Stanford rape case: Women seeking justice are constantly belittled by likes of Brock Turner's dad

“His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of his life,” laments the father of a son caught, literally, with his pants down, sexually assaulting an unconscious woman that stopped short of full-fledged rape only because he was apprehended by sheer chance. “Action,” mind you, not violence, not assault, sexual or otherwise, not even ungentlemanly conduct, just “events” that had turned his son Brock Turner’s life topsy-turvy, even though he’d got away with a sentence of only six measly months, with nary a word for his hapless victim. If you want to know how it shattered the life of the woman who attended a party at the Stanford University campus in January 2015 and unwittingly became the object of Brock Turner’s lust, how she is still trying to piece it together, just read even a few paragraphs of the 7,244-word gut-wrenching statement she had submitted to the court and then put up on the social news site BuzzFeed since the sentencing last week, from where it has since gone viral. If this is how blind parental love has played out in the United States in the Stanford student Brock Turner’s case over the last one year, then how does one explain a Mumbai socialite blithely describing journalist Tarun Tejpal’s transgressions on a junior colleague as merely a “grave error”? Something “that pricked the bubble of his public image and gave his detractors ammunition to demolish him,” and not a single word spared for the young woman who was not only molested by him (by his own admission, if not in those words), but did not even get the simple apology that is all that she had asked for? [caption id=“attachment_2820274” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Brock Turner who was guilty in the Stanford rape case. AP[/caption] A couple of months ago, UK’s The Guardian newspaper had carried an article which in trying to give RK Pachauri’s side of the story in the many cases of sexual harassment against the former TERI boss, had quoted a blog by another journalist as saying, “Obviously she was leaned on. This is straight out of All the President’s Men. It’s about ‘rat-fucking’. Black politics to undermine Pachauri’s reputation. I can see people using her. But there has to be someone at the head of it.” Anything, but take the woman’s word for it, women in this case. True, we didn’t need these reminders. We know all too well that whichever part of the world you are in, however affluent or educated you may be, rape or sexual assault (in the eyes of the Indian law they are one and the same) is, to too many people, a minor misdemeanour at worst, something for which the “vociferous dragging through the coals.” Tejpal was subjected to what was way beyond the pale, as voiced by the Mumbai socialite Malavika Sangghvi earlier this week. The tragedy is not just that such things happen and people try to find ways and means to wriggle out of such tight corners any which they can (there is no decent way out unless you take responsibility for your actions, repent what you did and face the music with courage and dignity, without putting blame on the recipient of your unwanted attentions), but the brazenness of it all. More the number of women stepping up to demand justice, more strident has become the attempts to belittle their efforts. More the victims of rape or sexual assault forcing such issues out in the open, naming names and giving explicit details of the wrong done to them, more is the attempt to dismiss such atrocities as “untoward incidents” (vide Tarun Tejpal in his letter to his colleagues) or explain them away as the fell effects of the scourge of alcohol (as Brock Turner and his father have, to great success with the judge pronouncing a sentence of mere six months even though it could have been as many as 14 years) or more is the attempt to belittle the women and their morals. His father wasn’t the only one who felt Brock Turner’s “20 minutes of action” should not be taken out of proportion, the loss of his place in the university’s swimming team and the scholarship that came with it was punishment enough they felt. While “there are more and more takers” for rehabilitating Tarun Tejpal, insists Malavika Sangghvi, even before the courts have come to any conclusion. In a world where a Donald Trump can become the US Presidential hopeful by making mean, bitchy, distasteful comments against Muslims, Mexicans and other minorities, in a world where people’s representatives can proclaim a “Muslim-mukt Bharat” as a legitimate political goal, in a world where politicians can be seen seething with righteous indignation for a family going unpunished for possessing mutton that had mysteriously turned into beef, disrespect for women’s rights does seem par for the course. But this is also the time to make a stand and draw the line in the sand, to protest each and every small indignity, to fight back against every sexist joke, any snide remark about what women wear, when and where they go and what they eat or drink. With the world turning dangerously conservative, with political correctness being sneered at, letting any anti-woman go uncontested is the most regressive act you can do today.