We Are Girls, Not Your Toys

December 16, 2012, would have probably been just another day for the 23-year-old paramedical student returning after watching a movie with a friend if Delhi had a safe public transport system. She would have lived to turn 28 on May 10 this year had the police reined in rogues in a white private bus that had no business to be on the road that night.

But instead, she died a painful death in a hospital in Singapore 13 days after she was brutally attacked and gang-raped. She left behind an angry nation that wanted change like never before. This is what happened that night:

The paramedical student and her friend, after watching The Life of Pi at a cinema hall in south Delhi, could not find any public transport to return home from there. So both of them boarded a chartered bus after its conductor talked them into it. The victim and her friend saw six boys in the driver’s cabin.

As the bus reached the flyover near the airport, three boys came out of the driver’s cabin. Two of them started abusing the woman’s friend and asked him where he was taking her late in the evening. One of them hit the victim’s friend who tried fighting back. Soon, two other boys joined in beating him with iron rods lying in the bus.

As the victim came forward to save her friend, two of the assailants pushed her to the back seat. While victim’s friend was caught and being beaten, the other assailants took their turn to rape her. In their brutal act, the convicts damaged her internal organs using an iron rod. The assailants also robbed both the victims.

They brought them in the front and pushed them out of the moving bus on National Highway 8 near Mahipalpur flyover. Both victims were later spotted by the passersby who informed the police.

Who also brought sheets to cover them. They were then rushed to the Hospital. The statement of victim’s friend was recorded.

Today, I’ll be speaking on an important topic that concerns all of us: disrespect. Imagine for a moment that you are an adolescent girl busy doing what most adolescent girls do at their age. Let us say that all you wanted to do was to grow and learn new things and live your life in relative peace and safety. Here, you are minding your own innocent, girlish business, when ten adult males corner you one day and rape you in a public area, while one of them films the event on camera. The police come along and break it up, questions you, and give you a medical thing and live your life in relative peace and safety. Here you are, minding your own innocent, girlish business when ten adult males corner you one day and rape you in a public area examination but do not arrest any of the perpetrators until their video goes viral and they are put to shame (Pidd, 2012). At the end of it all, you are left with a trauma that scars you for life.

It is not a very pleasant thought, is it? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the stark reality that girls have to deal with in India. Indian society and culture consider females as minority—and a supposedly inferior one at that. In certain cases, it is even worse: the girls are killed before they are even born. Those that are allowed to live face a possible lifetime of shame, censure, and disrespect. It is a great irony for a country that has had a female president and a female prime minister (Pidd, 2012).

At this point, you may be wondering what the root cause of the problem really is and what can be done about it. While Indian cultural norms play a major role in the mistreatment of females, the problem may actually be much deeper than that. Columnist Helen Pidd (2012) offers a thought-provoking opinion about the country’s sorry state of affairs: India may have had women in positions of power and leadership yet the underlying beliefs and attitudes toward females has not changed.

Pidd (2012) cites one village in central India as a prime example. The elders of this village in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh forbid women from engaging in a variety of behaviors, ranging from carrying their own mobile phones to choosing their own husbands. Since these rules only apply to women, none of the men appear to care at all.

Even specific laws (or lack of them) contribute to the abuse of females. The law that punishes rape only applies to penile penetration, which may be circumvented by more creative rapists. There are also no special laws against sexual harassment or sexual assault (Pidd, 2012), which means that troublemakers do not have to rape a woman to abuse her.

Note that these are the more extreme versions of disrespecting women. There are far more subtle ones. It is common, for example, for parents in India to marry their daughters off when the girls are as young as ten years old. Parents prefer male children to female children and the fear of the dowry is real. Slave labor is alive and well in the country—it is not unheard of for girls to be sold as chattels and subjected to exploitation and abuse. The ages-old practice of wife-burning is apparently still being practiced in modern times (Pidd, 2012).

Some of you may be asking “How does this concern me? This is India! It is so far removed from my own culture and experience. Besides, India is not the only country where men abuse women.” That may be true. However, the core issue is something that affects people of both sexes everywhere. Apathy, abuse, and disrespect know no culture or gender. That is why people must come to terms with their own tendencies to disrespect others, regardless of their nationality. The blatant disregard for women’s well-being in India is simply a reflection of a greater disease: a lack of self-respect among all people in all cultures. When there is lack of self-respect, trouble follows.

You may be wondering what leads to a lack of self-respect in India or in other cultures, for that matter? There are many possible reasons depending on the culture in question. Psychologists and other social scientists point to at least one possible factor: the existence of conditioning. Conditioning refers to the process of training people to behave in certain ways. People exhibit a behavior that is then reinforced (rewarded) in some way. This encourages them to repeat the behavior, which is subsequently reinforced. Over time, continuous reinforcement of the behavior establishes it as a habit (McLeod, 2014). If people in a particular culture all do the same thing and receive reinforcement for it over a long period of time, it results in a culture that habitually practices a behavior. In this case, it would be disrespect for oneself and for others, particularly women.

Relating this to India, it is possible that someone exhibited disrespect to oneself or to others at some point in the country’s history. That behavior may have gone unchallenged or may have been reinforced. Over time, more people (both men and women) grew to accept the idea of treating women in the same way without fear of the consequences. Since women failed to speak up during earlier times, this behavior went unchecked and grew into the problem that confronts people today.

This leads us to the next question: what can be done about it? This is a big problem that may have to be broken down into smaller action steps and combined with a number of other concrete solutions to be truly effective. Most of these solutions will probably take time before people will see their effects yet it never hurts to start planting the seeds of positive change.

First, people must educate and re-educate the members of Indian society—both men and women. Paradigm shifts are clearly needed in a culture where both sexes think it is justifiable for a man to physically beat his wife (Pidd, 2012). If it is true that thinking leads to emotion and emotion leads to behavior, then the problematic Indian mindsets and beliefs that keep oppressive cultural norms in place will have to go. Educating the people of India can replace the older attitudes that no longer work with newer ones that do. This is arguably easier to accomplish with children as their minds are more open and more pliable. However, adults who are willing to learn may also benefit from this. Even as I speak, support websites such as Chayn India have taken up the responsibility of educating teenagers regarding harassment, stalking, and abuse and what they can do to protect themselves from becoming victims (Chayn India, n.d.).

Second, more men and women need to make themselves heard. When hundreds of Indians took to the streets to protest the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old female medical student and mourn her death, the rest of the country took notice. The incident started conversations about rape in Indian culture. Apparently, the police took notice as well: they charged the suspects with murder (Khazan & Lakshmi, 2012). This victim’s experience served as a catalyst to bring more people into greater awareness of what is happening to their society. In a country where women are commonly mistreated and abused, it is likely that the abuse will continue if people do not speak up against it and no one holds perpetrators accountable for their actions. Men and women alike must confront the issue head-on and let the rapists and abusers know that their behaviors are unacceptable. Once people put pressure on authorities to punish unacceptable behavior, abusers will think twice about committing these heinous acts.

Third, it will help to recruit more women into the police force or at least form groups dedicated to protecting women in public places. Khazan & Lakshmi (2012) argue that female police officers in India are relatively rare, which may account for the low numbers in reports involving abuse or assault. They also argue that female victims are more likely to report incidents if a female officer is in charge of a women’s help desk. The country’s police force can train additional female officers for this purpose. At the very least, brothers, sons, and other male relatives may take responsibility for protecting their female relatives from harm by forming groups and cooperating with them. They may, for example, obtain mobile phones for the women and ask them to keep the males regularly updated about their location. Alternatively, these coalitions of male relatives may also speak with the police on behalf of their female relatives if no women’s help desk is available at the precincts.

Fourth, women must take responsibility for protecting themselves as well. Although it helps to have support groups and law enforcers on one’s side, there is no guarantee that they will be able to intervene in time during emergencies. Women must arm themselves, if only with knowledge and awareness. They may, for instance, carry non-lethal pepper sprays or chili-based substances for self-defense (Pidd, 2012). They may also attend self-defense classes, workshops, and seminars. While out on the street, women may employ common sense to avoid dimly-lit areas and stay in crowded areas. They could also carry mobile phones set to speed dial so they can contact their nearest male relative at the first sign of trouble.

Fifth, women must come together and form networks to support each other in times of emergency or crisis. Survivors of assault may band together and teach each other safety strategies, tactics, and survival techniques while looking out for each other. The idea here is to have all-female support groups formed by women who have undergone similar experiences, particularly if male relatives or potential supporters are unavailable or unwilling to assist.

In the end, disrespect is not a matter to be taken lightly. One thing that everyone—abuser or victim alike—must realize is that abuse will only take place and persist if people permit it. That is why protest, self-defense, awareness, and education are crucial to stopping and even preventing it. The time will come when India will be a safer place for women to walk the streets without fear of rape or assault. Until then, there is a lot of work to be done. The people of India owe this work to the women who have died as a result of gang rape, as well as to those whose lives are a living death due to other forms of abuse.