Teenage gang rape victim commits suicide as second woman f

[amigocabal]

Teenage gang rape victim commits suicide as second woman fights for life after separate brutal sex attack

A 17-year-old Indian girl who was allegedly gang-raped has committed suicide, sparking public outrage over the Indian police’s handling of sex crimes against women.

The news comes as a second woman, a 23-year-old medical student, suffered “significant” brain injuries and is fighting for her life after being gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi.

The family of the teenage victim alleges that the police officers investigating her case had pressured her to drop her complaint and marry one of her attackers.

Two officers have been fired and one suspended after the teenager was found dead on Wednesday night after swallowing poison.

The victim's sister told Indian television network, NDTV: "The police started pressuring her to either reach a financial settlement with her attackers or marry one of them."

Indian police have since arrested three suspects - including one female accomplice - who were allegedly named in a suicide note left by a teenager.

Where would people get the idea that rape victims should marry their attackers?

Also, there was a female accomplice to the gang rape. How common is it for girls and women to aid and abet any rapes, let alone gang rapes?

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Where would people get the idea that rape victims should marry their attackers?

Also, there was a female accomplice to the gang rape. How common is it for girls and women to aid and abet any rapes, let alone gang rapes?

I don't know about the second question, but the answer to the first is a combination of having a religion and culture that values women only as property, and a "you break it, you buy it," mentality.
The rapist is to marry his victim, becasue, as she's no longer a virgin, nobody else will. The victim traditionally gets as much say in the matter as a cow sold at the market does.

[General Zod]

Where would people get the idea that rape victims should marry their attackers?

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days."

But since this is India there's undoubtedly different religious reasons at work.

[Edi]

That Mirror article is not up to date as the woman who was being treated in a hospital in Singapore (after being transferred there from India) died of her injuries yesterday.

[mr friendly guy]

Plus it was the woman who died in Singapore whose treatment provoked the current outrage in India. Depending on your source a rape occurs every 22 minutes or 34 minutes in India (the last source is the Indian times by the way). Also the PM, Mr Singh apparently took his sweet time commenting on this event, which didn't endear him to the protesters. They have promised to bring this case to court quickly despite India's, ahem propensity of take a looooong time to bring cases to court.

Another thing is that India wants to now publish details online of anyone convicted of rape. While I have no sympathy for such scum, it does strike me as a government trying to cover its arse for failing to tackle the problem in the past.

[mr friendly guy]

Relevant articles

The earlier gang rape of a 23 yo woman who was either a physiotherapy student or a medical student who suffered severe multiorgan failure including perforated intestines and was later airlifted to Singapore under controversial circumstances, who has now died.

Another case with a 17 yo girl who committed suicide after allegedly being pressured by police to drop the case. I read elsewhere she was a Dalit, or one of what used to be called the Untouchables even though you aren't supposed to be able to discriminate based on caste in modern day India.

[amigocabal]

Where would people get the idea that rape victims should marry their attackers?

Also, there was a female accomplice to the gang rape. How common is it for girls and women to aid and abet any rapes, let alone gang rapes?

I don't know about the second question, but the answer to the first is a combination of having a religion and culture that values women only as property, and a "you break it, you buy it," mentality.
The rapist is to marry his victim, becasue, as she's no longer a virgin, nobody else will. The victim traditionally gets as much say in the matter as a cow sold at the market does.

That seems to be consistent with the rationale behind Suttee, where widows were burned on their husbands' funeral pyres.

[AniThyng]

About the female accomplice thing, I doubt its common, but it's not like people don't do unto others what they don't want done unto themselves all the time. I mean you'll also find that women also play blame the victim when talking about rape victims, especially in traditionally minded countries.

[Dominus Atheos]

About the female accomplice thing, I doubt its common, but it's not like people don't do unto others what they don't want done unto themselves all the time. I mean you'll also find that women also play blame the victim when talking about rape victims, especially in traditionally minded countries.

I heard an idea that women are more likely to blame the victim because women don't want to admit that rape can happen to anyone and so try to look for reasons why the victim "brought it on themselves".

[Crown]

Plus it was the woman who died in Singapore whose treatment provoked the current outrage in India.

Given how you go on to quote how often a rape occurs in India showing how common it is, I think the fact that the victim who died was thrown out of a moving bus once they were done with her (after beating and raping her for over an hour) is what truly shocked India. It wasn't that a pretty girl was raped, it wasn't that a pretty girl was beaten and then raped, it was that she was beaten, raped and then discarded like trash from a moving bus that completely shocked the nation.

[Edi]

They also got their panties in a twist earlier when a journalist and his cameraman filmed a 45 minute gangrape of a teenager by 12 men in one of the northern provinces and then showed it on TV. Nobody was shocked that she was raped, but that they had the temerity to show it on a national TV news program. It was only at that point that any investigation into the attack started, even though there had been a police station very near the place where the attack happened.

There was a Guardian article on that incident and it's even fairly recent, so should not be difficult to find.

[hongi]

That seems to be consistent with the rationale behind Suttee, where widows were burned on their husbands' funeral pyres.

Women also voluntarily immolated themselves.

The post-colonialist Gayatri Spivak wrote a great work that deals with sati called 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' on how history's been written to say that white men saved brown women from brown men. It's probably more accurate to say that brown women need saving from both white and brown men, and it'll be brown women who'll do the saving.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yes, the most discriminated minority that acutually is the majority (51%), I'm a guy, and this shit pisses me off. The Iron Age was a LONG time ago, Studies have shown that treating women as intellegent people, and educating them is great for your economic and social safty, So even if you don't have morals at least think of your well being financially. Than again, why the fuck is it that folks even here in the west tend to take a "Moral" stance against women's rights?

[Broomstick]

Those who have power are reluctant to give it up. In societies where women have a second-class or chattel status men enjoy privileges they aren't even aware of, and which they are usually loathe to give up.

"Marry the rapist" arises in societies where everything is judged from the perspective of men. Fathers/husbands are compensated for rape instead of the woman because rape damages the property of such men. Women who are raped are scorned as damaged goods because such men don't value women who are already used by another man. If a woman isn't deemed valued enough by her own family to be guarded 24/7 why should any other men value her? Such men view women as there to service there needs, so if they're horny it's somehow OK for them to use unwilling women as masturbation aids and if that causes a problem it's the woman's fault for being there and being female. Wives can not refuse sex, even dangerous/damaging sex, to their husbands because women are there to provide that service, along with offspring of the proper paternity. If a man rapes a woman he has to marry as already noted due to a "you break it you buy it" attitude.

This used to extend to giving the patriarch of a family privileges over the subordinate men in their family. In the code of Hammurabi if a man builds a house for another and that house collapses, killing the owner's son, then the builder's son is to be put to death... because that punishes the builder as the owner as been harmed, and if the innocent son dies on account of that, oh well, that's the point, isn't it? That's what makes it justice under that system.

It's not a viewpoint we in the west really understand any more, although there are still enough remnants of those attitudes left to put women at a disadvantage in our society.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

yes, the most discriminated minority that acutually is the majority (51%), I'm a guy, and this shit pisses me off. The Iron Age was a LONG time ago, Studies have shown that treating women as intellegent people, and educating them is great for your economic and social safty, So even if you don't have morals at least think of your well being financially. Than again, why the fuck is it that folks even here in the west tend to take a "Moral" stance against women's rights?

I think it was Darth Wong who said that you can't use reason to force someone out of a position he didn't get into by reason.

The "moral" stance, I think, can be explained by the fact that sexually repressed people exist everywhere, so it's statistically certain that at least one permavirgin either attained high priest status himself or had his ramblings heard by one of the aforementioned rank. What I'm saying is, repressing women today because it is moral is religious bullshit. You'll be hard pressed to find a misogynist who isn't religious.

[Iron Bridge]

It's probably more likely related to inheritance and tribal/family loyalty in an age where there was no contraception and no paternity tests. If women are regarded as chattel and kept closely monitored and controlled it is less likely that a man will end up raising someone else's children.

This would also explain why these views persist most strongly in societies where clan loyalty remains strong, like the Islamic world and India.

[General Zod]

You'll be hard pressed to find a misogynist who isn't religious.

That seems like a rather gross oversimplification of a complicated problem. Some guys get the idea in their head that women owe them something because they were "nice", or that women are inherently inferior at something typically male dominated. You don't need religion for those kind of attitudes.

[Aaron MkII]

The MRA movement is full of athiests and agnostics, and those guys seem more upset that the current male dominated society is weakening, their mom cheated on their Dad, woman won't talk to them and hating feminism.

[Eulogy]

This is a symptom of thar cultures.

Unfortunately, short of doing things you'd see in James Bond films, there is little that people in more enlightened societies can do to bring these monsters to justice. Well, they can make fun of India, but that's not probable to meaningfully change anything for the better.

Perhaps western countries can make it much easier for women to migrate to better countries? I wouldn't know how, but getting women into an environment where they can be treated like human beings would reduce the suffering the pigs can inflict on them.

[amigocabal]

yes, the most discriminated minority that acutually is the majority (51%), I'm a guy, and this shit pisses me off. The Iron Age was a LONG time ago, Studies have shown that treating women as intellegent people, and educating them is great for your economic and social safty, So even if you don't have morals at least think of your well being financially. Than again, why the fuck is it that folks even here in the west tend to take a "Moral" stance against women's rights?

Why would people give up advantages for others in the "out" group?

It is nothing short of a historical miracle that officials who benefited from centuries of racial discrimination voted to end such discrimination.

[Eleas]

This is a symptom of thar cultures.

That article is by and large a piece of chauvinistic, paternalistic trash. In principle I don't object to coining a new term of descriptions, but Dutch's conclusions are seriously outré given how utterly blinded he is by his own privilege, historical ignorance and personal hypocrisy.

That said, there does seem to be some degree of descriptive power to his theory when you apply it to (for instance) India. Nonetheless I'd still be wary of using it beyond quick discussion.

[Eleas]

It's not a viewpoint we in the west really understand any more, although there are still enough remnants of those attitudes left to put women at a disadvantage in our society.

I agree with almost everything you've said so far ITT, Broomstick, but I'd argue we still have those attitudes and viewpoints. They're just not explicit and codified anymore. We're not taught to speak them fluently enough to assume that everyone else operates the same way, so other attitudes (and laws) have far greater precedence. Usually.

[Broomstick]

There have been attempts to allow asylum types of immigration to women from the Third World based on such things (for example, allowing permanent residency in the US due to fears of FGM in women) but it's difficult because even in the west men simply don't concern themselves as much with these issues as women do, or don't take them as seriously. Sometimes folks even win the fight but it's not common.

There's only so much you can do to change an entire culture.

And, as a reminder, tolerance of such things isn't universal even within such cultures. Even in thar societies people do retain individuality and not everyone is in agreement. Not every man from such a place who find his daughter becoming westernized while living in the US or Canada or Europe or wherever will respond by murdering her. The restaurant I ate at last night was built by a entrepreneur from a thar culture who moved to the US 30 years ago and decided he liked our way of doing things better, resulting in very Americanized children, two of whom decided to keep the family business and the rest going on to do other things. On the flip side, there are westerners who move to thar societies and settle in, liking them better (though it invariably seems to be men of wealth and some status - I guess thar systems are better when you're the one on top, hmm?)

One of the reason women in India used to willingly submit to suttee was because the widow's lot in India used to really suck to an incredible degree. After all, if a woman's husband predeceased her it was because of something she had done in a previous life to deserve it, so essentially she was blamed for her husband's death and treated pretty much in accord with being a murderer, even unintentionally, or that her sacrifice would somehow help her husband achieve a better afterlife in which case refusing to kill herself was just being selfish and mean (which gets back to defining women only in how they serve men's needs) or whatever justifications were used for the practice. Yep, I could see where someone might prefer a quick death to a lifetime of being reviled with no hope of reprieve. Well, not so common a practice now, and at least for the middle class and upward Indian widows have more option of at least moving elsewhere.

With rape we're seeing this uproar not because these abuses are new - they are most certainly old practices - but because attitudes are changing. Fewer women are passively accepting this as their lot, and even some of the men, exposed to other cultures, are more capable of questioning the status quo. I try to see some optimism in these horrific news accounts or rapes and subsequent riots because this is what has to happen before real change takes place. There has to be sufficient outrage that people will take risks to make changes, and that outrage only occurs when attitudes change. There are 500 million women in India, and if those 500 million stand up and say "we're mad as hell as we're not going to take it any more" it's going to be damn hard for the 500 million men to squash them down again. Particularly when said women have allies in the outside world. Meanwhile, I'd suspect the response from the thar cultures to be something along the lines of "what's wrong with you pussies that you can't control your women?" followed by scornful contempt and silence.

In the west we forget it wasn't that long ago we fought our own battles against some of this, even if we're not a thar culture as defined in the essay. My grandmother remembered when women were imprisoned for daring to ask for the vote. My mother remembered when married women couldn't own property in their own name. I remember when "marital rape" didn't exist as a concept, only as an oxymoron, because there was no legal basis for such a thing. That's all in the US. I'm sure in other western countries a similar litany can be recited. If India is changing (and I hope they are doing so for the better) then we're going to see things like this now and in the future.

The only thing more tragic than a story such as this is such a story that is met with a shrug, with business as usual, and ignored as not important.

[Broomstick]

I agree with almost everything you've said so far ITT, Broomstick, but I'd argue we still have those attitudes and viewpoints. They're just not explicit and codified anymore. We're not taught to speak them fluently enough to assume that everyone else operates the same way, so other attitudes (and laws) have far greater precedence. Usually.

You don't have to tell a woman that, you know. I could go on at length about the continuance of such attitudes in the west, but it's ridiculous to pretend the difference is merely one of degree. Of course there are still misogynists in the west, there are still people who want to reduce others (and not just women) to chattels, and so on but the differences are extreme. In some countries it is codified in law that women (and others) are socially, legally, economically, and morally inferior to the elite men. In others it's not law but continuing custom. In others there have been real changes though the societies remain far from perfect.

Even if society was fully reformed in any individualistic system you'll always have folks trying to reinvent male superiority. The difference is between a society where those folks are in charge and those societies where their attitudes are not the norm and they're forced to "share power" with others, even unwillingly.

[Eleas]

I agree with almost everything you've said so far ITT, Broomstick, but I'd argue we still have those attitudes and viewpoints. They're just not explicit and codified anymore. We're not taught to speak them fluently enough to assume that everyone else operates the same way, so other attitudes (and laws) have far greater precedence. Usually.

You don't have to tell a woman that, you know.

I don't have to (nor do I desire to) "tell" a woman anything, but I still feel this way, and this thread isn't a private conversation.

I could go on at length about the continuance of such attitudes in the west, but it's ridiculous to pretend the difference is merely one of degree.

Of course there are still misogynists in the west, there are still people who want to reduce others (and not just women) to chattels, and so on but the differences are extreme.

...particularly since my point doesn't seem to have carried over too well. This isn't about scattered misogynists, this is about rape culture and patterns that still live on. They've lost their teeth, but said teeth can regrow pretty damn fast, such as with the attitudes on abortion in the US. The difference is one of saturation of these values. In terms of how people view one another, it's not a difference solely of kind, but of degree as well.

In some countries it is codified in law that women (and others) are socially, legally, economically, and morally inferior to the elite men. In others it's not law but continuing custom. In others there have been real changes though the societies remain far from perfect.

And I recognize that, and have not disputed it in the least. To pretend it's some kind of inviolate line that couldn't ever be crossed due to a fundamental and innate difference in cultures (or "enlightened heritage", as Dutch would perhaps sermonize) is dangerously complacent.


EDIT: Clarified a turn of phrase.