Gender Neutral Rape Laws in India: Not as simple as you might think
After the Nirbhaya Rape case in Delhi, in December 2012 a committee headed by Justice Verma, former Chief Justice of Supreme Court, was created to recommend amendments to the Criminal Law so as to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault against women. The other members on the Committee were Justice Leila Seth, former judge of the High Court, and Gopal Subramanium, former Solicitor General of India.
The Committee submitted its report on January 23, 2013. It made recommendations on laws related to rape, sexual harassment, trafficking, child sexual abuse, medical examination of victims, police, electoral and educational reforms. The government disregarded their recommendations and proceeded to foot a bill that made rape a gender-neutral crime.
What followed was a lot of backlash from feminist groups. It is important to note that gender neutrality was not the only reason why there was a backlash, but also because they did not take any of the recommendations from the Committee.
Prominent women’s rights advocate Flavia Agnes also voiced concern against the bill, “I oppose proposal to make rape laws gender-neutral.” she also added that women’s groups had also protested against gender-neutral Child Sexual Abuse laws.
Child Sexual Abuse? Do boys not get abused? 53% percent of Child Sexual Abuse victims are boys. Protesting against gender-neutral child abuse laws is rather evil if you ask me. Would be just denying reality to say that boys do not get molested. Did such protests actually happen? I could not find any source saying that they did.
Delhi advocate Vrinda Grover said: “Why should rape laws be gender-neutral? There are no instances of women raping men.”
Do men not get raped by women? There is a misconception that men mostly get raped by men, the truth is that the USA’s definition of rape is flawed. It does not account for “made to penetrate” situations. For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced.
The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%), sexual coercion (83.6%), and unwanted sexual contact (53.1%).
For non-contact unwanted sexual experiences, approximately half of male victims (49.0%) reported only male perpetrators and more than one-third (37.7%) reported only female perpetrators (data not shown).
5,451,000 men reported being forced to penetrate in their lifetime while 1,581,000 men were raped so around 4x more men are made to penetrate than are raped (penetrated by someone else) in the US, so the majority of male rape victims are raped by women.
Unfortunately, we have no data at all for male rape victims in India. So it is hard to know what the situation is in India. Both the countries are in a completely different league when it comes to gender equality but it maybe gives us some context.
Though the full reason why feminists opposed gender-neutral rape laws is that they believed if the laws are not gender-specific, the perpetrator can file a counter-case against the victim to mislead the law. As a form of intimidation to stop victims from reporting the crime. They wished for the perpetrator to be gender-specific and the victim to be gender-neutral.
There is little evidence to support or refute this claim, however, this is an opinion shared by many lawyers and judges including justices from the Supreme Court. According to them, the Indian society is not ready for gender-neutral rape laws:
They believe that there should be special laws instead where complaints can be filed against women when there is a clear power dynamic. Such as hostel wardens, or teachers, and so on.
The cringelord website of FeminismInIndia also believes the same:
They reason that the men who benefit from it are much lesser than the women who will suffer. Female on Male rape victims are statistically very small. On the other hand, 1/40 women face sexual violence every year, 99% of those cases are not reported. 33% face domestic sexual violence.
To put it simply, it is a trolley problem. If laws are made gender-neutral then it will give a course of justice for male rape victims, but it will harm female victims because rapists would be able to discourage them from filing rape complaints by counter-suing them. If the laws are gender-specific for the perpetrator, then it will deny justice to female on male rape victims. And as a the trolley problem, you run over the side with fewer bodies…
… right?
Well whatever may be the right answer, the center repealed it. According to the Indian penal code, men cannot be raped. Not even by other men. When in 2018 activists tried to make it gender-neutral once again, the center said that rape laws cannot be gender-neutral after consultation with Women’s Groups.
Before we jump in to call them “fake feminists” for detachment from the issue and moral superiority. The distinction is useless, they are the people who have put in the groundwork for gender equality. If anything, they would be more feminist than any of us.
From discussing this issue with various people, feminists, leftists, and even MRAs, I have gotten a variety of opinions. Some believe that they are right about it, some believe that it is a lie and I am a troll, some think that they are “fake feminists”, while some believe it is internalized misogyny. And of course, MRAs believe that it is because feminists hate men.
I, on the other hand, don’t know.
