Jyotika Rimal:
“Girl Raped and killed”
“Woman raped by her husband”
“16 year old girl gang-raped”
“Girl murdered after being raped”
Everyday when I turn the pages of my morning daily, I find at least one “rape” news. Mark my words, at least one. Sometimes there are two or maybe three. I don’t understand why this rape culture is getting so famous and trendy specially in the villages. It looks like some men feel that their moral would decrease if they do not rape someone. The rape culture has become so famous and important in some villages that people feel that they have to do it for one reason or another.
I believe, one of the major reason is because there are many places in out country where majority of the women are deprived of their own benefits and do not have the guts to stand up for themselves because they are so dependent upon their husband and male companions that they do not have any other option but to simply live with the brutality of getting raped.
Another reason, according to my understanding is because many families do not send their girl child to schools to get a degree. They believe that the sole responsibility of a girl is to get married and take care of her in-laws and children. A girl is married in such a small age that she has no time to understand her rights and shout for help if she is a rape victim. At a very early age, a girl is married to a man twice her age and before she knows what her husband is doing to her, she is already raped and deprived of the understanding that she must fight against it.
Third, women have no clue about their rights. Many women don’t even know that if they complain against a man for raping her and if that is proved, the man can get a very strict punishment.
Women have been living under men ever since the “Sati” culture existed where a woman would also die once her husband is dead, be it by suicide or asking someone to kill her. I ask why? Why should a woman suffer when she hasn’t done anything wrong? Why deprive her of all her rights? Why marry her to a man twice her age when she must be having the freedom to play with her friends? Why not send her to school so that she can learn to read and write and improve her family conditions? Why is it always the women who are blamed for something they did not do? Why is eve teasing being neglected so much in our country? Why can men have the freedom to tease any woman they want to? Why can’t women have the freedom to leave their homes without having the fear of getting raped?
Taken from the writer’s personal blog: http://jotkaluru.blogspot.in/
Jytoka Rimal is a communications officer at Samriddhi Foundation, a public policy think-tank in Nepal. She recently finished her MA in Sociology from New Delhi. Gender issues often catch her eyes and she likes to write about them in her personal blog. In her free time, she also likes to capture anything that catches her eyes.