When did rape become rough porn?

The anniversary of one of the worst days of our lives, the day Indian women began to know and understand real fear, has just gone by this week. Perhaps because we had no real change to record, only recriminations, it feels like we did not do enough to remember her. 

Yet this is a woman who lives with us, and within us, every day. She is the word we use to describe what our daughters should be: "be fearless, be like the fearless one". But all that has happened after two years after her brutal death is just endless remorse and escalating gender violence. We are like mice in a cage, chasing a long tail of excuses. So… the Nirbhaya fund was never utilised, the safe zones for women never got built, the lights on the street were never switched on, the street cameras were never bought… and the culprits of that heinous crime and murder were never hung.

What kind of justice can we ever hope to bring to our children? It's a sad fact, but now it is becoming more and more evident that, in this country, the only way women can be without fear is when they are dead.

Thus on December 16 we hardly had any sustainable feel good stories which said: India is changing and things are getting better.

Instead we saw the parents of the December 16/12 rape victim weeping while another brute tried to violate a young woman on her way home. Her mistake? She innocently got into the cab of a man who had been accused of rape before. He escaped detection because he got a clean chit from a cop who probably had never made the connection between rising crime, and the unquestioned "clean chits" given to countless criminals.

Even worse is the fact that in the media, rape has been reduced to rough pornography. That's why each rape is followed by reportage that goes into ghastly details. In many ways, violence has become the new pornography, where the more extreme it is, the more the voyeurs enjoy it. Not for a minute do they think of their victims. Not for a minute do they share their pain, or shame or humiliation.

Does all this mean that Indian men actually hate women? If not, then what explains this contempt for them? Why does sex have to become a sport enjoyed only when the woman is a victim, pleading for mercy?Perhaps to change things, every man, woman and child must remember the victim more constructively. 

For example, on December 16, we could take a universal vow in schools and colleges that we will all respect each other and our sons and daughters equally. And that we will bring up our sons to respect and honour women, so that as they grow up they help women achieve their goals. Perhaps that simple vow will do more to change society - than museums dedicated to the December 16/12 victim, where no one ever goes.