Last December, a young woman was mercilessly gang-raped by six men while trying to catch a bus home in New Delhi, India. She died 10 days after the attack.

Much of the discourse that has been circulating within the media about this incident focuses on how India has a rape problem and then blaming this problem on Indian culture.

Certain attitudes found within Indian society toward women, like blaming women for being raped and justifying male anger, need to be addressed. At the same time, we cannot continue to demean Indian culture and hold it solely responsible for sexual violence.

According to research data, a woman is raped every 22 minutes in India. The National Crime Records Bureau reported 24,206 cases of rape in 2011. The organization indicated that out of the cases that made it to court, only 26 percent resulted in convictions.

For many Indians, the New Delhi rape was the final straw. After news of this violent rape broke, thousands of people all around India have participated in mass demonstrations calling for an end to rape culture and holding rapists responsible for their crimes.

The grossly violent nature of the New Delhi rape not only led to outcry within India, but from the world as well. While the media has been focusing on criticizing Indian culture, we need to remember that India is not the only country where sexual violence occurs.

In the United States, data collected by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed an average 207,754 victims of rape and sexual assault each year, while the FBI revealed that a mere 24 percent of those reports resulted in arrests.

Though it’s difficult to compare these statistics between India and the United Station when so many different factors, such as unreported cases, affect these numbers, they do show that we have a serious problem ourselves.

Yet it’s convenient to focus on how this culture of rape is perpetuated within Indian society, with its densely populated slums and rigid social systems, while we ignore how we are responsible for perpetuating a culture of rape within our own society by not properly holding people responsible for their crimes.

Otherwise, a group of high school football players from Steubenville, Ohio would never believe it was okay to document themselves on social media sexually assaulting an unconscious teenage girl, or believe they could get away with it because they are good at throwing a ball around.

Let’s not forget the account published last fall in the Amherst College campus newspaper by a former student of the insensitive response she received from school administrators after reporting she was raped. A school sexual assault counselor told her it wasn’t worth it to press charges against her attacker and if she was sure it was even rape.

I can only imagine the sense of hopelessness she and others subjected to sexual violence feel when they are confronted with the reality that their tormentor may get away with what he has done.

If India has a misogynistic society, then I’m not sure what I can say about our own society when they are both alike in so many ways. However, we can and need to do better than point fingers. Sexual violence against women is not inherent to only certain parts of the world, it’s a global human rights issue.

Rahimon Nasa is a sophomore magazine journalism and international relations major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @rararahima.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published on January 14, 2013 at 2:47 am