The attire allegation

The DGP Andhra Pradesh made a controversial statement recently which created waves  of disapproval all over the country   and even made Mr P. Chindambram  react saying " Ours is a free country and everyone is free to wear what they wish to."

The controversial statement is nothing new... “Women are raped ‘cos they dress in an inappropriate manner”. We had ‘Slut walks’ all over the world and the Indian version called “Besharmi Morcha “ to refute this argument the past year in India. Perhaps DGP Andhra was oblivious of these developments . It’s not new that colleges and schools have dress code for women .But has it really decreased the rape cases. Prescribing a dress code is like hoping a miraculous development of a backward state of the country by simply changing it’s name.

 Dressing as no correlation with being a rape victim... heck it has no correlation  even with age !! If a women’s way of dressing was the culprit no Burkha clad women would have ever been raped ... and can anyone explain how an old woman or a girl child provokes a rapist. The worst case I had ever heard in my vicinity was a gang rape of a 4 year old when I was a post grad student at medical college. The crime was so brutal that the poor child had to undergo several  life saving and genital reconstructive surgeries.

How conveniently the blame is put on women for provoking a crime against them that not only takes away their dignity but also condemns them to be subjected to allegations like these for the rest of their lives. This argument isn’t new but what was most disheartening was the fact that the topmost officer of the police force, which is supposed to protect women, has such regressive outlook and what more he isn’t gender sensitive. This dismisses completely the hope of finding gender sensitization in the lower rungs of the police force. No wonder rape victims are raped again in police custody. I am sorry to say Mr DGP sir you simply lost the point and have revealed your ignorance . A cancer patient was raped by a hospital employee in a premier cancer institute in Mumbai ... I saw that poor girl deliver a dead baby in our hospital... can DGP Andhra give me a plausible explanation how a terminally ill teenage girl provoke such a ghastly crime against her..chemotherapy definitely didn’t make her attractive ... I am at loss and I am sorry to say that it’s disheartening to see that our senior officers make such outrageously stupid statements instead of rooting out the real cause of the problem.

No woman wants to be raped and it’s not the clothing but the a patriarchal mind set that always works towards suppressing women’s sexuality and bailing out male pervert urges. Until men are sensitized towards women and till they view  them as fellow human beings who deserve respect it will just be a blind blame on attire with no changein the rate of crime against women.