. We can win this battle not only by changing our mindsets but also by preventing some rapists-mindsets who wait for these incidents to grab it as an opportunity to pollute our mindsets in order to satisfy their sex-laced concerns. We need to change our mindset and respect the sensitivity and liberty of the fairer sex who should also make an effort to invoke and win respect from the meaner sex and do not fall prey to the designs of the rapists mind-set who revel in encouraging exposure in public life.