Why men rape: Banning porn is no solution

Mumbai: Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, who in his PIL in the Supreme Court in April this year contended that “most of the offences committed against  women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography” — and demanded that consuming pornography be made a non-bailable offence under India’s Internet laws — may have found support among many after Mumbai’s gangrape case. “It is a proven fact that after watching pornography you are more sexually titillated," Dr Yusuf Matcheswala, head of psychiatry at Masina Hospital, told Firstpost. “With the fantasy it provides, given that opportunity, people would prefer to ‘do it’”. Is the connection between pornography and sexual violence that simplistic? Most sociologists, women’s rights advocates and medical specialists think not. India transitioned from being a country with one channel and a handful of programmes on television in the 1980s to being bombarded with hundreds of channels with the onset of cable TV in the 1990s. With the turn of the century, telecom and Internet had taken off, and Indians were thrown into a whole new realm of information overload without not necessarily adequate preparation to handle it with discretion and responsibility. CULTURAL MINDSETS According to Dr. Rajiv Tandon, senior advisor (health and nutrition) with Save the Children, “We are straddling the world of being both, an old civilization and an aspiring modern society.” [caption id=“attachment_1065965” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Can banning pornography really curb crimes against women? AFP[/caption] Tandon told Firstpost that since the invasion of the cable channel into our living rooms we have allowed the media to transmit to us soft pornography — be it by way of our films, our TV serials or our channels sensationalising news. “Today something that was not easy to reach is now accessible to all and has created a situation where the maturity quotient of our society is unable to handle this,” Tandon said, adding, “Thing is, we are a young nation living with the mindset of an old civilization.” Shilpa Phadke, sociologist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), says any notion that  pornography is responsible for violence against women is just bunkum. “Pornography is an easy target. By blaming it we can conveniently ignore the way women are objectified and devalued or introspect the way our criminal justice system works – things that are the real problem,” Phadke told Firstpost. “If these people were more certain that they would get caught and punished they would be more careful,” she said. SOCIAL PROBLEMS To add to this there is unemployment, degradation of societal values and patriarchal mentalities. In a telling commentary on the mindset of Indian men,  The Guardian reported shocking reactions to what Indian men thought of the role of Indian women and how they perceived the recent spate of rapes. A 28-year-old driver, Abhijit Harmalkar who was interviewed by the newspaper  had this to say: “Our culture is different. Girls are not allowed outside after six [pm] because anything can happen – rape, robbery, kidnaps. It is the mentality of some people. They are putting on short and sexy dresses, that’s why. Then men cannot control themselves." “We are very much in a male hierarchical, male preference, male gender skewed environment where a woman is looked at as a commodity. Then there’s lack of education, poor development and economic growth that has not met the aspirations of the youth. So what we are potentially sitting on is a landmine ready to erupt,” said Tandon. It is a mix of these two problems which according to Tandon is the reason that disillusioned youth steeped in a patriarchal mindset commit crimes against women, like rape. “Anything that has an instinctive and animalistic response is what one would go to responsively and that’s what we are seeing,” he said. Nandita Gandhi, Co-director of Akshara, a women’s resource centre, agrees. “It’s a little bit of everything,” she said. “There are young people who are fairly frustrated with their lives and don’t see a bright future for themselves. So the frustration comes out on people who are most vulnerable, those they know can’t fight back – young people, children, wives, strange women who they photographed. It is very premeditated in that sense,” Gandhi said. THE FAMILY, OR ITS ABSENCE Matcheswala, psychriatrist at Masina Hospital, while believing that access to pornography has affected the way men behave with women, says that factors including upbringing, surrounding and hereditary factors also play a role. “If you are from a poor socio-economic background, are surrounded by petty criminals and social deviants, and come from a family of alcoholics you are more likely to commit crimes of violence against women,” Matcheswala said. While unemployment and lack of education are major factors acting as a catalyst for deviant behaviour, declining family control, too, plays an important role in it, according to Nandini Sardesai, professor of sociology at St. Xavier’s College. “The decline of family values is also responsible. Earlier the family had certain controls over its children, but now, primary relationships are with peers — which can have a positive or negative influence,” Sardesai told Firstpost. Our perceptions of the woman are also still archaic. “Despite the woman working, our perceptions have not changed. Women are still a commodity, still objectified,” she said. Harish Sadani, founder, Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA), told Firstpost that men need to be exposed to the basics of sexuality through positive means such as sex education. He said they also need to relearn the meaning of what masculinity is. “Commodification of women has becoming normal and so they find nothing wrong. They need to be taught about the real idea of what it means to be a man. Right now, we have the wrong forms of masculinity being reinforced.— like one normalises eve teasing and stalking in Bollywood.Songs like ‘Tu haan kar ya naa kar’ and  ‘Tu cheez baadi hai mast mast’ only take forward that skewed idea,” Sadani said. BANNING PORN, NO SOLUTION Phadke told Firstpost that she is against any kind of censorship asking to make consumption of pornography illegal as she believes IT will only open the door to censorship for anything and everything. “Besides being an invasion of privacy and rights of the individual, it will be asking for far more conservative ways of expression,” Phadke said. “Nobody seems to be concerned about other kind of violence Nobody is asking for a ban on violent video games or patriarchal ideas being propagated on TV or violence and killing in films so why pornography?” she asked. “Sexuality becomes a default target.” Sardesai too believes it is the patriarchal set up that needs an overhaul. Sardesai’s point is made well in the light of this  Tehelka   report , which sheds light on the pathetic attitude of the police and the regressive mindset of men in Haryana’s villages. A sub-inspector Praveen Singh from Bhuna Police Station in Fatehabad district, is quoted in Tehelka as saying, “How can you rape a woman forcibly when she doesn’t want it? Most cases we get here are motivated. Recently, a woman came and complained that her husband’s brother had raped her. I wonder what her husband was doing when she was being raped? When we went to investigate, all three of them had jumped into the canal and committed suicide. Now, how are we to take such cases seriously?” “Just because someone watches porn doesn’t mean that they commit such crimes,” Sardesai told Firstpost, adding, “When we talk of rape we always relate it to a sex crime. For me it’s a crime of violence against women. Men see how their mothers and sisters are treated at home and pick up from there.” Indeed, many across India still live with the mindset of ‘might is right’ when it comes to their women, and that such an act is actually an act of masculinity. The Tehelka report states , “If a Jat has not had sex with his siri’s (farm labour’s) wife and daughter, then he is not worthy of calling himself a Jat.” How will banning pornography address the mindset of these regressive, deviant and shameless patriarchs? That’s a question Kamlesh Vaswani needs to be asked