On Beate and India

So, yesterday, there was a substantially large obit in the NYT about Beate Gordon, who died a short while ago at 85.  At the same time, there have been updates about the young Indian medical student who was gang-raped and so badly injured in the attack that she died.  No big obit for her, because, aside from those few details and some info about the attack, we don't know who she was.

For some reason, these two stories have been going around in my head since yesterday. 

Beate Gordon was a performing arts director first at Japan Society and later at Asia Society.  I met her several times.  She was a small woman with perfectly upright carriage.  She wore her hair in a very tight bun, and spoke with that polished elocution that has become rarer and rarer, and always reminds me of Margaret Dumont, though, in Ms. Gordon's case (I never knew her well enough to call her by her first name), without the sense of humor. 

The obit notes her postwar work in Japan, in particular writing the women's rights section of the new Japanese constitution, which was kept under wraps until her autobiography came out, many years later.  I believe this is true, since I never remember hearing her talk about it, but I can tell you plainly she was a very proud and powerful woman with strong opinions about everything.   She stepped on toes, too, but she ruled her world.  She did.

In the discussion regarding the equal rights for women clause of the constitution, the obit notes (and I remember the reviews of her book noted it also, as well as interviews she gave at the time) that the US constitution does not have such a clause.  We tried it - remember the ERA? - but not enough states voted to ratify it before the time allotted ran out, though we came irritatingly close.  As women in the US watch repeated efforts to roll back our rights, I sometimes wonder if we had an equality of the sexes clause in our constitution whether those efforts could be dismissed out of hand.  We don't have one, and they aren't dismissed out of hand.  As tough as things can be in Japan for women, at least they have that.

With regard to the Indian rape case, I would like to say I am surprised, but I'm not.  Women are continually subject to harrassment in India, though upper-class women suffer it less (and it is possible part of the shock here was that this woman was not poor).  No ERA there either.

And foreign women are not exempt.  I knew a woman who was on a tour bus in a rural area of India, who asked to stop to use the bathroom.  She described her experience as having to walk to the restroom through a "gauntlet" of taunting, groping men.  She said she was absolutely frightened, and angry at the tour guide for letting her go without an escort (she did not, until that moment, know she needed one).  She told me she was afraid for a brief moment that she would never get out of the place and back to the bus.  Some vacation (she later sued the tour organizers for that and a great number of other reasons, though I have no idea if the suit went anywhere).

The NYT, in some of its coverage of the protests in India, notes that many of the protesters are men, and that while some of them genuinely feel outrage and think women should be treated better, some are simply enjoying a chance to make noise.  And the dearth of women at the protests is simply because they are afraid of being there without a male escort.  They are afraid that the men protesting a gang rape will assault them.  It's like a trip to Bizzaro World. 

Further on that, someone (sorry, but I forget who) compiled rape stats around the world, in an article I read a couple of months ago.  At least some of the studies asked men the reason why they raped someone.  A surprising number in some areas said it was simply a sense of entitlement; i.e., a woman out alone was an invitation to assault.  No biggie.  She knew the rules, they figure, and she played.  And she lost.  Or whatever.

Cultural differences - not.  And I deeply sympathize with the women's groups in India who have no less a task than trying to remake their society to simply respect them as human beings.  Their experience shows that gender equality is not automatic, nor is it immutable.  Beate Gordon took an opportunity to commit a radical act, which has somehow endured on paper if not always in fact.  Here, we don't have an ERA.  At this point, we don't even have a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.  But we do have the vote (since 1920!  After virtually every other disenfranchised group got it before us).  We should use it - while we still can.