Update: My blog post on the bogus nature of UN rape studies:
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2014/02/02/the-highest-rape-rates-by-country/
ORIGINAL POST
An Indian “rape crisis” has been evoked in the major media in the wake of the infamous Delhi gang-rape of 2012.
The “rape culture” narrative about India has come to signal the regressive, medieval nature of traditional Indian masculinity.
Palash Ghosh argues that Indian men, who, after 9/11, were conflated with the category “terrorist,” are now being conflated with the category, “rapist.”
Delhi gang-rape trial: A new and negative image for Indian men? Palash Ghosh, Ibntimes.com, Feb 5, 2013
I would suggest that this conflation is intentional and it is typical of the demonization campaigns carried out by the Western state media against countries targeted for intervention, whether that takes the form of bombing or of proxy wars or of NGO psyops.
I would suggest that there is no “rape crisis” in India in need of such international intervention.
There is, however, an over-hyped, UN-backed, elite-manufactured issue that functions as a site for state intervention.
The ” rape crisis” is actually the creation of the left-liberal ideology that fronts for the corporate interests of Western elites.
This can be readily deciphered from the media stories about the Delhi gang rape.
The major media (Western elite) coverage of the Delhi rape posited it as typical of the medieval village culture characterizing Delhi, in which no Westernized/modern woman can ever be safe.
In contrast, the truly cosmopolitan cities of the West protect women, ran the elite narrative.
Statistics, of course, do not bear this story out.
Poulami Roychowdhury has argued as much in her lengthy academic analysis of the story:
“The Delhi Gang Rape: The Making of International Causes.”
QUOTE:
“CNN likened the assailants to men in other “traditional societies” who “see improvements in the status of women as a challenge to their own” and who use rape as a weapon of power against such advances.”
Roychowdhury shows how the international media created a false narrative of a Westernized, modern woman attacked by traditional, patriarchal, village men.
The truth is both the victim and her assailants were remarkably similar in moving from lower-class agricultural backgrounds into an urban setting.
The international media narrative also ignored the Indian man who attempted to save the victim.
He was also stripped and assaulted.
But the media erased him entirely from public consciousness.
QUOTE
“It goes almost without saying that Pandey’s case illustrates the ongoing resilience and appeal of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “white men saving brown women from brown men.”
Spivak’s theory illuminates why Pandey’s male friend, Awindra Pandey, disappeared from the pages of international media while Pandey and her assailants took pride of place in the discussion. Commentators seemed to forget that Awindra was even on the busand was also physically assaulted, stripped naked, and dumped on the side of the road. He disappeared, Firstly, because his body stood outside the economy of international care: white men are not in the business of saving brown men from other brown men. He also had to disappear because brown men are not typically viewed as allies of brown women.”
Chowdhury also demonstrates how the emancipated female subject in the third-world exists in a narrative that ties her emancipation to her full participation in the neo-liberal economy.
She is described as going to malls and movies on her own, wearing Western clothes and accoutrements.
Meanwhile the atavism of her male attackers is tied to their lack of integration into that economy.
Neither construction is accurate.
The “rape crisis” was a creation of radical feminism embedded in the neo-liberal market-place, not an off-shoot of traditional Indian culture.
ITEM A The rape crisis is driven by financial incentives created by misguided, if not malicious, laws put in place by feminist ideologues.
See, “India to pay women big money to cry rape,” False Rape Society, January 8, 2010
It describes the law which has driven the “crisis of rape” now bearing fruition.
” It [India] has decreed that every woman who testifies that a male raped her will be handed the equivalent of 4,374.96 US dollars, a not-insignificant sum anywhere, but a huge payday in India.”
[Lila: in terms of Indian salaries, this would be the equivalent of $200,000 in the West, if we use the exchange rate prevalent at the time. Of course, this translation doesn’t account for the differing purchasing powers of the currencies, but $4, 374.96 is nonetheless a very large sum in India.]
ITEM B
The “rape crisis” is driven by cultural Marxism
The goal of cultural Marxism is to create morally and biologically neutral “genders” that are fungible and detached from the traditional family structure.
Indeed, it is to construct “gender” so that it is inimical to family life.
In that regard, it’s notable that the man behind many of the protests following the Delhi gang-rape case was a left-wing radical.
He was a communist radical from the hot-bed of left-wing ideology, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The protests following the rapes were also organized mainly by left-wing radicals.
Many of the protests turned violent, injuring nearly 150 people.
QUOTE:
“The protests, largely by students, saw hooligan elements mingled in the crowd uproot wooden poles erected for the Jan 26 Republic Day event and set them afire at five places. They upturned vehicles, smashed window panes of buses and other vehicles and also hurled stones and water bottles on policemen in response to tear gas and baton attacks to prevent protesters from marching towards Raisina Hills, where prohibitory orders were put in place.”
Pictures of the protests were circulated world-wide, bringing even the UN into the picture.
The UN made official pronouncements about a “rape culture” in India.
This led to the usual politically-motivated commentary from the liberal-left spectrum of the Western media.
However, a few conservative/men’s rights blogs didn’t buy the story and correctly diagnosed the “rape crisis” as a concoction of left-feminist ideological activism.
Similar accusations of an American “rape-culture” have been accurately deconstructed by Dr. Christina Hoff Summers
“Researching the “rape-culture” of America,” Christina Hoff Summers, False-rape.net.
Only a year after the Delhi gang-rape case, the JNU communist who was behind the Indian “rape-crisis” agitation was himself accused of rape. He became the subject of the usual trial-by-media-innuendo-and-womyn’s-assertion.
He killed himself, a victim of the left-anarchist monster he created.
The extremist ideology behind the “rape crisis” is evident in the new unequal laws in India.
In the case of rape:
See “Only men can be booked for rape,“ Nagendra Sharma, Hindustan Times, March 5, 2013
“Bowing to pressure from women activists, the government has decided to restore the term rape in criminal law that states only men can be booked for committing the offence against women. It has also decided to lower the age of consent for sex from 18 to 16 years.”
This is not gender-neutrality but gender-privileging. It means that a female assault of a male, or a male assault of a male, or a male or female assault of a male child, are lesser crimes, to be treated under the separate section in the Indian legal code that pertains to unnatural sexual acts.
But that section does not make the rape of a male a crime against a person. Instead, it treats it as a crime against nature, like voluntary homosexuality.
That means female rapists/molesters of men or children can be guilty of unnatural acts, but not of rape, a most significant perversion of equal justice under the law.
In the case of domestic violence:
A woman can get a restraining order against her husband or boyfriend if he threatens suicide.
Under Indian law, threats of suicide by a man, however, are treated as domestic violence against the woman.
The reverse does not obtain.
If India were really a woman-hating patriarchy, as the feminists proclaim, would such laws pass?
At one men’s rights site, an activist writes:
[Note added: Paul Elam, the founder of the site, “A Voice for Men,” seems to have anger management problems that have led him to make incendiary statements I do not in any way endorse. I also do not support the harassment of feminist activists.]
“We’ve already seen men in that country [India] forced to the back of buses like African-Americans in 1950s America. We’ve seen them beaten up by members of the public and female police officers alike for accidentally boarding the “female only” carriage of a train. And now we’re seeing the government actively denying them equal protection under the law in sexual assaults.“
Conclusion: What is going on in India is not a rape crisis but a crisis of misandry.
1. “Indian Communist feminist Khurshid Anwar commits suicide after rape allegations,“ Anil Kumar, A Voice for Men, Dec. 30, 2013.
2.” Woman should be booked for filing fake rape case, says HC,” Urvi Mahajani, DNA India, August 1, 2013
3. “Be vigilant about false rape cases: HC to trial judges,” Harish Nair, Hindustan Times, May 24, 2013
4. “18% rape cases false, study,” Times of India, Dec. 27, 2008
5. Delhi gang-rape case: Police find discrepancies in victim’s statement,” FirstPost, Jan 28, 2014
6. Activists: Indian media sensationalized Delhi gang-rape case, Venus Upadhyaya, Epoch Times, October 11, 2013
7. Attributing rapes to unique Indian culture reeks of bias, Gajanan Khergamker, Eurasia Review, March 28, 2013
8. Indian government – men don’t matter, David Cuspis, A Voice for Men, March 29, 2013
9. One in four men in Asia ‘admits to committing rape’? It doesn’t add up, Stuart Brown, The Guardian, Sept 18, 2013.
10. A sad day for male rape victims in India, Toy Soldiers, March 6, 2013
In so doing, Planned Parenthood is more than just outside mainstream American values. Its effort to preserve an abortion-on-demand policy through all nine months of pregnancy is out of step with the global community.
