Thursday, January 03, 2013
CORRECTING THE PERSPSECTIVE ON INDIAN RAPE
As ever, entirely the wrong perspective has been adopted re men/women regarding the truly horrific assault on the woman and her fiancé in India. The very strength of the reaction in India could not better illustrate that there hardly is political change needed or in process. Women are always regarded as specially deserving of consideration and protection: in any culture and at any historical juncture. This is as true in India as anywhere else. Hence, we have heard little if anything in comparison about the serious injuries the woman's fiancé suffered in trying to defend her; and that he has now lost his fiancée.
The very low incidence of 'stranger' rape generally within communities shows clearly that it is not a problem of any sort of supposed general attitude towards women. Where problems do arise it is across community boundaries. This is why rape often becomes a major issue in war – where women are still much better off than are men, of course, in that the men get killed rather than raped, whereas the women are either left alone or possibly raped, and rarely killed.
In a very large nation like India, riven as it is by major community boundaries, then it is no great surprise that there is a relatively high incidence of 'stranger' rape; but this is a problem indicative of serious division and conflict generally rather than rape specifically; as evidenced by the routine murder and serious injury of men.
The attitude of the Indian police is explained by a combination of the usual incompetence evident in any public service organisation in a poor, non-'Western' country and the well-evidenced understanding by police around the world that a high proportion of rape reports to police are fabrications – 50-70% according to Sir Ian Blair's own research; 90% according to specialist rape investigators in some places, and never less than 50% anywhere in the world. The feminist mantra that there is nothing unusual compared to other crimes about female false reports of sexual (or other cross-sex) assault is entirely contradicted by the data and by research into motivations revealing a spread of alarmingly trivial reasons that are all the women bogus complainants appear to need.
No doubt the Indian police should do a lot more to deal with the incidence of 'stranger' rape, but regarding what crime do the Indian police not need to get their act together?
# posted by Steve Moxon @ 7:03 pm 
