Effective efforts

I had written this, below email (last year) to set of people, of my impression (as a woman) and categorization of various potential heinous things that women may face in their life.

Hi A,

Thanks for putting this together! You have captured the essential purpose of this conference session and intention with it was triggered to begin with. If you notice, there are just so many issues of varied seriousness, be it regular day to today life instances, to trivial matter like using guys instead of folks, or more grave issues of molestations to rape. And since the session did not come out with tangible concrete action items to go home with, it cannot be labeled as faulty. Issue by itself is so diverse and knotty that we do need to focus on problem by problem from accepting if its a problem first to if there are healing steps required. But with due respect to everyone's consciousness, we do need to focus first on absolutely necessary harmful issues which are beyond the "gotcha" aha moments.

One such discussion I had with V (during conference) on existence of prostitution business in our "society." When people say existence of flesh business is acceptable for safer societies for women. So essentially are we sacrificing few women for greater common good? Is that something they are doing willingly? Is it the money lure (blinding by not providing the choice of other alternatives)? If it is a healthy component to the society then why it is not a mainstream profession and why not advocated to every woman. My gut feeling is no woman will or doing this by choice. Its either force, trick or difficult financial circumstances. Hence, I do not agree with that argument at all. highest degree...


Next is molestation, rape where affected women are damaged beyond inexplicable impacts. Even though for a moment we accept that we make it socially acceptable and men are more open towards accepting the victims, but are they not scarred and battered at a deeper level? Almost all the stories that we heard in the email, there was one element very common, shame, guilt, deep hurt (even though none of them asked for it). None were rape experiences in those but any kind of physical intrusion left them seriously hurt. How did the guilt get formed to girl child of age as early as 7/8 years old. Is it instinct or? higher degree...

Next is cat-calling or eve-teasing etc..these are instances where women are affected at a more superficial level and their physical self is not intruded by strangers. I got talking to my American friends here about this issues and idea of eve-teasing is almost non-existent. It will be interesting to find why it is such a big crisis in India.Is it suppression of guys feelings, upbringing, lack of proper education, lack of co-eds, sex education? These might be bit easier to deal with. I know, I am making a big assumption here. Please chime in. Medium level...

Next is issues related to our everyday lives, why were women made to learn cooking and guys taught not to cry etc...list is long here. But having said this, these are deep rooted, well fed from childhood practices/biases etc. How harmful can they be or are? Once we assess that we can address those as they come. Low level...


Some of you may feel that one is more harmful than the other. Agreed. This is very subjective. I merely listed all these for convenience and since we cannot adopt the same approach to all the problems. But we need to identify the gravity of issue individually and tackle one at a time. I think we have been pretty successful in introducing the topic in general. Now we need to find our focus and work towards one problem at a time.

My 2 cents.
Pallavi

Today, morning I read about this.

According to the Justice Department, 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped in her lifetime. Tribal leaders say predators believe Native American land is almost a free-for-all, where no law enforcement can touch them.

It got me wondering if just tightening the federal efforts is the solution to eradicate this problem.

The federal government has recently announced plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to improve medical clinics, buy more rape kits and bolster the police response to what authorities say is an epidemic of rapes on Indian land.

I personally don't think so! It will empower women and grant access to justice but they seem like prescriptive reactionary steps after the deed is done. What prescriptive steps are we formulating where physical assaults do not even occur in perpetrator's mind? What can we introduce in our formal or informal education or methods of social interactions that aggressive mindset is dealt with, to avoid destructive attacks, altogether?