Gender Relations in the Prophet’s Society

Excellent article by Maryam Amirebrahimi on Gender relations at the time of the Prohet (saw) Alhamdulilah everyone needs to know these facts and the Sunnah of male/female cooperation and interaction. In my experience far too many men think banishing women from the mosque (and the public sphere as a whole) is somehow Sunnah...How wrong they are!

Ibn Abbas radi allahu `anhu (may God be pleased with him) shares with us, “A beautiful woman, from among the most beautiful of women, used to pray behind the Prophet ﷺ. Some of the people used to go to pray in the first row to ensure they would not be able to see her. Others would pray in the last row of the men, and they would look from underneath their armpits to see her. Because of this act, in regard to her, Allah revealed, “Verily We know the eager among you to be first, and verily We know the eager among you to be behind,” (Qur’an 15:24).

From this narration, we learn that the young men who lived in the very city and attended the very masjid of the Prophet of God ﷺ slipped and checked a girl out. And yet what did the Prophet ﷺ do about it?

Did he create a wall between the men and women’s sections? Nope. Did he prohibit women from going to the mosque, lest they tempt the men who attend? Never. In fact, he ﷺ did the exact opposite and commanded that women not be stopped from going to the House of God.

What he did do was allow men and woman to continue to be a part of the same society, working together as a community, existing cohesively. At the same time, he ﷺ helped train his community to keep their desires in check.

For the rest of the article see here. 

Racism in the Muslim Community?

This made me very sad. I'm so disgusted by my own community at times. :( Alhamdulilah I love this sister though well done to her for speaking out.

Why Do White Guys Hate My Hijab?

Just last week, I graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. A few weeks before graduation, my best friend (the only other hijabi on Wesleyan’s 2600+ student campus) and I were taking one of our infamous long walks (we have preset one and a half, three, and five mile loops) around campus and the surrounding Middletown area. As was typical of our second-semester of senior year conversations, we were venting to each other about the many difficulties of finding post-undergrad work with our liberal arts degrees (she a government major and I a history major) and barely-there networks. As we paused our conversation to cross one of the many streets that interrupt our rather scenic routes, I turned around to “look both ways” when I heard a car honk at us and someone yell, “Take that shit off of your head!” Amused, all I could think was, “Hey look, it’s another one of those white guys who hates my hijab.” Unfazed (and quite honestly, used to such behavior at this point in our Wesleyan careers), we continued on our walk.

The next morning, I had to share this story with one of the librarians at Wesleyan’s Art Library, where I worked. During my shift the week before, much to her surprise, I mentioned to my supervisor how often Middletown residents (especially young white men in their red or white pickup trucks) verbally abused my friend and me when we left campus to walk into town. I even refused to walk into town for dinner the day after the Boston Bombings in fear that I would be attacked, like the many hijab-wearing Muslim women in Boston in the aftermath of the bombings. Horrified to hear what my friend and I go through (even though it doesn’t bother us very much), my boss mentioned that it was common for young white males in Middletown to drive around Wesleyan’s campus in the warmer months to “cruise for chicks” (her words, not mine). That’s when it hit me, “So that’s why these white guys hate my hijab – the way I look interrupts their ‘cruises for chicks.’”  More specifically, the way I dress denies them their privileged white male gaze – a privilege that society has taught them is their right, especially over women of color.

The male gaze.  The white male gaze. That infamous white male gaze. Kind of like the male gaze that permeates Hollywood and cinema. Except in this case, the white male gaze is separated from its objects of desire by car windows, not movie screens. And these young white men in their pickup trucks feel it’s their absolute right to “gaze” at women on and off campus. They drive around Wesleyan to see long flowing hair, short shorts, and even shorter dresses. Our hijabs, long-sleeved shirts, maxi skirts, and maxi dresses disrupt their cruises; we deny them their gazing privilege. And so, through their shielded windows and in their mobile getaways, they feel it’s their right to tell me to “take that shit off” of my head.

I hate to break it to you, white guys, but your male gaze is one of the major reasons (among many others, rest assured) I began to wear a hijab.

And let’s not kid ourselves:  the privileged white male gaze and the verbal abuse it provokes is not reserved for Middletown residents only. Although their remarks usually surfaced when they were under the influence, I’ve gone through the same phenomenon with white fraternity brothers at Wesleyan. On one Friday night in the spring of our junior year, my friend and I were taking a late walk when a couple of white fraternity brothers shouted out of their car, “Take that shit back to India.” I’ll admit, this time the words hurt a little more, mainly because neither of us is from India. All joking aside, it did hurt that these Wesleyan fraternity brothers – who we’ve sat in semester-long seven-student seminars with – felt that it was their right to openly and publically shame us for acting different, all because we choose to dress in a way that does not allow them to see us the way they want to.

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This is how racism takes root

By now surely everyone knows the case of the eight men convicted of picking vulnerable underage girls off the streets, then plying them with drink and drugs before having sex with them. A shocking story. But maybe you haven't heard. Because these sex assaults did not take place in Rochdale, where a similar story led the news for days in May, but in Derby earlier this month. Fifteen girls aged 13 to 15, many of them in care, were preyed on by the men. And though they were not working as a gang, their methods were similar – often targeting children in care and luring them with, among other things, cuddly toys. But this time, of the eight predators, seven were white, not Asian. And the story made barely a ripple in the national media.

Of the daily papers, only the Guardian and the Times reported it. There was no commentary anywhere on how these crimes shine a light on British culture, or how middle-aged white men have to confront the deep flaws in their religious and ethnic identity. Yet that's exactly what played out following the conviction in May of the "Asian sex gang" in Rochdale, which made the front page of every national newspaper. Though analysis of the case focused on how big a factor was race, religion and culture, the unreported story is of how politicians and the media have created a new racial scapegoat. In fact, if anyone wants to study how racism begins, and creeps into the consciousness of an entire nation, they need look no further.

Imagine you were living in a town of 20,000 people – the size of, say, Penzance in Cornwall – and one day it was discovered that one of its residents had been involved in a sex crime. Would it be reasonable to say that the whole town had a cultural problem, that it needed to address the scourge – that anyone not doing so was part of a "conspiracy of silence"? But the intense interest in the Rochdale story arose from a January 2011 Times "scoop" that was based on the conviction of at most 50 British Pakistanis out of a total UK population of 1.2 million, just one in 24,000: one person per Penzance.

Make no mistake, the Rochdale crimes were vile, and those convicted deserve every year of their sentences. But where, amid all the commentary, was the evidence that this is a racial issue; that there's something inherently perverted about Muslim or Asian culture?

Even the Child Protection and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), which has also studied potential offenders who have not been convicted, has only identified 41 Asian gangs (of 230 in total) and 240 Asian individuals – and they are spread across the country. But, despite this, a new stereotype has taken hold: that a significant proportion of Asian men are groomers (and the rest of their communities know of it and keep silent).

But if it really is an "Asian" thing, how come Indians don't do it? If it's a "Pakistani" thing, how come an Afghan was convicted in the Rochdale case? And if it's a "Muslim" thing, how come it doesn't seem to involve anyone of African or Middle Eastern origin? The standard response to anyone who questions this is: face the facts, all those convicted in Rochdale were Muslim. Well, if one case is enough to make such a generalisation, how about if all the members of a gang of armed robbers were white; or cybercriminals; or child traffickers? (All three of these have happened.) Would we be so keen to "face the facts" and make it a problem the whole white community has to deal with? Would we have articles examining what it is about Britishness or Christianity or Europeanness, that makes people so capable of such things?

In fact, Penzance had not just one paedophile, but a gang of four. They abused 28 girls, some as young as five, and were finally convicted two years ago. All were white. And last month, at a home affairs select committee, deputy children's commissioner Sue Berelowitz quoted a police officer who had told her that "there isn't a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited".

Whatever the case, we know that abuse of white girls is not a cultural or religious issue because there is no longstanding history of it taking place in Asia or the Muslim world.

How did middle-aged Asian men from tight-knit communities even come into contact with white teenage girls in Rochdale? The main cultural relevance in this story is that vulnerable, often disturbed, young girls, regularly out late at night, often end up in late-closing restaurants and minicab offices, staffed almost exclusively by men. After a while, relationships build up, with the men offering free lifts and/or food. For those with a predatory instinct, sexual exploitation is an easy next step. This is an issue of what men can do when away from their own families and in a position of power over badly damaged young people.

It's a story repeated across Britain, by white and other ethnic groups: where the opportunity arises, some men will take advantage. The precise method, and whether it's an individual or group crime, depends on the particular setting – be they priests, youth workers or networks on the web.

Despite all we know about racism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, the Rochdale case showed how shockingly easy it is to demonise a community. Before long, the wider public will believe the problem is endemic within that race/religion, and that anyone within that group who rebuts the claims is denying this basic truth. Normally, one would expect a counter-argument to force its way into the discussion. But in this case the crimes were so horrific that right-thinking people were naturally wary of being seen to condone them. In fact, the reason I am writing this is that I am neither Asian nor Muslim nor Pakistani, so I cannot be accused of being in denial or trying to hide a painful truth. But I am black, and I know how racism works; and, more than that, I have a background in maths and science, so I know you can't extrapolate a tiny, flawed set of data and use it to make a sweeping generalisation.

I am also certain that, if the tables were turned and the victims were Asian or Muslim, we would have been subjected to equally skewed "expert" commentary asking: what is wrong with how Muslims raise girls? Why are so many of them on the streets at night? Shouldn't the community face up to its shocking moral breakdown?

While our media continue to exclude minority voices in general, such lazy racial generalisations are likely to continue. Even the story of a single Asian man acting alone in a sex case made the headlines. As in Derby this month, countless similar cases involving white men go unreported.

We have been here before, of course: in the 1950s, West Indian men were labelled pimps, luring innocent young white girls into prostitution. By the 1970s and 80s they were vilified as muggers and looters. And two years ago, Channel 4 ran stories, again based on a tiny set of data, claiming there was an endemic culture of gang rape in black communities. The victims weren't white, though, so media interest soon faded. It seems that these stories need to strike terror in the heart of white people for them to really take off.

What is also at play here is the inability of people, when learning about a different culture or race, to distinguish between the aberrations of a tiny minority within that group, and the normal behaviour of a significant section. Some examples are small in number but can be the tip of a much wider problem: eg, knife crime, which is literally the sharp end of a host of problems affecting black communities ranging from family breakdown, to poverty, to low school achievement and social exclusion.

But in Asia, Pakistan or Islam there is no culture of grooming or sex abuse – any more than there is anywhere else in the world – so the tiny number of cases have no cultural significance. Which means those who believe it, or perpetuate it, are succumbing to racism, much as they may protest. Exactly the same mistake was made after 9/11, when the actions of a tiny number of fanatics were used to cast aspersions against a 1.5 billion-strong community worldwide. Motives were questioned: are you with us or the terrorists? How fundamental are your beliefs? Can we trust you?

Imagine if, after Anders Breivik's carnage in Norway last year, which he claimed to be in defence of the Christian world, British people were repeatedly asked whether they supported him? Lumped together in the same white religious group as the killer and constantly told they must renounce him, or explain why we should believe that their type of Christianity – even if they were non-believers – is different from his. "It's nothing to do with me", most people would say. But somehow that answer was never good enough when given by Muslims over al-Qaida. And this hectoring was self-defeating because it caused only greater alienaton and resentment towards the west and, in particular, its foreign policies.

Ultimately, the urge to vilify groups of whom we know little may be very human, and helps us bond with those we feel are "like us". But if we are going to deal with the world as it is, and not as a cosy fantasyland where our group is racially and culturally supreme, we have to recognise when sweeping statements are false.

And if we truly care about the sexual exploitation of girls, we need to know that we must look at all communities, across the whole country, and not just at those that play to a smug sense of superiority about ourselves. Source

Where are the Girls in this Mosque?

 I was shopping in another part of Toronto the other day, accompanied by my siblings, and it was time for the Maghreb prayer. There was a big mosque nearby and we drove there. There was one entrance called "Sisters' Entrance", my sister entered from there, while my brother and I walked around the mosque to enter via the main entrance - aka the "brother's entrance".

It was a very nice, huge, ornate, well designed mosque. It was also quite new; the mosque used to be two portables fitting around 40 people before, now this was a proper mosque accomodating thousands. The main prayers were over; so my brother and I prayed by ourselves. The main prayer hall was divided into two sections - a glass barrier separating the dimly lit "private" space from the main hall - this is where we prayed. The sisters' area was upstairs.

As we finished praying, I noticed there was a dars (a lesson) going on. I sat down and listened for a bit. The speaker was an old bearded man, he sat in the centre of the main hall surrounded by kids and adults, and he was speaking in flawless English. The topic of the speech was taking lessons from the life of the Prophets and applying it to modern times. As I listened, I realized the speaker was really good, and the speech was excellent. The kids listened with rapt attention.

And yet ... take a look at the picture below.

Everyone shown around the speaker is a male. The adults were male, the kids were male, and of course the speaker was male. Where are the females.

"Oh, they are upstairs, listening too," Answered someone, when I asked them. "We have speakers and close circuit TV."

This is the problem, the big problem, in today's Muslim organizations. If you take a look at this picure, there is a LOT of empty space behind the men, in the MAIN prayer hall. Why can't girls sit here, in close proximity to the speaker, so they can personally ask him questions, or be inspired in way that only a face-to-face conversation can? Sitting behind the men will satisfy any requirements that orthodox Muslims can throw at them, and not to mention, teaching women this way is actually a sunnah.

I remember going to these classes, sometimes as a kid, often as an adult, when a well known speaker would come to the mosque, and being inspired by the Islamic knowledge imparted. If my sister or wife would attend, sometimes I would wonder why they were not similarly impressed. Hard to be impressed when you are looking at a curtain, I think!

I was reading Cartoon Muhammad's article "The Need for Muslim Women Leaders". He is on the mark on how certain segments of the mosque community (let's be candid - it's the more "religious" folk) who construct barriers (literally and figuratively) against Muslim women speakers.

However, the problem that I saw in this mosque, in this dars, prevent women from seeking knowledge in the first place. Muslim Student Associations all across Canada talk about Israel Apartheid, but we have to be honest and admit there remains an Apartheid system in many of our mosques that discriminate against half our community - the girls.

Contrast this to the times of Caliph Umar (the Caliph of the Muslim empire!) being corrected by a woman during a Friday Khutbah! Or even contrast this with the Sayeda Khadija Centre in Mississauga, Ontario. When I was there, the first few rows were occupied by men, and the next few rows were occupied by women. Sisters conversed with the imam (who was standing, in person, a mere 50 feet away from them). And this was no progressive "flaky" imam, this was Imam Hamid Slimi who also teaches at the prestigious Islamic Institute of Toronto.

If you are a woman, which mosque would you go to?  Source

Women Victimized by Yemeni ‘Exchange Marriages’

SANA'A -- Women living in areas of rural Yemen are increasingly losing their say regarding whom they marry as they become caught-up in the widespread phenomenon of ‘exchange marriages,’ in which money and family ties outweigh romance.

The expression rises from the phenomenon of spouses from two families being traded in what is essentially more of a business arrangement than a traditional marriage, Dr. Abdul-Baqi Shamsan, professor of sociology at Sana'a University, explained.

Shamsan told The Media Line that the main victim of this type of marriage is the woman. “In such exchange marriages, the women are dealt with as commodities by the family’s or group's elders, who strip them of their right to choose their life partners,” he said.

Poverty and tribal traditions push many people into marrying-off their children this way in order to avoid paying unaffordable high dowries or to strengthen ties between the families involved. But the prospect of these marriages ending in divorce is very high because usually if one couple breaks up, the other would most likely follow suit. Even if they don’t, the family-members from the second couple often intervene to end the second union as well.

So when Maha Saleh Al-Kawlani, 25, came home in tears and told her brother Mohammed that her husband Fuad had divorced and but kept their 18-month-old son with him, her family, which considered the divorce to be an act of ultimate disrespect to them, reacted with outrage.

Just a few days after his sister Maha’s divorce, Mohammed, seeking to get even with his brother-in-law for dishonoring his family, divorced his wife and Fuad's sister Jamila, keeping their two-year-old daughter with him. "From the time we got married, the family problems never stopped…Our marriages were dependent upon each other," Mohammed told The Media Line.

Their exchange marriage, which had been arranged by Mohammed's father Saleh Al-Kawlani and his father-in-law three years earlier, according to Shamsan never stood much of a chance because, he said, “exchange marriages are not based on acceptance, love and respect. Whenever one couple doesn't get along and breaks up, the other part of the business deal is that the other couple will likely break up as well.”

A similar story exposing the hazards of exchange marriages was told by translator Abdusalam Rajeh, 35, who married his cousin twelve years ago, and in turn, two of his cousins married two of his sisters. Rajeh said his father and uncle arranged their marriages, but nevertheless asked the would-be brides and grooms for their opinions.
“Unfortunately, most of the family problems that my wife and I experienced stemmed from external factors. For instance, if my sister and her husband quarreled, our marriage would be affected,” Rajeh recounted.

The father of six, Rajeh said his wife was taken forcibly from him by her father to her father's house more than once after Rajeh's sister went to Rajeh's family's home because of quarrels with her husband.

"Sometimes we had problems and the other couple was adversely affected," he said, adding, "Indeed, problems from the exchange marriage sent my marriage to the verge of collapse more than once.”

Things became so bad that he divorced his wife four years ago. "But my love for my kids and my wife; and my determination not to break up this family," led him to take her back, he explained to The Media Line.

According to Islamic law, a husband can be re-married to his ex-wife if he divorced her once or twice, but after the third divorce she must first be married to another man in order for her original husband to marry her again. This time, Rajeh said he took no chances, making an agreement with his uncle and brother-in-law that if one couple had problems, this must not have any effect at all on the other couple.

"However, I still feel that my marriage is not based on a firm foundation and is therefore prone to collapse at any time," Rajeh rued. “Though the interference of families in our marriages has significantly decreased since the agreement, it still sometimes comes into play."

Rajeh’s wife, 30-year old Shams Ahmed, told The Media Line that, "Exchange marriages simply mean unending problems [usually] resulting from other people's actions which we have nothing to do with.”

While there are no statistics on how many people are involved in exchange marriages, Abdulmalik Salah, a sociologist at the Yemen Center for Social Studies and Research Labor, told The Media Line that, "According to our knowledge of Yemeni society, we can say it's a widespread phenomenon in the rural areas, especially in poverty-stricken ones." Such areas constitute around 70 percent of the country.” According to Salah, some 60 per cent of couples marrying this way end up divorcing.

Salah said that the factors behind this widespread phenomenon include the harsh economic conditions, the high illiteracy rates among people in the rural areas, and their lack of religious understanding. Exchange marriage is actually prohibited in Islam, so Salah says that some people agree to pay low dowries to each other in order to get around this religious prohibition. For example, what might have been an expected dowry of $5,000 might instead end up no more than $100, according to Salah.

Shamsan agreed with Salah, adding that, "Some tribal people adopt this form of marriage in order to strengthen the bonds between their families; or uses it in an attempt to extend their influence." However, he said this often backfires as the relationship between the two groups or tribes involved in the exchange marriage turns sour when because of the divorce of one or both of the couples.

Indeed, Mohammed's father, Saleh Al-Kawlani, told The Media Line that, "The good relationship that I used to share with my cousin Ali turned into animosity after we married our children in an exchange marriage. Now, we don't even say ‘Hi’ when we cross the road.”

Mohammed himself hopes to put the whole experience behind him by marrying again, but stressed he would “never, ever marry or let any members of the family get married in an exchange marriage.”

His father agreed, saying, “I should never have arranged such marriages for my children. I had heard a lot about the ill-effects of exchange marriage, but I did not believe them before. I would never accept my children marrying in this way -- ever again.”

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Manhood & Womanhood in Islam - By: Yasmin Mogahed & Yassir Fazaga

I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t

 THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience for an Indian women’s magazine. It created a stir in the women’s movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared. Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rageafter a young woman’s rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

It’s not exactly pleasant to be a symbol of rape. I’m not an expert, nor do I represent all victims of rape. All I can offer is that — unlike the young woman who died in December two weeks after being brutally gang raped, and so many others — my story didn’t end, and I can continue to tell it.

When I fought to live that night, I hardly knew what I was fighting for. A male friend and I had gone for a walk up a mountain near my home. Four armed men caught us and made us climb to a secluded spot, where they raped me for several hours, and beat both of us. They argued among themselves about whether or not to kill us, and finally let us go.

At 17, I was just a child. Life rewarded me richly for surviving. I stumbled home, wounded and traumatized, to a fabulous family. With them on my side, so much came my way. I found true love. I wrote books. I saw a kangaroo in the wild. I caught buses and missed trains. I had a shining child. The century changed. My first gray hair appeared.

Too many others will never experience that. They will not see that it gets better, that the day comes when one incident is no longer the central focus of your life. One day you find you are no longer looking behind you, expecting every group of men to attack. One day you wind a scarf around your throat without having a flashback to being choked. One day you are not frightened anymore.

Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women. It is horrible because you are violated, you are scared, someone else takes control of your body and hurts you in the most intimate way. It is not horrible because you lose your “virtue.” It is not horrible because your father and your brother are dishonored. I reject the notion that my virtue is located in my vagina, just as I reject the notion that men’s brains are in their genitals.

If we take honor out of the equation, rape will still be horrible, but it will be a personal, and not a societal, horror. We will be able to give women who have been assaulted what they truly need: not a load of rubbish about how they should feel guilty or ashamed, but empathy for going through a terrible trauma.

The week after I was attacked, I heard the story of a woman who was raped in a nearby suburb. She came home, went into the kitchen, set herself on fire and died. The person who told me the story was full of admiration for her selflessness in preserving her husband’s honor. Thanks to my parents, I never did understand this.

The law has to provide real penalties for rapists and protection for victims, but only families and communities can provide this empathy and support. How will a teenager participate in the prosecution of her rapist if her family isn’t behind her? How will a wife charge her assailant if her husband thinks the attack was more of an affront to him than a violation of her?

At 17, I thought the scariest thing that could happen in my life was being hurt and humiliated in such a painful way. At 49, I know I was wrong: the scariest thing is imagining my 11-year-old child being hurt and humiliated. Not because of my family’s honor, but because she trusts the world and it is infinitely painful to think of her losing that trust. When I look back, it is not the 17-year-old me I want to comfort, but my parents. They had the job of picking up the pieces.

This is where our work lies, with those of us who are raising the next generation. It lies in teaching our sons and daughters to become liberated, respectful adults who know that men who hurt women are making a choice, and will be punished.

When I was 17, I could not have imagined thousands of people marching against rape in India, as we have seen these past few weeks. And yet there is still work to be done. We have spent generations constructing elaborate systems of patriarchy, caste and social and sexual inequality that allow abuse to flourish. But rape is not inevitable, like the weather. We need to shelve all the gibberish about honor and virtue and did-she-lead-him-on and could-he-help-himself. We need to put responsibility where it lies: on men who violate women, and on all of us who let them get away with it while we point accusing fingers at their victims.

Source

Where rape is seen as violence

Rape cultures are nourished by norms, attitudes, and practices that trivialise, tolerate, or even condone violence against women.The legitimisation of prostitution and trafficking will only support the myth of male supremacy, increasing such crimes

A cruel and bizarre idea has surfaced since the rape of the 23-year-old student in Delhi — that prostitution should be legalised because ‘men will be men’ and, if prostitutes exist girls from ‘good’ families will not be raped.

Besides the very elitist notion that poor women should be sexually available to protect middle-class women, the idea is an insult to most men who do not have an unbridled sexual desire. Most men will not rape women if they are not obtainable otherwise. Most men, like most women, know that there is an appropriate place and time for sex and build relationships around it. They don’t see rape as sex, but rape as violence.

However, the masculinity of the minority of men, who rape women, is not questioned by their fellow men. Men are silent, even if they don’t condone acts of sexual violence and domination by other men. They do not break the unwritten code of honour among men, by speaking up or reporting sexual violence and harassment.

This gives free reign to the cult of masculinity that creates supremacy crimes. Damini (name changed) was not just raped but monstrously violated with several objects ultimately leading to her death, showing that the rapists’ actions were based on a desire to dominate and violate. The legitimisation of prostitution and trafficking will only support the myth of male supremacy, increasing such crimes.

Prostituted women do exist. The CBI admits to three million prostituted women in our country. Yet National Crime Records Bureau data shows that between 1953 and 2011, the incidents of rape went up by 873 per cent. Obviously the root cause of rape is not lack of access to sex but a hatred for women and a desire for violence to women’s reproductive parts. Perhaps this data proves that the existence of prostitution normalises a rape culture.

Rape cultures are nourished by norms, attitudes, and practices that trivialise, tolerate, or even condone violence against women. They are further normalised if there is impunity for perpetrators either due to a lack of effective legal mechanisms or apathy to prosecuting crimes against women.

ROLE OF PORNOGRAPHY

These misogynistic norms are actually being promoted by the sex industry turning huge profits. India has become the third largest user of pornography in the world. Blue movies and CDs are available at any street corner, besides of course as phone and Internet applications. For many 12-year-olds, the first sexual encounter is a pop-up character on a TV screen, being penetrated in every part of her body, crying with tears streaming down her face, yet asking for more. This confusing message socialises some boys into believing that sex is connected to violence and domination and when a woman says no she means yes.

I would be curious to know if police investigators have thought to ask Damini’s rapists if they ever watched porn and how much. The answer may require a response, in addition to punishing the individual men.

It may require looking at a multibillion dollar sex industry that is creating notions of masculinity, which are increasing, not acting as a buffer, to the violence and rape in our culture.

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