Synopsis : The
incidence of rape and murder of an innocent child, girl or a woman occurs in
societies where the men still feel superior to women and disapprove their
modern ways but the times are changing .Women are getting education and
training that puts them on equal footing with men that many can’t accept so
behave aggressively toward them. The blog looks at the tribal reasons behind
such behavior.
I get very annoyed when bad people are called animals
because animals are noble and have compassion whereas the bad people are not like noble animals.
Today I would like to write about a very primal instinct
in human beings that brings out the dark side that is usually covered with the
cloak of social taboos and norms. Since childhood we are taught by our parents,
our teachers and others what are good values and what are not. Most organized
religions do the same although what effect it has on the morality of the
average person is anyone’s guess.
Since the time unknown, men have been overly harsh on
women in most countries and have promulgated laws and rules for them to keep
them in their place that is home and hearth. These are called tribal laws that
have roots in the belief that women are the weaker sex so they must be
protected by men either by keeping them at home or through other means like
hijab, burqa or veils of some sort so that they remain invisible to men who
have bad intentions. This tradition still prevails in many Moslem countries
that prevents the women to show their full potential as human beings although
it is slowly changing.
They are discouraged to wear western clothes, form
fitting and revealing clothes or clothes that attract undue attention to their
bodies. They are discouraged to go to school because people are literally
afraid of educated women who may someday challenge the male hegemony over them.
This attitude of male superiority over women is prevalent
in uneducated tribal cultures where boys are preferred over girls, where girls
must be married off even before they reach puberty to prevent them from illicit
sex before marriage, where the hard core Islamists kill girls for going to
school and who question their authority, where the boys within the family learn
to dominate over their sisters and even mothers.
Women who are thus oppressed are fighting back and
steadily gaining their rights through protests and through education because
they get their support from their family. Some governments are taking proactive
steps to help women get education, jobs and training and are enacting laws in
their favor. Indian government recently banned the practice of Triple Talaq and
promotes fair compensation and equal treatment of women.
In India the child marriage is banned by law and now the
government is considering raising the minimum age for girls to get married from
18 to 20 but secretly and not so secretly some communities still practice child
marriage because it is very difficult to change their mind set and the tribal
culture.
The British stopped the inhuman practice of burning the
widows alive on the funeral pyre of their husbands although some tradition
bound Hindus opposed the law on the ground that it was their tradition. The
real reason was to acquire properties owned by the dead. Thankfully the law is
enacted throughout the country preventing this hateful crime but other
roadblocks to complete female emancipation still remain that are rooted deeply
in the patronizing culture in many societies in general in many parts of the
world that are being slowly overcome.
But during my grandfather’s time meaning some 90 years
ago, it was unheard of sending the girls to school anywhere in India although
some girls learned the alphabets and basic math at home simply because women’s
education was not their priority.
During the British Raaj, some British women started
schools for girls so they set up schools like Annie Besant school, St.Anthony school, Girl’s high
School, St. Mary’s school, Loreto and many others but 90 years ago very few
female children attended them and those who did stopped at grade 5th or 6th .
They were told by their mothers and elder sisters that the formal education was
not necessary for them since they were going to get married soon so they should
learn how to cook or mend clothes.
In rural areas where most Indians lived and still do,
this attitude is still prevalent although it is slowly changing because the
government actively promotes female education both at primary and secondary
level and makes it easier for the rural children to go to school
The western countries only recently ( 1918 ) allowed
women to vote and to get education and jobs with equal footing with men in
many sectors. The female education and
their right to vote in England and in the United States was a hard fought
battle they won so now you see women there have become professionals and can be
found nearly in all jobs that were previously open only to men including in the
armed services. The first black president and now the first woman as the vice
president in the United States show how far we have come. We see this trend
throughout the world although the success rate varies from country to country.
We all have the primal instinct to protect our children
from harm. Women breast feed and protect their babies just like the lioness due
to this primal instinct. This instinct is natural and benevolent.
But my subject of this blog is the dark primal instinct
of some men that comes to the fore even today when women are making tremendous
progress in every field and breaking all the old traditions that had tried to
puts limits on them. This dark side of some men is not a natural phenomenon but
a learned experience. The traditionalists irrespective of their religion and
location still believe that education for women makes them question their
authority that they find very hard to tolerate so they resist the female
emancipation with tragic consequences. They disapprove of women who wear tight
fitting and skimpy Western clothes, going out with boys late in the evening,
smoking, drinking, dancing in a seductive way, living with their boyfriends
before marriage and promiscuity. They see such women as a threat to their
tribal culture.
This disapproval was manifested one night when a teenage
girl was gang raped by a group of people in a running bus late at night in
Delhi just because she was with her boyfriend so they assumed that she was
promiscuous so should be punished this way. Her boyfriend was severely beaten
by them and both of them were dumped by the roadside. The girl beaten, raped
and severely bleeding from her injuries was found gasping for life when she was
brought to a hospital.
The prime minister of India sent her to Singapore in his
plane with doctors and nurses to assist her but unfortunately she died before
she could be helped. Her boyfriend survived but will bear the scar of the
incidence the rest of his life.
No day or week goes by without the report of rape of
children or gang rape of a teen age girl somewhere in India often resulting in
the death of the innocent. The police catches the culprits but no punishment is
enough for them because they took the life of an innocent girl.
This sort of crime is reported from every part of the
world and begs the question why people behave this way and commit such crimes?
This is the dark side of the human nature that manifests itself during the
struggle between the tribal culture and the modern age that recognizes the
right of women to get education, choose their mate often against the wishes of
their family, right to mix with boys at school, right to choose a profession
they like, right to pass competitive exams and become officers in the
government, right to dress the way they want, right to eat the food of their
choice, right to marry only when they feel that they are ready etc.
These rights that women worldwide are demanding and
making inroads into terrify the traditionalist because the tribal laws they
value comes under threat and their authority gets shaken up that they cannot
tolerate. When such tribal laws are passed on to the next generation of boys,
they too start to believe in them and start to look down on women who demand
their rights mentioned above. That is why I say that the sinister primal
instinct is a learned process and not a natural one.
This is especially true if the men remain without
education and skills so they express their hate toward a girl who is educated,
well dressed according to her taste and goes out with her boyfriend late at
night that triggers their dark primal instinct to rape the girl and beat her
boyfriend unconscious. A rape is often the expression of disapproval of ways of
modern women like in the case of that poor girl in Delhi and this disapproval
is linked to their tribal culture that goes easy on boys but is harsh on girls
and modernity.
When a girl goes out with a boy anywhere in a traditional
society, it is assumed that she is promiscuous so her behavior is socially
condemned let alone cases where men and women live together without marriage.
These guardians of the tribal society feel that they are responsible for the
moral standard they impose on everyone specially women but exempt the men for
the so called indiscretions. When a girl is gang raped in a village in India,
often the elders in the village council blame the girl saying that she must
have seduced the boys to do so and punish the girl. ( Read my blog called The story-of-Phoolan here )
The dark primal instinct that I write about here is a
product of the tribal culture that is diminishing in its influence on the
society as a whole in cities but is still found to a great extent in the uneducated
rural societies where women still face many difficulties they want to overcome.
The tribal culture that favors boys over girls is quite
tolerant of boys and says that it is perfectly alright for boys to seek sexual
satisfaction wherever they can including the prostitutes so they say that Oh
boys will be boys and they may sow wild oats but never the women.
There was a time in Medieval Europe when jealous men
forced their women to wear a chastity belt that only the men could open with a
key so the poor women suffered. In the harems of kings in India, the guards of
the harem were castrated just in case some women got horny and had affairs with
them. You could imagine the frustration of young women cooped up inside a
guarded harem where no male was allowed except the king so some women did get
horny. The Chinese kings did the same and hired eunuchs to guard their women.
The Western culture that promotes equality for women has
come a long way from their days of chastity belt and patronizing attitudes
because women will not put up with it anymore. Many have become leaders in
their country and have encouraged millions of women to come forward and become
whatever they wish to become. They have won their rights after a long fight
because they too had to contend with the tribal culture of the males at first.
They now inspire all the women to claim their rights so now half the world
population is becoming more aware of their rights and are taking steps to get
on the equal footing with men. ( Please read the blog called The other half here )
Depending on the country and the tribal laws prevalent
there favoring men over women, they have a long way to go to get to where they
want to be. Now some Moslem countries are relaxing their laws so that women can
get education, can drive and can choose a profession there but often their own
families stand in their way.
Older women find nothing wrong with their tribal culture
that kept them illiterate and tied them to home and hearth because they had
gotten used to it. They also show strong disapproval of the influence of the
Western women on their society and their culture when it comes to skimpy
clothes, going out with a male companion without a chaperon etc.
The overt sexuality in some men driven by their
testosterone at a certain age makes them aggressive toward women who break
taboo so they use it as an excuse to hurt them just like in the case of that
Delhi girl. This sort of thing happens in any society, progressive or not so
rape occurs in all countries. The extreme violence associated with rape of a
woman and the murder later begs the question why it is so and what exactly
triggers such hateful action that results in the death of an innocent girl.
I have always maintained that the act of rape is often
associated with a male showing dominance over the body of a woman who is
helpless so it is not always about the sexual gratification. It is about the power
play so a stronger male overcomes the resistance of a woman and rapes her by
showing that he disapproves of her. You will see this behavior in soldiers like
what happened during the war in Bangladesh.
In the animal world, you will never see a dominant male
overpowering a female so copulates only when the female is ready. The females
show their willingness to copulate when they come of estrus and start spreading
their urine that contains the scent of female hormone estrogen. The male
animals pick up the scent to find their mate and in the process fight with
other males to secure their right to breed but they rarely fight with the
female because they don’t have to.
In humans we find that the way we are brought up has a
lot to do with the way we behave toward the females. In educated families, the
parents are a lot more tolerant and wish or encourage their daughters to get
their full potential through education and meaningful jobs. There an educated
woman may work even after her marriage to pursue a career of her own
For the first time women are being trained as fighter
pilots in the Indian Air Force and many are fighting in the front alongside
their male soldiers. The Peshmerga girls in Kurdistan fight just as hard as
men. This is a drastic change from the days of our grandfather so I see that
the tribal culture can change with time and the spread of education for all.
In countries where boys and girls mix easily with each
other since childhood form a greater understanding of each other so aggressive
sexual behavior is restrained. It does not mean that there are no rape cases
there but violent incidences like what happened in Delhi or elsewhere in India
is not common although serial killers killing of prostitutes or women suspected
to be promiscuous is not unheard of. The education in women weakens the
influence of tribal culture that lingers in societies where men still play the
dominant role.
So please do not label bad people as animals. Animals are
noble in their behavior so we should learn a lot from them.
Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
La biografía de anil en español.
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