Wow, my sister-in-law lived in India for 6 months training people. She never experienced anything like this, apart from a few men politely asking her out. Is this phenomena a regional thing or something?
India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
161–170 of 201 posts
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will bite. Women in Pornography are paid to do that (mostly). Women who get raped on the streets of Delhi aren't paid to do that.
Right. Objectifying women is okay as long as they get paid. And I guess in this fantasyland rape never happens too.
Nice. Way to miss the fucking point. Let me break it down for you. The article was an article on sexual harassment and rape in a specific country. Not this country. A different country. Totally different cultural values, objectives. You rambled on about two completely different issues:
1. The "developed world" and objectification of women here.
2. Pornography and the porn industry.
The developed world, its issues are irrelevant here. Every time, a god damn article comes about something wrong in the third world, it is not necessary to bring up this world. It conflates the issue and introduces moral relativism. Sure there is female infanticide and female genital mutilation but HEY, women in tech in the bay area get shafted too. That in essence is the argument being made.
To address the other issues of your muddled argument. Sure pornography might involve objectifying women. Sure it might be a bad thing. Sure someone must do something about it. Guess what? It is fucking irrelevant here. This is about women who go to a country and expect not to get raped.
I think next time, I should just down vote and move on, instead of spending my time arguing online.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#163I've lived in Tokyo for years, and have been stared at many of times, masturbated at, molested on the train, and have had unwanted filming up my skirt.
I think these experiences prepared me to keep my expectations low when traveling.
I was not too shocked by the staring (and photo taking) in India, even though it occurred at a level I'd never experienced before. I was also lucky enough to be traveling with two Indian friends (a guy and a girl), and they DID mind when we found other people taking my picture.
I remember thinking many times I was lucky to have traveled and lived abroad before visiting India; otherwise I would have been as shocked as the author of this article.
While we should be able to expect more, people (and especially young Americans) need to know that society's rules and how much they are actually respected can be completely different. Dancing at a festival or shopping in an extremely crowded place may be exhilarating but even these simple activities come with risks that are just not there back home. (Even a woman going outside alone comes with risks in some countries. I would not feel safe going outside in India without the company of a trusted male friend). Even if rape is technically illegal, that technicality will not protect you, or even provide much comfort after being harmed. Maybe the world feels smaller than ever since technology is connecting us all, but it's safer to not assume everyone is working within the same moral framework. I found that out the hard way.
Women absolutely should not have to worry about these risks, and it is shameful that we do. But we should be aware of it and not ignore it when we are outside of our own country and law systems. This needs to be discussed with students before they embark on study abroad. It's good to talk about it so that others realize they need to be very careful in some places, but I think in this case change needs to come from within India itself.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not culture so much as it is the side effect of culture merged with their current development state as a country. That is, if India's quality of living and development were advanced to that of the west, there probably wouldn't be anything objectively inferior culture-wise.
It is definitely culture. The US didn't start treating women reasonably on its own. It required a generation of women to protest in the streets until the culture and the law changed. This hasn't happened in India yet, but is hopefully now beginning. I wouldn't draw too many direct parallels between women in the pre-'60s US, and women in India since the respective traditions are so hugely different, but what has to ha…
But I still think it is societal development. Liberalism is a natural evolution as the quality of life and the society advances, and so the way woman are treated in India I believe is an effect of its development, not an effect of its culture.
Like you said, the US had the same stage. We used to be heavily racist and also oppressed women during an earlier stage of socio-economic development.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is definitely culture. The US didn't start treating women reasonably on its own. It required a generation of women to protest in the streets until the culture and the law changed. This hasn't happened in India yet, but is hopefully now beginning. I wouldn't draw too many direct parallels between women in the pre-'60s US, and women in India since the respective traditions are so hugely different, but what has to ha…
But I still think it is societal development. Liberalism is a natural evolution as the quality of life and the society advances, and so the way woman are treated in India I believe is an effect of its development, not an effect of its culture. Like you said, the US had the same stage. We used to be heavily racist and also oppressed women during an earlier stage of socio-economic development.
I don't think it's a useful model to suppose that there's some underlying "true culture" that doesn't change over time and that will be gradually revealed as their economy improves. Culture changes, and economic development is a catalyst for change. Whatever way people behave today, that is the culture today, and if they behave differently tomorrow, that will be the culture tomorrow. Right now, Indian culture subjugates women. In the future, it hopefully won't.
Liberalism might be an "inevitable" consequence of advancement from one stage to the next, but real people have to fight for it to make it inevitable. When they fight for it, they will be changing the culture, not revealing it in a more true form.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
>people flee these countries for a reason ... massive cultural and social advantages Woah, there's some serious ethnocentrism in your comment. I know 100s of people who have moved to the USA from India, including my parents, a lot of their friends, and a large number of friends and colleagues. These people tend to be very progressive for India and still very few think Western culture is objectively better than Indian…
I feel like this is a cop-out. Indian culture is objectively worse than American culture, and this article is pretty solid evidence of this. "Traditional values" are no excuse for misogyny and barbarism. Tradition is close to the literal opposite of social progress and I don't understand why it is glorified. I'm pretty proud that I have no "solid foundation of traditional values," and that I've incidentally raped a g…
I wanted to write a comment on this topic. But just figured out that every word you wrote is true.
I am happy that i follow no religion, no cast, no nonsense.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of "traditional" values turn out to be wrong. As judged by whom?
Common sense, if the "traditional value" is that women should be in the house cooking lest they subject themselves to groping and leering. Common sense.
Only billions of other people have a different a kind of "common sense" where "women in the kitchen" is considered perfectly natural for them.
What makes yours better? That it's you (your culture that is) that has it?
Which brings us to a bigger question: should different cultures with different values on such issues exist in parallel?
E.g I for one take offense ("common sense" to me) with any culture that is so backwards as to have the death penalty.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
>people flee these countries for a reason ... massive cultural and social advantages Woah, there's some serious ethnocentrism in your comment. I know 100s of people who have moved to the USA from India, including my parents, a lot of their friends, and a large number of friends and colleagues. These people tend to be very progressive for India and still very few think Western culture is objectively better than Indian…
Have you talked to the women? My wife is Indian as are many of our friends. The men all think wistfully about moving back to India. None of the women do. People are skeptical of "American Culture" in large part because even after living here for years, they view it through the lens of how it was portrayed in Indian cinema. Regardless, the women all appreciate that in America they can safely go about their business in…
THIS.
Couldn't have put it better. The men romanticize about life back home. The women don't. They dot want their daughters going back to a place where they're treated as second class citizens. They often know that even their own families would lock them back into a situation where the lost many f the freedoms they learn to appreciate living in America.
I had a good friend tell me one if the key reasons many women stay in abusive marriages back in India is because if they divorce their husbands they genuinely feel they will simply be opened up as fair game for rape by any man who feels like it.
I'm highly offended by the folks in this thread who've even saying things like - yes it's bad for women in India but the us has it's problems. That's not the same as living either a second class status or in constant fear.
One if my favorite movie lines, familiar to many on this site, comes to mind: "how does it feel to live in fear? That's what it is to be a slave".
Are ALL Indian men likely to act this way. No of course not. So let's avoid the straw man of "not everyone behaves this way". This is the cumulative effect of enough people and the culture they live in.
Men in the west are definitely comfortable respecting the cultural values of other countries without a though or care for what those values mean for half the population and that they're often enforced through brutal violence against women or the threat of that violence used to intimidate.
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
But aren't patriarchy and misogyny fundamentally related? I mean, are there any societies with strong patriarchal norms but very little misogyny?
It heavily depends on your definitions of both those terms. However, strictly speaking, patriarchy in itself while still constraining of women (an egalitarian society would be much better), also required heavily duty-bound behavior from men. Something which is not conducive to open or effective misogyny. I do not know of any societies with strong patriarchal norms and very little misogyny, if they do indeed exist.
Yeah I'm calling BS on that.
Patriarchy in cultures is without fail about the control of women. All niceties around protecting them boil down to treating them as property, as chattel. You fundamentally don't have an equal situation when one gender is rendered property of another.
ergo misogyny
Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I expected to be O.K. with misogyny in the service of "traditional values", or are traditional values beside the point here? A lot of "traditional" values turn out to be wrong.
Is there not plenty of misogyny in non "traditional values"? What does media sell, show 24/7? Valuing? or objectification?
right - objectification of women in ads is bad - boo West
You have me on that. I'm with you all the way.
Treating women as property of men. Using violence and intimidation against women to maintain the traditional order. The normalization of sexual harassment of women in a culture at large. The institutionalized discrimination against them (try getting a divorce lawyer to take your case as a professional woman in India).
All vastly, dramatically and objectively worse.