What about Britain's daughters?
What about Britain's daughters?
It's just over a week since the documentary India's Daughter was broadcast on BBC Four. It was a difficult watch. Its focus was the violent gang rape of 'Nirbhaya' — 23 year old medical student. She and a male friend had just got on a bus they thought was taking them home when the attackers struck. The boy was brutally beaten.
Not content with raping her, the men also violated her with a iron rod, pulled out her intestines and threw them into the street.
Her insides were so badly torn apart the doctor treating her confessed he did not know how to re-join them. It seems trivial to mention that Nirbhaya also had bite marks on her face, limbs and lips. Somehow though it reveals even more the contempt these men felt for her.
I waited for answers as some of the men who attacked Nirbhaya were interviewed. They showed no remorse or shame. It wasn't their fault, they said. It was the young woman's fault. She should not have been out without a family member after 6.30 at night as that meant 'she was not a good girl'. Nor should she have put up a fight to stop herself being raped. She should have just let herself be raped and they would have let her go. Bringing in the death penalty for the crime of rape would not stop women being raped, said one of those convicted of her attack, because men would just kill them after raping them rather than let them go.
People watching outrage in the UK asked themselves why do so many men in India think like this? The fact is whenever any bad behaviour is left unchallenged it tends to get worse. It becomes normalized.
Nirbhaya's story is a chilling one. Brutal, sordid and deeply distressing. So much so women in India and many men are rising up and holding rallies demanding change. But should it be a wake up call for us in Britain too? What about Britain's Daughters?
According to government statistics here in the UK reported rapes of women in England and Wales are up by 31 percent. There were more than 24,000 rapes reported in the 12 months to September 2014. Meanwhile the conviction rate for rape has dropped.
It is widely accepted that many rapes go unreported. In fact government statistics in the UK reveal that on average 85,000 women and girls are raped each year in England and Wales. That's 7083 women every month, 1634 a week, 232 a day, nine women every hour. That is higher than India where statistics reveal a woman is raped every 20 minutes.
Let us not forget too, that according to Women's Aid one incident of domestic violence is reported to police every minute and on average, two women a week are killed by a current or former male partner.
Why aren't we talking about this and making a big noise about to try to highlight and stop it here in the UK? Because rape and domestic violence is still a taboo subject that most of us would rather pretend didn't exist. We also can't ignore the fact that by and large our country is run by men so there is not much of an appetite to whip up a debate about it. Women on the other hand often don't want to talk about it because of the stigma the subject carries. They fear being labelled trouble causers, or reviled as man haters or even damaging their career or status.
Then we come to the blame game. How many times when a rape is discussed do we hear statements from both men and women saying things like, 'what did she expect wearing those clothes', or 'she shouldn't have been out late at night.' Or 'well she went back to his house'. These are not a million miles away from the views we felt so appalled by hearing from India.
In the UK the 1970s was all about feminism and women's rights, the 1980s about career girls and shoulder pads and the 1990s about girl power, thanks to the pop band the Spice Girls. Now though there are signs that our hard won equality is in danger of going into reverse. The phenomena of 'sexting' where (mainly) girls are bombarded by requests from boys to send them naked pictures of themselves happens so often it is now considered 'normal'. Grooming of girls by male gangs who cruise the streets looking for young girls to abuse and sell for sex is happening up and down the country. It is routine in many rap and hip hop songs to call women bitches and whores and the there is also the rise in boys watching on-line porn at school on their smart phones.
These are all fairly new things that lead girls to being seen only as sexual objects rather than human beings, with brains and feelings. Worryingly this sexual inequality is having a real impact on girls' self esteem.
It was this statistic from a charity called End Violence Against Women, that made me realise how bad things have become: One in three schoolgirls believe it is ok sometimes to hit a woman or force her to have sex. One in two boys think this too.
It tells me not enough is being done to help girls make sense of what's going on around them and that many girls already feel inferior to boys.
We owe it to our girls to show them they are equal to boys. We also owe it to boys to make sure they think this way too.
What about Britain’s daughters? - TOI Blogs
