Revisiting 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape' & Why Global Discourse On Rape Needs To Change
Gang-raped as a teenager in what was then Bombay, and indignant at the deafening silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article in a woman's magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims.
Thousands of Indians have taken to the streets as public anger is growing over the brutal gang-rape and murder that took place in Hyderabad.
From one MP calling for the perpetrators to be lynched to others calling for capital punishment and lifetime imprisonment, the discourse on rape and sexual assault in India has come to the point where a similar movement died down in 2012 after the brutal gang-rape and murder of ¡®Nirbhaya¡¯ that took place in India¡¯s national capital.
Currently, the demonstrations in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and elsewhere are ongoing but alongside, rapes continue unabated in India.
Meanwhile, police have found the semi-naked body of a six-year-old girl, who was raped and then strangled with her school belt in Rajasthan.
It was followed by Uttar Pradesh Police arresting a man on Monday for allegedly raping a 70-year-old woman in Sonbhadra district.
Therefore, even while there is a massive public outrage, we continue to look the other way and are once again fragmenting the entire discourse into what punishment should be served to the perpetrators.
Understanding rape and sexual violence are important and that¡¯s where Sohaila Abdulali and her non-fiction book ¡°What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape¡± come into play. The author was herself gang-raped as a teenager and was among the first survivors to speak out about rape back in the 1980s.
Image Credit: InsaneOwl
In the book, Abdulali, who has previously authored at least two novels and some children's books as well as short stories, recalls that she faced a "deafening silence" on rape in India for over three decades. Things, however, changed, or at least that¡¯s how she saw it after the 2012 Nirbhaya rape case in Delhi.
Gang-raped as a teenager in what was then Bombay, and indignant at the deafening silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article in a woman's magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims.
1980s :: Protests In Delhi Against Rape pic.twitter.com/up3fwlSOsm
¡ª indianhistorypics (@IndiaHistorypic) November 29, 2019
The story went viral -- 30 years later, in the wake of the 2012 Delhi rape case and the global outcry that followed.
For the first time ever, rape became an acceptable topic of everyday conversation and led to changes -- some good and some bad -- in the law. But did the public outrage and mainstreaming of the conversation around rape help prevent future incidents? Perhaps no. It, however, helped galvanise a movement of sorts and the topic became less taboo than it earlier was.
After sharing her personal experience in the book that was released to critical acclaim last year, Abdulali draws the attention of her readers to the discourse around rape, in India and elsewhere. Astonishingly, she contends that the attitudes and receptions to victims and perpetrators remain quite the same in most parts of the world. She laments that the tendency to look at the victim with an eye of suspicion not only does damage to the survivor¡¯s morale but also pushes the entire conversation into a dark hole.
Abdulali maintains that she is yet to see a single woman anywhere actually gain anything by pointing the finger at a rapist or harasser. She urges her readers to accord women speaking out about sexual abuse at least the respect of not starting with the fear that they are out to get men. According to her, historically, in every culture, there is one group that has consistently lied about rape: Rapists.
Abdulali stresses on the need to destigmatise the act.
¡®It¡¯s going to be a long time until rape is so stigma-free that there¡¯s no penalty for speaking out as a survivor. Sometimes the penalty is to be pigeonholed, somehow diminished.¡¯
The book also contends that survivours should come out more openly and speak out about rape when the situation is conducive. In this context, she mentions that keeping quiet about rape has a whole other toxic effect as it lets the abusers off the hook.
¡°I want to be very clear that it is never the victim¡¯s obligation to speak up, or report, or do anything but survive. Her first responsibility is getting through it. But we are all culpable in the silence around rape, a ¡®vast international conspiracy¡¯ if there ever was one,¡± she mentions in the book.
