How to illustrate your news story on rape

(From the Feb 2012 Times of India story, 'Constable booked for raping minor':



(From the Times of India story on the Kolkata car rape victim)



(From IBN Live news reports; this seems to be a standard IBN visual for rape news stories)



(From IBN Live news reports; FirstPost carried the same screengrab)

Department of Rants: The 2 am rule for rapists

"If you travel alone after 2 am and become victim of a crime, the police alone can't be blamed. It is advisable that a relative or friend is with you at odd hours." Delhi Police chief, BK Gupta, on crimes against women in the capital.


I'm assuming the Delhi Police chief, Mr BK Gupta, is a conscientious man who often patrols the city at 2 in the morning, remarking on the astoundingly high number of women out on the city's streets. I'm also assuming that his Delhi is significantly different from the city we live in, where most women who work in offices and shops will try to get back home at a "decent" hour, where it can be actively dangerous for women to walk around the city after 7-8 pm, and where it's scary taking the Metro or a bus after 9 pm, when the number of women travelling by subway seems to fall sharply.

I'm also assuming that Mr Gupta's access to Delhi's rising rape figures reveals a pattern none of us had suspected--the only reason for the Delhi Police chief to imply that women would be safer if they didn't insist on wandering the city at 2 am, after all, would be if he had noticed a distinct pattern of rapes and assaults on women occurring after 2 am.

That would make us want to assume that this attempted rape of a child, which took place at 3 pm, or this case of rape, which began well before 2 am, or any of the cases of molestation and assault that happen in the Metro or on public transport during the day, are statistical outliers. The fact is that except for call-centre rapes--often crimes of opportunity, where the rapist(s) will wait for a car to drop off a BPO worker late at night--rapists don't keep to Mr Gupta's timings, nor do men who're into harassing or assaulting women.

The truth is that Mr Gupta and his police force have been unable to make the capital a safe place for women, and part of the reason why the police repeatedly fail may have something to do with this attitude, this expectation that women should always take the blame. It's our clothes that get us raped, or the fact that we're out in public spaces, or that we have the temerity to be out without a (male) guardian: there is no parallel analysis of male behaviour in the city.

But it's not Mr Gupta's ridiculous premise--logically, he's arguing that women are more often at risk of violence after 2 am--that we need to get angry about. It's the belief behind his statements, that somehow, just by insisting on being out and about in public space, women bear the responsibility for the attacks perpetrated on them. It reinforces a powerful view of Delhi as a man's city, with public space defined as masculine by default, women defined as interlopers and intruders as a matter of course.

It's one thing to be told this, in harsh ways, by some idiot who'll brush up against you on the road, or follow you back from the bus stop. It's another thing to be told, by the police chief in your city, that if you're out after 2 am without a male protector, you get what you deserve. You don't see BK Gupta addressing men in this city, telling them that they should be ashamed of themselves for treating women with disrespect. You don't see him lecturing the boys and men who're out looking for victims, before or after 2 am, on the evils of their ways. You don't see him saying that as the police chief of India's capital, he has a zero-tolerance policy towards men who harass or offer any kind of violence to women.

Instead, he's effectively endorsing the old arguments that women, somehow, ask for it, by being where they shouldn't be, by having the temerity to travel the city without that all-important protector. The stereotype of violence against women that he's promoting is an old one, too: a crime visited upon those who in some way transgress the norms, who call violence upon their heads by "dangerous behaviour". This ignores the facts about rape and violence in the city, the fact that a slum dweller is at higher risk for being raped because of her unsafe surroundings and the perception that she has no means of redressal; the fact that neighbours and family relatives are often the ones who offer violence towards women; the fact that our streets can feel, to women, like battle zones, regardless of how you dress and when you're out.

But all of this is too complex for Delhi's police chief, who might then have to admit the truth--about the relatively low reporting of rape as a crime, the lack of seriousness with which we treat sexual assault and verbal harassment, the low conviction rate in cases of assault and rape, the unthinking aggression of many (not all) men in Delhi. He might actually have to ask his police force to change the way they treat women who are out and about at 2 am, or even at 2 pm. He might even have to change his own mind about the way he sees violence against women in this city. And if Mr Gupta can't do this, he doesn't really deserve to keep his job.



(The views expressed here are personal.)

If we discussed men the same way that we talk about women…

(Thousands of women come out on the streets to protest via SlutWalks, after a Toronto constable suggests that women could protect themselves better by not dressing like sluts.)


“Of course he’s a rapist, did you see the trousers he was wearing? And that vest? Why would a man wear that kind of clothing if he wasn’t out cruising for a victim?”

“The give away is the brand of jeans. If you see a bunch of guys walking down the road wearing Levis or Diesels, it’s all right, they’re not going to rape you. Other brands—well, I’d be careful. Just saying. You never know what a man wearing another kind of brand is thinking.”

“We always suspected he was a rapist. He’d leave the house every day wearing pajama-kurta—it’s obvious now that he didn’t want to waste time undoing buttons and zips.”

“According to police experts, women should be careful around men in tight jeans. Men in tight jeans are showcasing their sexuality and drawing attention to the power of their libido. Women should also be careful around men in loose jeans. Men in loose jeans have something to conceal, and may either be covering up an excess of sexuality or compensating for feelings of inadequacy. Many experts caution that men who wear pajama-kurta, shalwar-kameez, dhotis or lungis are subliminally indicating intent to rape, because these clothes are less restricting than Western wear.
Men in business suits, say some studies, are considered high risk because they are already accustomed to wielding power and carrying out certain forms of corporate violence. And women should stay far away from men in shorts, boxers and swimming trunks, who are sending out signals that rape would be expedient and easy for them. Police experts on rape suggest that in order to avoid becoming rapists, men should stay at home, not venture out after dark and dress in several layers of clothes—four pairs of jeans, six pairs of shorts—to indicate their willingness to support women’s rights and their intent never to rape.”

But these are things we never do. We never look at male behaviour; it's always the women in the spotlight. We never ask questions about what makes men think they have the right to rape, or to harass; we never look at what a man's wearing when he whistles at, or grabs, or attacks, or assaults, a woman; we never demand that men change their behaviour, their attitudes, their habits; we never shame rapists the way we shame the raped.

A quiet rant on the Assange case, and a response to Kavita Krishnan

I have a lot of respect for Kavita Krishnan and her work in the field of women’s rights in India. Reading the first four paragraphs of her opinion piece in the Huffington Post on rape, I was in complete agreement with her. Krishnan confirmed my understanding of the way rape laws work in this country-—the conviction rate is low, reporting rapes is often a difficult, brutalizing process, and the understanding of consent is limited in the legal system. (Marital rape is not yet an offence, for instance; and a woman’s right to the integrity of her own body is not at all well defined in India, in either legal or cultural terms.)

It is in the final paragraph of Krishnan’s article where we part company. Here’s what she has to say:

“Certainly, from the perspective of all those women in India who find the most brutal of rapists going free, protected by the police and the state, and their most serious charges of rape trivialized or even suppressed by force, the idea of a man being hunted down by Interpol on charges which are as complex and ambiguous as those in the Assange case is disturbing. From what I hear, Sweden's rape laws are nothing to quarrel with, and are in fact quite enviable for us in India, where even marital rape is yet to be deemed illegal. But for the US to fire at Assange from the shoulders of the two Swedish women indeed is an insult to the women struggling in vain for justice the world over. It is possible that Assange's casual flings with female fans may not be very democratic; he may be guilty of insensitivity to the concerns and rights of women (for instance their right to be free from HIV). But if sexism is a crime worthy of Interpol's attention, then Interpol should immediately arrest Silvio Berlusconi and Bill Clinton, just for starters!”

The Assange case is complex, and has drawn intense scrutiny across the world. At present, allegations have been made by two Swedish women of sexual assault, sexual molestation and, under the nuanced provisions of Swedish law, an allegation of "less severe" rape; he has not yet been formally charged. The case is nuanced and it would be very wrong to assume his guilt. (I’m attaching some links that might be of interest below.) But this is why I disagree with Krishnan, and think that she has not paid enough attention to the details of the Assange case before offering her opinion on it.

1) She assumes that the allegations brought against Assange by the two Swedish women are part of a US-backed conspiracy; there has been little evidence of this so far. There are legitimate fears that the case will be misused, and legitimate questions about the workings of the legal system and the timing of the case, given Assange’s current situation, but news accounts do not support the idea that the two women are involved in any conspiracy theory. The allegations made by the two Swedish women should be treated as a separate matter, in the absence of any evidence to back the conspiracy theory.


2) It’s a fallacy to assume that because the worst and most violent instances of rape routinely go unchecked across the world—Somalia, South Africa, India and a score of other countries—it is an insult to those women to seek redressal for cases that involve apparently lesser degrees of rape and sexual assault.

The allegations against Assange wouldn’t hold up in any Indian court for a reason: the rape laws in this country are extremely unevolved. A woman’s consent or withdrawal of consent is not taken seriously, and the assumption most courts would make is that if a woman agrees to sleep with a man, she gets what she deserves, even if the man subsequently overrides her wishes or uses force.

The better argument would be not to envy or marvel at Sweden’s laws, but to work for more progressive laws in India. In terms of degree, there is a difference between a Dalit woman brutalized and raped by the men of her village, or a Somalian woman subjected to repeated, violent rape, and a woman who experiences a turning point when the man she’s in bed with uses unacceptable force or coercion. But can we be clear that both of these—first-degree and third-degree rape, so to speak--are unacceptable, instead of drawing false parallels?

3) Krishnan should know better than to assume that Assange’s crime is “sexism”. The allegations made by the two Swedish women concern sexual molestation, sexual assault and "less severe" rape. These are not trivial, if true. And this case is not about an HIV test, sex by surprise, or a broken condom. It’s about consent, the overriding of that consent and the use of force in the process of the overriding of a woman’s consent. The allegations made by these two women deserve to be taken seriously. There’s a big difference between being "insensitive" to a woman’s fear of HIV, and the allegations of molestation and assault laid out in the Guardian report.

I am not an expert on either the law, or on rape victims, though I have written on rape and sexual assault in the course of writing for the gender beat. I’m following this case the way I’ve followed rape trials in India—just as an observer and as a woman who is interested in women’s rights.

But Kavita Krishnan is an expert, and she should know better than to prejudge two women, and to trivialize the allegations they have made against Assange. I understand and share her concerns for the harshness that Indian women face, on a daily basis, and I understand how dealing with the everyday brutality of rape and rape charges in this country can make anyone wonder why the Assange case matters at all.

Here’s the thing. To the two women involved in this case—women who have been vilified, who have had their names and addresses posted on the Internet, who have been blamed and dismissed, even before the case comes to court--it matters. The laws in their part of the world allow them to file a complaint against a man like Assange; the laws in my part of the world would leave an Indian woman in a similar situation with little or no prospect of redressal. I get that discussing the nuances of consensual sex versus non-consensual sex might seem like a luxury, when every week brings its raft of gang rapes, call-centre rapes, caste-conflict-inspired rapes, the casual rapes of sex workers, the routine rape of Dalit women or women in conflict zones to our attention.

But the right to give or withdraw one’s consent is not a small thing. The right to say 'no' to one's sexual partner, when you're uncomfortable, afraid, in pain, or fear rape, and to have that 'no' heard and accepted, is not a small thing. The right to be heard instead of being dismissed, or belittled, or vilified, is not a small thing. The right to consent should be the right of every woman, and every man; it shouldn’t be a luxury at all.

Here are some links that might be of interest:
1) The full allegations against Assange, from the Guardian:
The two Swedish women say that consensual sex with Assange turned, in separate incidents, into non-consensual sex. One woman alleges that he used force to hold her down, and then deliberately tore his condom when she insisted that he wear one. The other woman alleges that after several instances of consensual sex, where she insisted that Assange wear a condom, she woke up to find him having sex with her, not wearing a condom. He faces charges under Swedish law of sexual molestation and sexual assault. The allegations are yet to be proved, and Assange is yet to be charged.

2) Jessica Valenti on the laws in Sweden and the US on rape, and issues of consent:

3) From Kate Harding, an early piece contesting Naomi Wolf’s assessment of the Assange case:

and a more recent post on the rape myths coming up in the wake of the Assange case:


4) Caroline May on the rift between feminists and progressives on the activist left:

5) Jaclyn Friedman on What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape:

and: Friedman debates Naomi Wolf on Democracy Now:

6) Salil Tripathi: When No Means No