Sex means rape for most men

One wonders how long it will be before we learn the lessons we should have learnt after Nirbhaya's ghastly death. With the molestation and murder of another young girl in Moga, will we understand one basic, fundamental truth? For a majority of men sex actually means rape. And that is why they are unashamed, and that is why they think that when rape is reported something is wrong with the complainant and not with them! According to them this is normal sex. And if women are out on their own, or if they are "unprotected", they are fair game.

And that is why we live in a society where the very concept of marital rape is a conundrum. Because once you are married you are free to rape your wife every day of your life. After all, why bother to get married otherwise? How else does the man get sexual fulfilment?

In most households, a common scenario will be: the husband rolls on top of the woman, and after a few grunts and thrusts it's all done. Certainly he would have got what he wanted, and there is little understanding about sexual fulfilment for the woman.

The sexual revolution in which women are supposed to be treated as equals, where men try to find a means to satisfy them has simply passed India by. In fact for large swathes of Indian society (barring some elite, upper middle class segments) sex and rape are interchangeable. The man has a need, and the woman better allow him to get some "relief".

And increasingly, sex is about violence, about voyeurism, about "sharing" your experiences on mobile phones and the Internet. The bodies of women, and their minds are irrelevant. What a woman feels is irrelevant. There is no room for sensitivity where sex is concerned. Sex itself is a violent act, according to most men, and therefore women must submit.

This is the dangerous thinking among the immensely damaged generation of men which is growing up in India today. This is a generation of men who are (as I have said before) under-educated about gender relations and over exposed to a media where violence and harassment are commonplace. Within their own families they have encountered disrespect for women, whether their mothers, sisters, or any other relative. Punjab, also, has one of the worst sex ratios in the country, which reinforces the disrespect.

But for these men, their understanding of sex is obviously perfect because (according to them) we live in a patriarchal society, where using force is mandatory. And so, if the girl or woman resists a man can legitimately string her up on a tree, or stuff her with stones, or throw her out onto the road. But only after he has first humiliated her, and tortured her because she has not understood why she was put on earth in the first place. It is entirely her fault. He is the hunter after all, and she is the shikar to be shared among friends along with booze and tandoori chicken.

The men in the bus in Moga were very clear about what they were doing.

But what was worse was that in the political slug fest that followed about who owned the bus, the real issues were never discussed. The political opposition, stuffed almost entirely with patriarchal politicians, spent the entire time, sickeningly, discussing the owners of the bus. And almost everyone forgot the girl. We could have paused and hung our heads in shame. We could have had a minute's silence in Parliament as we did when a farmer committed suicide in front of the TV cameras in Delhi.

Right now, we need to stop politicising and begin humanising the problem. And understand that this is not about curtains on windows and who-owned-the-bus. But about a young girl who died and of the many who will continue to die till men continue to believe that sex and rape are the same thing.