Expert view: Rape is more about power than sex

A Madhya Pradesh minister had made this startling statement about rape: “It is a social crime which depends on the man and the woman. It is sometimes right (sic!) and sometimes wrong.” He further declared: “Item numbers in films create a bad environment.”

The honorable minister failed to realise that rape is not about sex and the sexy item numbers. Rape is about power, about violence. Sex is being used as a tool to achieve them.

Research has clearly established that a rapist’s pleasure does not come from the act of sex. It comes from his ability to subjugate, humiliate and degrade the victim. If item numbers can incite rapes, then practically all women in India would have been raped by now.

Rape is never right. Our policy/law makers must try to understand human sexuality rather than make nonsensical statements. Janaki Lenin, in her erudite writing on the issue of rape rightfully states, “Biology merely provides men with the tools, but culture determines how they use them.” In other words our cultures/societies have to sensitise men on gender issues and make men treat women with respect.

We all need to evolve as better humans, there is always scope for improvement, no doubt about that. This is not an attempt to exonerate men completely; neither are we referring to those men with psychiatric or sadistic problems, but getting to the bottom of the issue is the endeavour.

Parents create and nurture a child.  The onus of instilling sensitivity falls on them. In the male-dominated society, a woman tends to internalise the attitudes of the men she is with — her father, brother or husband. And she inadvertently passes on the same to her sons who go on to be fathers, brothers and husbands. The man on his part lacks the raison d’être.

The need of the hour is — a woman must be able to discriminate the attitudes and a man must be receptive to that fruition.  The responsibility is more on the mother to make her male child more sensitive, responsive and receptive, more by virtue of the fact that a young boy values his mother’s sentiments more. Society needs the empowerment called love. It starts from birth. 

The writer is a sexologist. Mail him at dr.narayana@deccanmail.com