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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIndian Police Hold 15 Men for Gang Raping Danish Tourist
Delhi Police detained 15 men for gang raping a Danish national in a part of Indias capital popular with backpackers, the latest incident exposing the dangers for women in the worlds second-most populous country.
The 51-year-old woman was raped at knife-point by a group of men between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. yesterday in Paharganj neighborhood, Deepak Mishra, special commissioner of the police, said in a phone interview. The area is within 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) of the presidential palace and contains many hotels.
Police have identified the men involved in the crime and are conducting further investigation, Mishra said.
The allegation comes amid an unprecedented debate about sexual violence in India triggered by the gang rape and murder of a student in New Delhi in December 2012. Even after lawmakers imposed stricter penalties for men who assault women and established fast-track courts in the aftermath of that attack, India is struggling to tame male attitudes that leave ordinary women vulnerable to attack.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-15/police-detain-15-men-for-gang-raping-tourist-in-central-delhi.html
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)As opposed to hookers, or poor women, or women who were wearing the wrong thing, or women who were walking down the wrong street, or women who weren't careful with their drinks, or...?
redqueen
(115,096 posts)That is exactly the kind of insight that led me to radical feminism.
JI7
(89,173 posts)by suggesting she may have been a prostitute.
redqueen
(115,096 posts)was arrested and processed as per policy (objectionable as that policy is), when officials and politicians there say things like that (and so much worse) about actual victims...
It truly should be waking a whole lot of people up. Especially women.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)I know we're far from perfect on human rights and labor, but SHE HAD A SLAVE!
Did the Indian government really think that we were just going to let that go?
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)We are a contentious bunch, but IMO its the only way to go.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)Matariki
(18,775 posts)Pretty disgusting attitude on the part of whoever wrote that, although they probably don't have a clue what the problem is with that wording.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Warpy
(110,900 posts)because they have a huge surplus of young males with no marriage prospects thanks to a few decades of favoring male offspring and aborting girls--or worse.
Add to that a deep seated misogyny that goes back millennia, and it's a recipe for extreme sexual violence against women.
About all they can do about it at this point is to try to identify the guilty and scoop them off the street. Everything else will take time.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's right, there's a "cute" name for random, pervasive street harassment of women by men in India (particularly in Delhi -- Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, etc. aren't nearly as bad). It's constant, and like all systemic assertions of power it very subtly gets under the victim's and perpetrator's skin until people start making excuses for it. (Not that the US doesn't have our own problems about this...)
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)ALL the women. Bet it stops in a hurry.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)If I were a woman, I'd probably avoid India altogether. I don't want to go because of all the filth. They don't practice good sanitation over there, and they piss and shit in public. Fuck that.
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)there's reasonable caution, then there is total absurd generalizations and bigotry.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Fuck that. I don't want to go where women get repeatedly raped.
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)WIth the police letting the aggressors go, I'd think twice as well.
But you didn't talk about the filth and piss and shit on the streets.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)Sixty per cent of the "global total" who do not have access to toilets live in India, and hence are forced to defecate in the open. In actual numbers, sixty per cent translates to 626 million. This makes India the number one country in the world where open defecation is practised. Indonesia with 63 million is a far second!
At 949 million in 2010 worldwide, vast majority of people practising open defecation live in rural areas. Though the number of rural people practising open defecation has reduced by 234 million in 2010 than in 1990, those that continue to do so tend to be concentrated in a few countries, including India, notes the 2012 update report of UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
...
More than half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation live in India or China. The high figure prevails even as four out of 10 people who have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990 live in these two countries.
Rapidly-modernising India is drowning in its own excreta, notes the New Delhi-based Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment in a Comment piece published on June 14 in Nature.
Response to Dorian Gray (Reply #17)
LuvNewcastle This message was self-deleted by its author.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)To reiterate, fuck that.
Matariki
(18,775 posts)or have some kind of problem with women. I really resent that the answer is "women don't need to travel to India by themselves". Or the only way I can travel to many parts of the world would be with a male escort.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)I just said "by themselves." Two women, a group of women, a woman and her boyfriend, it makes no difference. But in some parts of the world, a woman is in a lot of danger when she's alone. That's true in a lot of places in the U.S. too, but it's worse in some countries than others.
Egnever
(21,506 posts)I just cant wrap my head around 15 guys getting together to rape someone. I don't understand Indian culture at all. How does it get to the point where that many people get together to do such a thing.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)I mean, literally, everywhere you went, you were always within 5 feet of other people. Bathing. Going to the bathroom. Sleeping. Eating. Working. Walking to work. Every minute, of every day. You still live with your family after you get married, and you will continue to, for the rest of your life. You don't have "private" thoughts or feelings; everybody knows everything about your life all the time.
(That doesn't explain the rape problem at all, but it explains the "gang" part of it: everything that happens in India, at least in the cities, is done by a crowd.)
get the red out
(13,459 posts)They don't appear to have the horrific rape problem that India does, at least from what we see reported.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Just the gang nature of it once it happens.
That said, China's rape problem is also pretty horrific, and even less reported than India's.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)much less have a relationship, get some sex, get married, and the whole 9 yards.
Lots of people in India have selectively aborted and "otherwise eliminated" girls. As a result, today there are too many men and not enough women.
IMO, these events are caused by a hopelessness on the relationship front, coupled with the society's misogyny.
ETA: Post 13 covers this in more detail.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)excuses gang rape. That's spiffy.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)Too many men means a vile free-for-all with no expectations of humanity to be placed on anyone, who knew?
Aerows
(39,961 posts)we have some people to "explain" it to us, so that we "understand" that it isn't as bad as it sounds.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Or the article in post #13. 37M more men than women isn't a healthy society.
And good thing you invented the word "excuse" out of thin air.
Otherwise it would look like you're just knee-jerking and not bothering to find out what's causing these rapes.
You can't fix what you don't bother to understand. And note that "understand" does not mean "excuse".
Aerows
(39,961 posts)every vile thing in the world that happens, you show up to minimize or "explain" it to the rest of us so we "understand" it.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)When this kind of imbalance has happened in other places, crime by the SOL men shoots up, including rape. Threatening them with harsher prison sentences isn't going to fix it. After all, China has a similar problem, and they have some extremely harsh penalties for rape.
But hey, I'm sure ignoring underlying causes is gonna solve the problem real soon now.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)Men are "causing these rapes"; they do not see women as human beings, they see them as property, things. They feel they can do with women what they want, and generally they CAN, with impunity.
India has allowed women to be considered NOTHING by turning a blind eye to this gender ratio problem. Now they don't give a damn about the attitudes toward women that hatred of females has bred into the men. The men want to rape women and feel they have a right.
But MEN are CAUSING the rapes.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Quote where I am saying the men are not causing the rapes.
The men are also not poofing into existence and raping. They are in a massively misogynistic society that has screwed them over with gender imbalance, leading to the anger and resentment that causes them to commit more crimes, including rape. But they are committing the rapes.
You can't fix the men without fixing the society that created them. Because even if you "fix" one man, that society will have created more in the meantime.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)India's culture is FUCKED, so far as women go, I will gladly give you that, I believe that no woman should go there as a tourist for that reason.
But there are gang rapes in first world countries also, so it can't always be growing up with your potential mates being aborted or murdered at birth, or that the whole country despises women?
jeff47
(26,549 posts)India has a specific problem arising from India's culture. It's created 37M more men than women and is rife with misogyny.
Other countries, including the first world, are about 50%-50% women-to-men. The level of misogyny varies. Gang rapes in those countries are not being caused by a very large gender imbalance.
Since the subject at hand is rapes in India, I'm discussing India's problem.
mythology
(9,527 posts)But there is a distinct sociological history that shows repeatedly, when a society has a gender imbalance of too many men, things like crime and war go up. Trying to understand things is not actually the same as excusing it.
Sort of like if you go to the doctor and say my arm hurts, you need to get to the cause of the pain because that's how you treat the underlying problem. You wouldn't put a cast on somebody with a cut and you wouldn't put antibiotics on a broken bone because it won't solve the problem.
Matariki
(18,775 posts)jeff47
(26,549 posts)Matariki
(18,775 posts)and also what you said. In the context of previous posts about the gender imbalance creating a class of unemployed and violence-prone young males.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)He was married with a child. Creepy, hideous man made my working life hell for 8 months.
And at another company where I worked, the founders were a married Indian couple. That man fixated on the HR director. His stalking was so bad that her boss and her assistant worked out a schedule so that the director was never alone when he was in the building. One or the other of them was always with her for her protection. Their entire schedule based on protecting a stalking target. Another creepy, hideous man with zero respect for women.
So for those 2 at least, the prospect of not getting a date was irrelevent to their harassing behavior. Mysogeny, yes.
redqueen
(115,096 posts)Egnever
(21,506 posts)it does seem to be much more common in india though. At least at this level. I doubt in my entire life i have heard of as many gang rapes with so many men imvolved as i have in the past year or two out of india.
redqueen
(115,096 posts)A few years ago, France was rocked by a trial for repeated gang rapes. It is one of the few countries which counts the number of gang rapes. Most countries don't bother. It's estimated that 25% of reported rapes are gang rapes.
And that's just the reported ones. Think of how many girls and women just disappear. Some are sold to human traffickers, some are murdered. None of it is very big news, for some reason. How many have heard of the gang rapes in France? It is sad to think of the reason we hear more about these crimes when they happen in countries like India, Pakistan, Africa, Brazil, etc.
Racism and misogyny are issues that we can't afford to ignore.
Beacool
(30,244 posts)Poor woman!!!
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Something needs to change here...
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The first thing people say?
"Legalize prostitution. That will solve it."
"No, that won't work... not everybody could afford a prostitute."
Sigh...
JI7
(89,173 posts)i don't think it's totally illegal. i think it's considered "decriminalized" at least.
and they still have problems that people claim will go away if it was legal. at an even worse level than places that do make it illegal.
JI7
(89,173 posts)i'm not saying i would support it. but i would not feel bad for the rapists .
get the red out
(13,459 posts)None at all. I make no pretense of being a "good" liberal.
Common Sense Party
(14,139 posts)Maybe that will get their attention.
shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)The authors adopted a Chinese term, guang gun-er (bare branches), for unmarried men from age 15 to their mid-30s who have limited prospects for employment. This group, which is larger in countries where sex selection is prevalent, usually commits the preponderance of violence within a society, according to the report.
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/indias-man-problem/?_r=0
JI7
(89,173 posts)shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)tblue37
(64,979 posts)rural areas of China. Just because the girls are forced to marry their kidnappers doesn't mean it is not rape.
JI7
(89,173 posts)temporary311
(954 posts)Of whether it "seems" worse because it is, in fact, actually worse, or is merely reported on more.
JI7
(89,173 posts)one thing about india is that they are able to get access to media easily. this is why we the rape cases that happen in even poor small villages that seems far removed from the more busy areas can still easily send news of internationally .
but the way i see it is that even assuming the rate was lower compared to many other places, it's still a huge problem within that country.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)and it is allowed because they hate on themselves. Suddenly it's the woman's fault because she won't "give it up" - not that their government and social attitudes caused this problem.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)Stockholm syndrome in the women. Inhumanity in the men, the government, and social attitudes.
India is a cesspool of teeming misogyny and human indifference. VILE country.
shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)Well, they'd have to get up pretty early to beat your shithole of a country in the woman-killing stakes.
2 million dead women in Indochina
1 million dead women in North Korea
100,000 dead women in Iraq
but thats okay because it was good noble brown woman-killing by white people such as yourself.
shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)you have large numbers of men with no prospects for steady employment, marriage, children or property, and therefore no investment in the status quo. It is the recipe for this sort of behaviour as well as many others.
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)this is crazy. Up until about a year ago, I didn't think that this type of violence was the norm in India, but the number of cases that we've heard of is just sad.
redqueen
(115,096 posts)Recent
http://www.channel4.com/news/peterborough-child-rape-gang-guilty-abuse
Older
http://m.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Another-girl-may-have-been-gang-raped-in-Cleveland-4864500.php
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/05/gender.ukcrime
http://mobile.english.rfi.fr/france/20131126-controversial-french-gang-rape-trial-goes-appeal
France records the numbers of reported gang rapes separately. Most countries don't. There are thousands reported on France every year.
I think we only see the most shocking cases make the news. And only when the victim speaks out.
Dorian Gray
(13,469 posts)to think of any woman attacked or raped. This violently, repeatedly, by any number of attackers is so horrible.
JI7
(89,173 posts)including in the United States where he raped a maid.
and you had even people on DU try to defend him and claim it is all a Sarkozy conspiracy against Kahn. if sarkozy is so powerful he should have been able to easily use those powers to win re-election.
lpbk2713
(42,696 posts)It looks like they have their work cut out for them.
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)does'nt China have similar demographics? For similar reasons (i.e. abort the girl)