Someone please explain to this fumbling fool that rape is not a metaphor. Rape is abuse that is sexual in nature. It is necessarily the violation of a person’s body without his or her consent. In different countries, the law interprets the minimum amount of violation to label an act as rape. While rape is physical, it also is a telling commentary on the nature of power equations between the rapist and the victim.
The person who wrote that post works at CNN-IBN. As a person who works with a Media organisation, should he or she be expected to understand the very basic facts of semantics and semiotics? The concept of an analogy is not any vague comparison stretched thin and far. I do admit that the notion of an analogy can be abstract. However, even in that abstractness, one seeks to find the ordered pair or a pattern. One doesn’t compare Delhi to a woman, and the rape of a woman to the illegal buildings on the face of the city. That is just downright idiotic, insensitive and incoherent.
And no – using the term rape is not the same as using the term ‘murder’. Or ’stealing’. Save the half-baked analogy and come to the point next time will you Mr Kamlesh Singh. [Tip: Guptavati]
Posted on May 16th, 2006 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Gender, Media, Random Links
It leaves one cold stylistically and outraged by the gender assumptions that lead this man to neccesarily construe the violated as female.
anonymous: True.