[WFS-India] [OT] Indian un-civilization

Tue Sep 17 18:43:35 UTC 2013

Ummm. Did you follow the responses to this post? Also, statistics on women's abuse and harassment across nations? I hope this list isn't for some kind of senseless militant feminism. I thought we were way past bra burning and congregating to have constructive responses to VAW. 

Why is this posted to this list anyway?

On 17-Sep-2013, at 9:31 PM, "A. Mani" <a.mani.cms at gmail.com> wrote:

> India is a terrible sub-human place because of traditional values and
> lack of sex education. The social, economic and political system
> obviously represses people. The writer fails to see that religion has
> an essential evil role in all this.
> ________________________________
> 
> http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/world/american-student-india-sexual-harassment-irpt
> 
> By Rose Chasm
> 
> When people ask me about my experience studying abroad in India, I
> always face the same dilemma. How does one convey the contradiction
> that over the past few months has torn my life apart, and convey it in
> a single succinct sentence?
> 
> “India was wonderful," I go with, "but extremely dangerous for women.”
> Part of me dreads the follow-up questions, and part of me hopes for
> more. I'm torn between believing in the efficacy of truth, and being
> wary of how much truth people want.
> 
> Because, how do I describe my three months in theUniversity of Chicago
> Indian civilizations program when it was half dream, half nightmare?
> Which half do I give?
> 
> Do I tell them about our first night in the city of Pune, when we
> danced in the Ganesha festival, and leave it at that? Or do I go on
> and tell them how the festival actually stopped when the American
> women started dancing, so that we looked around to see a circle of men
> filming our every move?
> 
> Do I tell them about bargaining at the bazaar for beautiful saris
> costing a few dollars a piece, and not mention the men who stood
> watching us, who would push by us, clawing at our breasts and groins?
> 
> When people compliment me on my Indian sandals, do I talk about the
> man who stalked me for forty-five minutes after I purchased them,
> until I yelled in his face in a busy crowd?
> 
> Do I describe the lovely hotel in Goa when my strongest memory of it
> was lying hunched in a fetal position, holding a pair of scissors with
> the door bolted shut, while the staff member of the hotel who had
> tried to rape my roommate called me over and over, and breathing into
> the phone?
> 
> How, I ask, was I supposed to tell these stories at a Christmas party?
> But how could I talk about anything else when the image of the smiling
> man who masturbated at me on a bus was more real to me than my
> friends, my family, or our Christmas tree? All those nice people were
> asking the questions that demanded answers for which they just weren't
> prepared.
> 
> When I went to India, nearly a year ago, I thought I was prepared. I
> had been to India before; I was a South Asian Studies major; I spoke
> some Hindi. I knew that as a white woman I would be seen as a
> promiscuous being and a sexual prize. I was prepared to follow the
> University ofChicago’s advice to women, to dress conservatively, to
> not smile in the streets. And I was prepared for the curiosity my red
> hair, fair skin and blue eyes would arouse.
> 
> But I wasn't prepared.
> 
> There was no way to prepare for the eyes, the eyes that every day
> stared with such entitlement at my body, with no change of expression
> whether I met their gaze or not. Walking to the fruit seller's or the
> tailer's I got stares so sharp that they sliced away bits of me piece
> by piece. I was prepared for my actions to be taken as sex signals; I
> was not prepared to understand that there were no sex signals, only
> women's bodies to be taken, or hidden away.
> 
> I covered up, but I did not hide. And so I was taken, by eye after
> eye, picture after picture. Who knows how many photos there are of me
> in India, or on the internet: photos of me walking, cursing, flipping
> people off. Who knows how many strangers have used my image as
> pornography, and those of my friends. I deleted my fair share, but it
> was a drop in the ocean-- I had no chance of taking back everything
> they took.
> 
> For three months I lived this way, in a traveller's heaven and a
> woman's hell. I was stalked, groped, masturbated at; and yet I had
> adventures beyond my imagination. I hoped that my nightmare would end
> at the tarmac, but that was just the beginning. Back home Christmas
> red seemed faded after vermillion, and food tasted spiceless and
> bland. Friends, and family, and classes, and therapy, and everything
> at all was so much less real than the pain, the rage that was coursing
> through my blood, screaming so loud it deafened me to all other
> sounds. And after months of elation at living in freedom, months of
> running from the memories breathing down my neck, I woke up on April
> Fool's Day and found I wanted to be dead.
> 
> The student counselors diagnosed me with a personality disorder and
> prescribed me pills I wouldn't take. After a public breakdown I ended
> up in a psych ward for two days held against my will, and was released
> on the condition that I took a "mental leave of absence" from school
> and went to live with my mother. I thought I had lost my mind; I
> didn't connect any of it to India-- I had moved on. But then a
> therapist diagnosed me with PTSD and I realized I hadn't moved a
> single inch. I had frozen in time. And I’d fallen. And I’d shattered.
> 
> But I wasn't the only one, the only woman from my trip to be diagnosed
> with PTSD, to be forced into a psych ward, to wake up wanting to be
> dead. And I am not the only woman who is on a mental leave of absence
> from the University ofChicago for reasons of sexual assault and is
> unable to take classes.
> 
> Understanding my pain has helped me own it, if not relieve it. PTSD
> strikes me as a euphemism, because a syndrome implies a cure. What,
> may I ask, is the cure for seeing reality, of feeling for three months
> what its like for one's humanity to be taken away? But I thank God for
> my experiences in India, and for my disillusionment. Truth is a gift,
> a burden, and a responsibility. And I mean to share it.
> 
> This is the story you don't want to hear when you ask me about India.
> But this is the story you need.
> 
> http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023053
> _______________________________________
> 
> There's a response to the piece by an another American girl who was
> part of the same student group, which presents a somewhat different
> picture:  http://travelingwhilefemale.blogspot.in/2013/08/a-response-to-rosechasms-cnn-ireport.html
> 
> And this response is by a young Indian woman:
> http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023884
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> PS. I haven't seen the last two links.
> 
> 
> 
> Best
> 
> A. Mani
> 
> 
> 
> A. Mani
> CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS
> http://www.logicamani.in
> _______________________________________________
> 
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