On the Indian Sexual Assault and America

I have just returned from a group meeting for Davidson's chapter of Half the Sky, where we discussed the gang rape of a 23-year-old student which has gotten a lot of media attention recently. The discussion was both thoughtful and one which has opened my eyes.

A little bit of background first:

The Indian girl was with a male friend of hers after a movie. She and her friend boarded a bus to go home. The bus had been taken over by six young males. The couple knew something was wrong when the driver took a wrong turn and wouldn't let the two off of the bus. The six males then proceeded to rape the woman and beat the man. The woman was impaled with a pole and eviscerated. When medics found her, the great majority of her intestines were outside of her body. She was taken to a New Delhi hospital, where she stayed for ten days before being taken to a Singapore hospital, where she died three days later.

Her rape and eventual death have ignited massive protests all over India, and has attracted international attention.

There are hundreds of different lenses and analyses to see through or conclude from the horrific acts, the following protest, and the rhetoric being used by a number of different actors in the month following her rape and eventual death.

I'm an American male, so I will offer my perspective as one, and provide analysis particularly interested in American action/policy.

My Evening With Nicholas Kristof

I've been told that it's easy to pick a great person out of a crowd - and perhaps I had even seen a little bit of truth in it - but after 4:00 yesterday afternoon I knew the phrase to be true.

It was an oddly warm December 3rd day, with temperatures staying around seventy Fahrenheit all afternoon. I threw on a tie and walked to the E H Little Library, internally debating the speed at which I should walk with the amount of time I had until the event started. When I made it to the library, I went upstairs to the Davidsonia room - the one adjacent and connected to the Rare Books Room to wait with many other eager colleagues of mine.

When Nick arrived in the room, everyone simultaneously stood up and turned around to face him. The three lovely ladies who escorted him to the room were beaming from ear to ear, expressing on their faces what I knew I was feeling inside.