Why do Rapes Happen?

Since last couple of years, our country is going through Hell. Every day we either wake up to the news of Communal Riots or Mob lynching or some other brutal crime. One thing that is always common in all these crimes is Women getting Raped. I won’t talk about riots because, all thanks to movies made on events that (potentially) happened more than a decade ago, there are already people fighting over it on the Internet.

I was recently asked by someone that "Why do rapes happen? What LURK's inside the mind of a person that turns him into a rapist?" and I did not have just one or two sentences to give my opinion about the same. I've heard various people's opinions over the years about these subjects and I don't think I agree with most of them. Three reasons that I have constantly heard over the years for Women being Raped and to which I do not agree at all are:

• They work Late Nights.
• They Wear Short Clothes.
• They Smoke and Drink.

From a personal experience, I was unfortunate to meet a woman who believed that if a woman gets raped then it's her fault. Let's talk about some of the rape cases in India over the past few years now. On 30th May'2017, a 27-year-old woman was raped by a GovernmentRailway Police (GRP) constable in a moving Train at Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. It happened in a broad daylight and the woman wore a Burkha wherein not even a finger was visible for public view. It was the holy month of Ramadan and she was observing Fast so for obvious reasons she was not found Smoking or Drinking. Why was she raped?

Apart from that, people who still believe that its a Woman's Clothes or Lifestyle or her Late Night Work Culture that provokes the rapists, I just want to ask them how was 8-year-old girl Asifa Bano or the Six-Years-Old Unnamed Rape Victim from Delhi's Janakpuri provoking any of them? I would agree with what Famous Youtuber Bhuvan Bam says in one of his videos that even if you believe any one of the above-mentioned points are the reasons for Women getting raped then you too have traits of being a rapist. It's only the sick mind of the rapist who is responsible for a woman getting raped and nothing else.

Speaking about why some men develop such an evil mind which leads them to rape a woman, I would say it’s something which every man is injected with right since the time they're born. From a young age if boys cry, they are told, "Stop crying like a girl." which is the very moment that the ego of being superior gender starts to build up within the male kid. While growing up, over the years, kids have been watching movies and songs objectifying women to be a piece of meat used only to fulfill sexual desire. There have been movie scenes all these years wherein I have seen the main lead actors Eve Teasing, Physically Assaulting and Stalking Women.

I remember a movie scene wherein a woman asks our 'Hero' that what qualities does he sees in a woman when he first meets her. He replies that it depends on which way the woman is facing (if she is facing him then he would be looking at her breasts and if it's the opposite side then the rear back). There is a small kid somewhere who is looking up to this actor. He would end up believing that it's quite normal for us to behave this way and disrespect women. So, it’s even these actors who make the kids believe from a young age that women are an object, their lives are secondary, their needs don't matter, they are the inferior gender and can be used the way men like.

Education also plays an important role in building up rapists. We are raised with No Education at all about women, their identity, the way their bodies function and their needs. Those are some chapters that are to be skipped or just out of the syllabus. In fact, the first time that I got to know about periods was when I overheard one of my uncles saying, "Always fuck a woman during her periods because there won't be any fear of her popping out kids." It was being discussed by elders. I thought it was okay to laugh about the fact that women bleed. I always took it as a joke until I got to know what it exactly was.

After dealing with all these, kids are exposed to pornography, wherein a woman is portrayed as someone who quite easily slips into having sex with a man or multiple men. They're shown performing different, sometimes extreme, strange and bizarre sexual acts. These sexual acts include Anal Sex, Bondage, Hardcore Sex and Gangbangs. Women are shown enjoying being beaten up and tossed around. Furthermore, a lot of kids fantasize about enacting some of those acts and exploring the whole thing.

As shown in these videos, the viewer is made to believe that the girl will easily cooperate irrespective of the consent (Consent is a non-existent thing). All this contribute to a person becoming a rapist. So, when a woman refuses their advances, it directly hits them in their ego and the whole sexual encounter they had fantasized turns into rape. So basically, it does not matter what a woman wears or how she looks.

Not just pornography, the internet itself plays a part in spreading the rape culture across the country. There's a famous 10-second-video of a youngster shouting about celebrating his weekend by doing cocaine and banging women's vaginas. The video is easily accessible on Youtube or Instagram. I have friends and family members who love what that guy says in the video. They find it funny that the guy shouts "Fuddiya Faado". They never realised that it's their own Mothers and Sisters about whom he has been talking all along. Maybe they do realise but, they're too less of Men to care about it. So, Men have been raised in such a way that there is a rapist in every one of us.

Apart from that, our beloved society plays a big part here as well. We meet people everyday questioning woman's character based on the size of their breasts, the way they walk or the gender of friends they hangout with. Almost all the profanity that people hurl at each other are based on demeaning women. One a personal level, one question that people have been asking me since I've been single for over a year is "Is there any woman you secretly got whose pussy you've been banging to vent your frustration/tiredness?" (Offensively in Hindi it goes "Thokne ko koi maal nahi hai kya tere paas?").

You meet such people every day who try to make you believe that it is necessary for you to have regular sex with a woman even if there is no commitment or relationship involved. All these macho men are lonely and jobless enough to consider sexual intimacy as a basic need. I'm sorry to break this to you but (at least according to me), Sexual intimacy is not a basic need, and I don't think anyone ever died because they were not having sex. People who try to make you believe that sex a basic need are just lonely and depressed and need a mental health counsellor. You will meet such men who have no respect for the opposite gender and will ask you to get a piece of meat for your own pleasure.

It's your responsibility to react accordingly. Moreover, you will meet men who will make you believe that it's quite easy to get a girl just to sleep around which again is not true. Sometimes people get lured to such advice and when they're unable to find a 'Friend with Benefit' they just promise relationships and marriages to women only to use their bodies for their own sexual pleasures and leave them once they're done which also a type of rape. So, it's us and our society that needs to stigmatize the perpetrator instead of the victim. Sensible sensitivity is needed to counter rape or any sort of sexual assault which is rightly classified as the 'Worst Crime Against Humanity'.