Threat Or Tweet? How To Sober The Bullying Kids Behind Their Scary Masks

There's a new campaign petition up on Change.org. (Indeed, there's a new one every few days and I have begun to suffer campaign fatigue. However, this one got me to sit up again.) I'd encourage people to pop over to the site by clicking on the link, and see the kinds of scary messages that are being sent to women. I would be absolutely unnerved if someone sent me such messages.

This campaign is about getting Twitter to adopt a less laissez-faire approach to online bullies threatening female users of the service with rape. Now, I'm a strong supporter of free speech, so I would be uncomfortable asking Twitter to shut down the accounts of those making these offensive tweets or even censoring the offending messages.

Thinking about the problem and my own ideological constraints made me realise that what gives these bullies their courage is their relative anonymity. They can threaten other people from the anonymity of their dens, secure in the knowledge that their right to free speech is protected. Ironically enough, it's free speech that can get them to mind what they say.

I think Twitter should have a simple policy that says anyone making threats of violence against others will have their personal details revealed on a public website along with the details of what they said and when. If law enforcement in their jurisdiction viewed such messages as a crime, then they would have to deal with the consequences of that.

I'd go even further and say that the police should include such a website as a source of rape suspects whenever a rape takes place. All the Twitter offenders in the vicinity should be taken in for questioning as a matter of course. Once someone has threatened rape, they should legitimately be considered a suspect in any future rape case in their vicinity. Hoist them with their own petard.

The sheer inconvenience and social ignominy of being escorted to the local station every time there is a rape should gradually discourage anyone else who thinks this is something they can engage in with impunity.

The police could even offer to stop rounding these people up every time if they would consent to leaving behind a DNA sample. Purely voluntary, of course. The checking would still take place every time a rape occurred, but they wouldn't have to personally visit the station.

In short, society needs to take the same approach to these, er, twits that it takes towards the raising of children. The mature approach is not to forbid behaviour but to acquaint misbehaving children with the consequences of their actions.

The consequences of sending threatening messages can be demonstrated quite effectively while ensuring that all counter-measures are legally justifiable.

Rape Protests Convulse India Once More - My Haiku

Cold, merciless rapes

Winter of our discontent

Now leaders shiver

Breaking The Nexus Between Moralism And Crime

mor-al-ism (n.)

1. A conventional moral maxim or attitude.

2. The act or practice of moralizing.

3. Often undue concern for morality.

Yesterday, I updated my blog post on outrageous statements with the latest one by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (Society for Awakening the Hindu People):

Since the Bharatiya (Indian) youth is turning towards indulgence by blindly following westerners, it has been noticed that the sale of contraceptives peaks on this day [Valentine's Day].....This leads to a rise in incidents of rapes and other atrocities.

What?? What is the blinking connection between the rise in the use of contraceptives and the rise in incidents of rape?

I spent a while shaking my head in disbelief at how stupid people can be, and then I had an epiphany.

While almost everybody condemns rape, they don't all do it for the same reasons.

I condemn rape because it violates the rights of a human being. The HJS leader's statement (and those of others before him) suggests that many people condemn rape primarily because they see it as a loss of honour! And they are probably more concerned with the honour of families and communities, since a dishonoured woman can simply be made to hide from public view, or in extreme cases, be killed to "redeem her family's honour". That's the connection then, between rape and promiscuity, which is what the rise in the sale of contraceptives is meant to indicate. Both are violations of perceived notions of honour.

So let me confront this issue head-on, and address the traditionalists in society:

There is a big difference between sexual promiscuity and rape. You may not like to see increased sexual promiscuity in society, but no one is getting hurt, and so it is not a crime, no matter how much you may hate it. Rape violates the rights of a human being, and so it is a crime.

My painting that I blogged about earlier was an attempt to put the stigma of rape back where it belonged, i.e., not on the victim but on the offender, because this is a crime, not an issue of "honour".

The notion of "honour" perverts our notions of right and wrong. It makes us insensitive to human rights. And so, it is not enough to condemn rape. It is crucially important to condemn it for the right reasons, otherwise we are headed for a Talibanisation of society.

"But we don't want to see Indian society becoming like the West!"

The polite way to answer this objection is that democracy is utterly incompatible with restrictions on people's private lives. I'm tempted to express a less polite opinion, though: With the number of old fogies holding such views,  I hope they do us all a favour and die already.

When Good Sense Seasons Justice - The Justice Verma Committee's Report

After weeks of hearing nothing but the most mediaeval claptrap emerging from the mouths of India's public figures, it was a pleasant shock to read page after page of sweet reason in the long-awaited report of the Justice JS Verma Committee. The report, modestly titled "Amendments to Criminal Law", can be thought of as the thinking man's (or woman's) reasoned response to the brutal gang rape in Delhi in December last year. I would recommend that people at least download the document and skim through it, because it's almost a mini-degree in liberal arts for the aspiring cultural sophisticate.

The references in this report to the Indian constitution reminded me of the mental model that I have of the Indian justice system, without which I find it an infuriatingly contradictory mess. When one understands the Indian system of law as comprising three different layers that represent three completely different world-views, the madness becomes partially understandable.

A simple explanation of India's legal schizophrenia (click to expand)

[Of course, this is a gross oversimplification, and can be faulted on several levels. Still, I believe it represents a fairly good working model that explains the often puzzling contradictions between the various voices that are heard in Indian forums.]

Justice (Retd) JS Verma, a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, flanked by Justice (Retd) Leila Seth, former Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court and former Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium

I especially like the following aspects of the JS Verma Committee report:

1. It recognises the multi-faceted nature of the problem and does not come up with facile and simplistic solutions. It blames lacunae in the law, lax enforcement, an unsympathetic officialdom and a pervasive culture of patriarchy, and then follows them up with recommendations in all these areas.

2. It recognises the concept of "marital rape", which should come as a welcome cultural shock to Indian society.

3. It unwraps the national flag from around the armed forces, explicitly recommending that soldiers be held accountable for crimes against women in disturbed areas under the control of the military. Any criticism of the military has been considered unpatriotic, and armed forces personnel have operated with impunity for far too long under the protection of the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act). A similarly uncowed treatment of police misbehaviour occupies a full section.

4. It resists the pressure of the mob baying for blood by ruling out death and castration for rape. The maximum recommended sentence for rape is life imprisonment with no chance of parole. We are reminded that we are talking about justice here, not revenge or retribution. India cannot and must not be a Saudi Arabia.

5. It excoriates traditional "morality" with many examples, such as the misplaced notion of "honour" and the outrageous idea that rape victims ought to marry their offenders for the problem to be "solved". It also quotes from Sohaila Abdulali's famous autobiographical article on why rape is horrible (hint: it has nothing to do with the loss of "honour" or "virtue").

6. It highlights the need to recognise the rights of citizens with different gender identities and sexual orientations, such as gay and transgender people.

7. It guides Indian law towards greater compliance with UN resolutions and international treaties. No country is an island; there is a web of shared values that needs to tie human civilisation together. It demolishes the stereotypes of Indian women versus Western women that have characterised even some Supreme Court judgements.

8. It comprehensively addresses the issue of sexual harassment and has a number of recommendations not just for the government but also for independent tribunals and for employers of all kinds.

9. It does not neglect various other forms of violence and injustice, such as acid attacks, domestic violence, human trafficking (with very moving testimony from victims), dowry-related harassment, child sexual abuse, the notorious Khap Panchayats, etc.

10. It addresses the need to improve public safety for women and provide better amenities. It also lays out a very comprehensive code of practice for the medical and legal examination of sexual assault victims.

11. It doesn't shy away from raising the issue of electoral reforms, given that so many MPs have rape and molestation charges against them.

12. It talks about educational reform and social engineering to improve perceptions.

In short, this is an amazing document. In much the same way that Thomas Huxley was "Darwin's Bulldog", the Justice Verma Committee's report is the Indian constitution's bulldog. It can shock awake the conscience of those who read it.

Refreshingly, the report does not artificially curtail its content in the interests of conciseness. It is 630 pages long. It recognises that certain things need to be said, and that this is the most opportune time in Indian history to say them, a time that President Obama would call a "teachable moment". It is a comprehensive critique of everything that is wrong with Indian society and Indian systems where the treatment of women, children and the "different" are concerned. And it only took 30 days to produce!

Much has been made of India as a civilisation, and the scriptures that are deemed the spiritual foundation of that civilisation. But if India as a nation is ever to be thought of as truly civilised in the modern sense of the term, this document could well be the moral foundation on which such a civilised society is based.