Four women 'rape' a man in Jalandhar: Gender-neutral laws are crying need of hour

Minutes after I got off a show on a leading English news channel about intimate partner violence – where I had once again aired my own experience of surviving abuse and emotional manipulation at the hands of a raging sociopath – I found my Inbox on Facebook abuzz.   Amongst the generous outpouring of solidarity by women who’d also battled the same scathing scars and had lived to stand up for themselves and others – were a couple of correspondences from men. This is not unusual. From raging rape threats to perverse phallus pictures to the most profane verbal abuse to being slut shamed and character assassinated  – a woman writing on sex, sexuality, gender and politics in India is an easy target for detractors. And so, I sighed. ‘Not every man is a rapist!’ ‘You are anti men.’ ‘Get laid!’ ‘Single and despo…’ ‘Liberal, feminist whore.’ I almost could mouth aloud the most common lines of attack. But, this time, this mail was different. ‘Madam, I heard your talk…but what do you have to say about the man from Jalandhar who has recently alleged that four women, all of whom appeared to be in their early twenties had abducted him in a car after spraying some chemical in his eyes only to later drug him and sexually abuse him inside a forest area. It is being further added that he was dumped by the four women later at a secluded spot, late in the night. The case has not been reported to police, but the victim has narrated his ordeal to local media and said that he is married with kids. According to him, his wife asked him not to file a complaint since he came back alive and that is what mattered to the family, reports are saying. The man alleged that the kidnapping was done for sexual motive. While narrating the whole incident to media persons, he has stated that he works as a labourer in a leather factory. On his way home, a white car stopped near him on the Kapurthala road in which four girls were sitting. The girl driving the car asked for an address written on a slip which she gave him. As soon as he started looking at the slip, the girl allegedly sprayed something in his eyes, after which he could not see anything and eventually fainted. Next, as he gained consciousness, he was sitting with them in the car, blindfolded with hands tied behind his back. After this the girls took him to an unknown place where they allegedly drugged him. He alleged that they were drinking alcohol and forced him to drink as well. After this all four took turns to rape him, the man claimed. Later at around 3 AM, the girls left from there leaving him blindfolded and with hands tied…’ I paused, to rub my eyes. Some of my mascara had bled. ‘Madam, you are an authority in all these matters…is this the way forward. Are women who in our country are abused every eleven minutes now seeking revenge or equality?’ The question stirred something inside me. I thought of how, barely half an hour ago, or something – the anchor, while asking me details of how I was violated in my early twenties, had seethingly remarked that men such as my ex deserve to be behind bars – going on to then probe, if I had ever actually complained to the police. If I would, now? How she had added that she could not help but wonder, if he had abused more women – where he may be now. How her pale lips had quivered, with an impotent rage. I was all of 19 when the violence erupted. I was a little over 21 when I left the city of my birth – forsaking a prestigious scholarship in the UK – my dream as a University topper to join a newspaper office in the burgeoning national capital at a paltry salary of Rs. 4,500. I was a fugitive on the run. Petrified of being discovered. Scared of my boyfriend. But, even more of who I became when he found me. How weak I eventually was – easy fodder for a narcissist – never ending mind games and complex emotional blackmailing and the perennial begging for forgiveness and citing how much he had loved and sacrificed for me, sans a shred of real guilt/remorse or a wee bit of changed behaviour – emotional abuse at the core of physical abuse – the hunter and the hunted. A power dynamic that justifies violence and dehumanisation of all shapes and forms. I asked myself – if I were to confront my abuser, today. Would I also beat him up? Would I want him to suffer the way I had? Give up on his ambition to lead a life built on second hand, compensatory aspirations? Had I wished him the worst things – all this while? If you type – men being raped by women, Wikipedia throws up that ‘a proportion of victims of rape or other sexual violence incidents are male. Historically, rape was thought to be, and defined as, a crime committed solely against females. This belief is still held in some parts of the world, but rape of males is now commonly criminalized and has been subject to more discussion than in the past.’ Wikipedia further adds. ‘Female-on-male rape is mostly under-researched if we were to compare it to other forms of sexual violence. Statistics on the prevalence of female-on-male sexual violence vary. One study (Hannon et al.) finds 23.4% of women and 10.5% of men report being raped, while 6.6% of women and 10.5% of men report that they were victims of attempted rape. A 2010–2012 study by the Centres For Disease Control and Prevention claims that one in 17 men (5.9%) report being made to penetrate at some point in their lives (up from 4.8% in 2010). The surveys also adds that male victims often report only female perpetrators in instances of being made to penetrate (2012: 78.5%, 2010: 79.2%), sexual coercion (2012: 81.6%, 2010: 83.6%), and unwanted sexual contact (2012: 53.0%, 2010: 53.1%).Among male victims who were raped by being penetrated, 86.5% reported only male perpetrators, (down from 93.3% in the previous study published in 2010). A 2008 study of 98 men interviewed on the United States National Crime Victimization Survey found that nearly half of the men (46%) who reported some form of sexual victimization were victimized by women.’ Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code defines rape as “sexual intercourse with a woman against her will, without her consent, by coercion, misrepresentation or fraud or at a time when she has been intoxicated or duped or is of unsound mental health and in any case if she is under 18 years of age.”   Consent is defined as clear, voluntary communication that the woman gives for a certain sexual act. Marital rape is an exception to giving consent as it is not a crime under the Indian Penal Code, as long as the woman is above 18 years of age. According to Indian laws, men cannot be raped at all — they can only be “sodomised”, covered under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Until the draconian section 377 was struck down, even consensual homosexual sex was regarded as a criminal offence.   While the Supreme Court struck down this part of the law in a historic verdict a few years ago, more amendments are certainly a crying need in the legal definitions of rape. With the definition of rape limited to “the penetration of the vagina by a man”, women cannot be booked for rape.   At the most, they can be booked for sexual assault, or forced, unnatural sex under Section 377. On similar lines, therefore, a man cannot be legally raped. With the definition of rape limited to “the penetration of the vagina by a man”, women cannot be booked for rape. At the most, they can be booked for sexual assault, or forced unnatural sex under Section 377. Similarly, men cannot be legally raped, and women can’t be charged for rape.     Let’s look back when the Supreme Court of India was met with a similar situation where a woman by the name of Priya Patel was facilitated committing gang rape with with her husband Bhanupratap Patel.   According to the charge sheet, when Bhanupratap was committing the crime, Priya went to the room and the victim asked her for help. However, she slapped the victim and bolted the room from outside and left the place. The husband and wife were charged under Section 376(2)(g) of the IPC.   After many twists and turns, the Supreme Court had ruled that a woman cannot be prosecuted for a gang rape offence even if she had facilitated the crime. “A bare reading of Section 375 of the IPC (Indian Penal Code) makes the position clear that rape can be committed only by a man,” a bench of judges Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia declared while delivering the judgement. Many then had held that the judgement in the Priya Patel case was ‘bad law’ and had called for the laws to be made gender-neutral since victims and perpetrators belong to all genders.   It is true that while India’s rape laws have undergone changes over the past few decades – they still continue to regressively espouse patriarchal structures. When the crying need of the hour globally is the gender-neutral rape laws that stand for equality and dignity of men, transgender and homosexual persons to be protected, alongside women. Afterall what is rape? Essentially just non-consensual sex, right? The writer is the best-selling author, Sita’s Curse, Status Single, Leading columnist on gender & sexuality, Community Founder - Status Single, India’s first and only community for 75 million single Indian women. Views expressed are personal.  Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. 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