No one. Absolutely no one ‘deserves rape’. Because rape is not something one ‘earns’ on a karma scoreboard. One’s actions have no bearing, under any conceivable circumstances, on the act of rape. It is a heinous, blood-curdling crime punishable under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code. That is as air-tight as it gets. There is NO ringside context to be provided. Amen.
Why get into things that do not ‘deserve rape’ then?
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In the light of a recent incident that led to a woman being shouted down in public for reprimanding a bunch of young women over their choice of clothes and then proceeding to tell them that they “deserve rape”, there are a few things worth getting off our chests.
1) One’s choice of clothes does not make one ‘deserve rape’. For a man, a woman or person of any gender. Because the problem does not lie swaddled in the dress’ hemline but in the societal crack-line.
Society is broken, its disparities are like two parallel lines that looks like they will never meet, and rape is the power turbine that is roaring with fuel. When one rapes, it is not because the survivor is the problem, it is because the perpetrator is.
Rape is about the power equation between the perpetrator and the survivor, and most naysayers never got the gender memo on how complicit and messed up social conditioning can get.
2) A sexist comment, no matter how abysmal, does not deserve ‘deserve rape’ in return. So if a person is being distasteful, regressive, and misogynistic, it does not mean that one can use “you deserve rape” as a counter-threat.
That is counter-productive, self-defeating, and uses the same language of misogyny.
Rape cannot be normalised in the daily lexicon as a punishment meted out according to subjective discretion. That discounts the experiences/trauma of countless survivors worldwide. And perpetuates the wildly faulty notion of the survivor who ‘had it coming’.
3) The lack of ‘parental control’ does not ‘deserve rape’. First of all, no one, leave alone a parent, gets to tell anyone what they should and shouldn't wear. It is a question of bodily autonomy. And if parents don’t really care what you are wearing, by way of moral supervision, they ‘deserve’ a round of applause. The word ‘control’ contains, decimates, and reins in personhood and agency.
So the lack of ‘parental control’ deserves to be celebrated, not castigated for putting one’s child in ‘harm’s way’!
4) Finally, coming back to the first point, the surface area covered by a piece of clothing on one’s person is not an indicator of the degree of sexual harassment/assault that they ‘deserve’. Nothing justifies sexual harassment/assault.
People in bikinis don’t ‘deserve rape’.
People in saris don’t ‘deserve rape’.
People in short dresses don’t ‘deserve rape’.
A naked person does NOT ‘deserve rape’.
No one ‘invites’ a crime upon themselves. Humans have evolved with enough self-preservatory instincts to ensure that. So if a person, with their own say, is dressing in a way that another person is not okay with, the seed of rot lies in the latter. Not the former.
(Just an aside: ‘Body-type’ shouldn’t stop anyone from ‘flaunting’ what they’ve got. One can wear whatever on good earth they want to wear, no matter what their body type is, and feel like a million dollars!)
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