From: usubrama@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Uma M Subramanian)
Subject: Re: More About India
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 07:22:54 GMT


In article <1992Oct6.150358.28380@coe.montana.edu> prem@cs.montana.edu (M.P.Pre
mkumar) writes:
>Hi nettors,
>
>It seems suddenly people realised that India is not a place for women to live
>in. Oh yeah and USA is always better. BULLSHIT.

It didn't seem worthwhile to respond to an article that had nothing but
sweeping generatlizations and didn't even pretend to offer any factual
basis (either by way of personal expereince or statistics or female
friends' experiences). But I guess I'm still not tired of pointing out
on SCI the vehemence with which many men deny all sexism in Indian
culture out of  a misguided sense of pride in anything Indian or out of
vested interest.

>I just saw arguments by people based on their experiences in Delhi and Bombay
>alone. Maybe eave teasing happens in Madras, Bangalore and Calcutta too. Anybo
dy
>heard of any eave teasing in towns and villages ? Any incidents ?
Even though this sounds like a rhetorical question, challenging people to
produce something that doesn't exist, I'm going to take this question seriously
and answer it: Yes, I can give you numerous incidents, but it's too
painful and degrading to do so.

>The truth is people here are over exaggerating the issue very much. Yes, its
>true that eave teasing is there in big cities. But it doesn't mean that all
>men are like that. Maybe a few. But the few make their presence felt. One
>example I can offer in the same lines: The foul mouthing of some "civilised"
>nettors against some members of the opposite sex. If someone read SCI and
>decided that all Indian men are like that then will you all accept that ?

Oh, I now see your concern -- you don't want someone thinking that all Indian
men are like 'that'. I wonder why such invalid conclusions should bother
you, especially when you seem to be indulging in a great many of them
yourself.
>
>USA is better than India in treating women eh ? I assume people just study
>and study and don't look around what's happening here. Did any of you see
>the statistics of sexual harrasment in USA ? Did any of you see the series
>of women beating cases shown in CNN and other news bulletins ? Based on my
>observations I think USA treats women very very badly compared to India.

You certainly didn't look around in India. Anyway, rape and sexual assaults
are so vastly underreported in India due to the taboo associated with it.
The worst thing in my experience is that fo rmany women, it is not
possible to tell even family members about such cases for fear of losing
the little freedom to move around in the city. The reaction in my
experience has been "I told you not to go out alone" "From now on, you
can't go out alone"    and you soon learn to never talk abou t this to
anyone. If this is the kind of support a woman/girl has at home, one
can imagine why rapes and assaults are not reported. (BTW, I wonder how
it is for married Indian women to tell their husbands about such things,
if the reaction is often one of blaming the wife for "asking for it".)

>Men here look at women as sexual objects(most of them). In India, eave
>teasing stops in the roads here it follows the women wherever she goes. And
>they get beaten by their husbands(I accept that this is common in India too)
>and their boy friends.

Yes, except that in India a woman is told that it's her lot to put up
with all this shit.

>Guys here are always looking for women for sex. And most of them do get what
>they wanted by persuasion or force. Men go to bars to "pick up" girls for the
>night. The work place is also not so good to the women here. And I can tell
>for sure that offices in India are much better than here in the USA where
>women are always apprehensive of what might happen to them.

I admit I never worked in India, but my experiences in university campuses
(both from fellow students and male professors and the ubiquitous
"roadside romeos") has been pretty negative except for those few
friends and teachers. I have many female friends who work in India, and
the story is the same. I hate to ask this futile question: bu twhere do
you get your "facts" that you so confidently wave around? 

About men going to bars to pick up girls for the night -- yes, there are
pick up joints, and men AND women go there to pick someone up or to be
picked up. A woman wouldn't go to one if she doesn't want to pick someone
up or to be picked up. And there are bars which are decent places to
hang out at. In my experience, the attention you get from men is not
threatening in the western context, in general. A man may walk up to
you and try to strike up a conversation, but I feel I'm in control of
the situation and polite indifference is enough to put an end to the
whole business. And similarly at the workplace -- at the workplace, men
have a lot more at stake and don't make advances rashly except whre
there is obvious power imbalance and the infrastructure of the field
has a lon ghistory of sexual assaults and a toleration for it, such
as the medical fields. Of course, intimidation based on gender and
sexual assaults are far too rampant in the workplace in *every* culture
for women to feel anywhere near safe, but I simply fail to see your
comparison of US and India in this respect..

The difference between India and the US is that the attention you
get from a man is scary and you have to take cover immediately inIndia
and a woman has to constantly send out messages that she's "a good
girl". The relative absence of sexual misbehavior towards women in
rural areas is not because the villagers are liberated when it comes
to women's issues but because the women there are warped into a mold.
The pseudo-respect for women in the Indian culture is based on this
implicit agreement: "woman, don't you create any trouble or else..."

The attention from men, in this culture, at least in the subculture
that I am familiar with, is the kind that looks for signals and is
capable of being stopped at the woman's discretion, and in this
country, unlike India, a woman is not subjected to flagrant, bestial
assaults that are a part of her daily life. The purpose of these
unsolicited advances is to keep women in a subservient position by
sexual intimidation. Ask a woman in htis country how many times she
has encountered physical, sexual handling by strangers in public and
compare the figure you get from an Indian woman. 

>The schools are biased towards men here. Did any one of you read the reports
>about how girls are discriminated in the school education system here? 

?
I agree with you here (and I've written on this earlier). But,
The implicit claim here seems to be that Indian educational system
is not biased in favor of men. Would you care to substantiate that? Girls
are discriminated at school *and* everywhere else in India to a degree
that is pathetically blatant to everyone except those who try to
glorify India at every opportunity.
>
>So for heavensake don't try to glorify USA and degrade India at every 
>opportunity. And don't just complain on everything in India without you
>doing anything to help. [I remember seeing a report that Delhi Women students
>formed an action group against eave teasing - I wonder how many of the people
>who complained here did anything of that sort when they were in India].
>While I accept that women are not always treated well in India I also say that
>USA is no better.

All those men who jump in to stand up for Indian culture when it comes
to women's issues -- be it arranged marriages and ho wthey affect women,
the treatment of women, the educational system and how it affects women --
do us all a favor. If you can't live the life of a woman, try the next best
thing: talk to some women and listen to what they have to say.

I consider myself bicultural at this point, and I have to say as
an Indian woman I've never enjoyed as much freedom and a sense of 
equality in interactions with men as I have in this country. Not that
this is the perfect system for women. Let someone try ot defend the
American system as the perfect system for women and then you'll see
what I have to say about that. Inspite of that, I say again that
Indian culture is cruelly oppressive to women, even without any
comparison to a system that's far better. 

All that I've said here is with due apologies to the many male
Indian individuals I know who're wonderful people. This discussion
is mainly about the culture and the underlying assumptions in the
Indian culture that permits this unspeakable phenomenon of public
sexual assault.


>Sincerely yours,
>M.P.Premkumar

Uma Subramanian