April 22, 2013: Fight for the Right to not Be Raped
end quote from:
http://www.takepart.com/photos/photo-day-winter-2013
When I saw this photo today at first I couldn't figure out what exactly was happening here. It just said, "Photo of the day". And then I realized that these people were demonstrating against Rape in India. So, even though it might look like something else is going on the photo is what I would call "a Paradox photo".
When I went to India with my family in 1985 I realized on the one hand that I was safer most of the time than I would be almost anywhere in the U.S. because most people are Hindu and seriously believed at that time in Karma. So, though people were everywhere on the streets trying to scam you for a nickle or a dime for literally any little con to get you to give them a few coins, you actually were more safe there than in the U.S. in most cities because of the strength of people worried about harming you and getting bad karma for it.
However, I started to notice that women in the countryside NEVER traveled alone and always traveled in groups of about 10 women. I wondered about this at the time and realized after talking to my wife that they did this to protect themselves from rape. It took me some time and some near death experiences myself to understand why. (The near death experience was in a large group of people who had been sitting and waiting a long time and everyone had to go to the bathroom. And there were about 100,000 people trying to get to about 10 toilets and my daughter and I were almost knocked down and killed in the mad rush to the toilets). So, the only way I saw to keep my daughter and I alive was to take a football like stance with my elbow protruding that would literally knock down anyone running towards us. Because I'm 6 foot 5 inches tall this worked as no one wanted to be injured. So, we didn't die and get run over in the mad rush to the toilets.
In our "English Based Culture" here in America we are very self disciplined in a way not seen in most of the rest of the world cultures. So, for example, it is a point of honor that men in English cultures don't rape women because we still live in some ways in a world of Chivalry that likely started around the time of the legendary King Arthur. But, other countries don't have this history. So, in places like India and nearby Muslim nations, women have been treated somewhere between children and greatly loved pets now for thousands of years. Being raped at any age is something that women in the lower classes have had to put up with always because they don't have equal status to men.
For example, in the country in India in 1985 and 1986 when I was then, often women and wives who were not educated out in the country away from the bigger cities would sort of be embarrassed and laugh like little children or schoolgirls because they had not had an equal education and didn't know how to meet someone like myself and my wife. So, meeting someone like me and my family was sort of like meeting aliens from another world. My stepson said it best. He said, "These people think we are Gold Plated E.T.'s (extra terrestrials). And I must admit at that time it was at times out in the country as great a difference as actually being E.T.'s.
At that time (I'm not sure what the ratio is now) there were only 40% of the people in the country that had any education at all because there wasn't public education at that time. So, if a family couldn't afford a dress suit of clothes or uniform and tuition they stayed ignorant regard to anything about formal education even in the 1st grade. And I saw this everywhere. So, people like my wife and I who had both had many years of college by then were treated in some situations like royalty and put in situations with upper class people of that country just because of our education and the fact that we could afford to travel to India from the U.S.
So, what I'm trying to get at is that some cultures were not raised with chivalry where women were to be protected enough so they could be equal now. So, the fact that they are being raped in Muslim and other cultures as a way to keep them down in their child or revered pet status is not surprising as the world changes as it has been since the 1980s.
So, imagine cultures where women have never been prepared for equality and have always been treated as children and only good for one thing, (raising children like eternal babysitters). And you will understand why men in lower classes rape women to keep them still being children and babysitters rather than anything else.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the cultures are not like ours except in the top 40% generally over there. Equality works here because of thousands of years of equal like treatment where women often even fought in battles alongside their men in Viking Cultures and others in Northern Europe. This wasn't true in most other countries around the world. So, this is a very difficult thing for these cultures now to give their women equal rights. It might seem easy to us but they have thousands of years of not being equal. There is a saying that might be partially appropriate, "You can't get there from here!"
So, unfortunately the only way enough people in lower classes could change would be to send them to a culture like ours for high school or college, or to educate them in upper class schools in India. Otherwise, I don't really see a way for the lower uneducated classes of men and women to change much. It may happen very slowly over time. This isn't just a problem in India which is majority Hindu, it is a problem in Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, and all Muslim Countries in the lower classes as well.
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