Statics provided by RAINN show
that every 2 minutes someone is sexually assaulted in the US. 1 out of 6 women
have been victims of rape or attempted rape. 9 out of 10 rape victims are
women. 15% of sexual assault and rape victims are children under the age of 12.
These statistics are of the US alone. Sexual assault and rape is a horror of
every country, culture and religion and each have their own way of dealing with
it.
Recently there was a rape case in
the Middle East which the victim was lashed in public in the name of religion
for being raped. In cultures where girls are considered to be burdens, God forbid
if they are raped, the girl is often forced to marry the rapist. And if it is a
gang rape then one of the men has to marry the victim in order for all of them
to be condoned. Just a few months ago there was a case in India where the girl
was brutally gang raped on a moving bus and afterwards thrown out the window.
And the typical excuse.... she was on the wrong bus. She was calling for it.
For my final project I want to put together a video collage
of such rape case. It will be kind of like a virtual mosaic where rape stories
will form the image of a woman which will fall apart at the end. Because rape can
be such a vague topic in the sense that there is so much to say about it, I’m
thinking of comparing cases from South East Countries and the Middle East with
those found in America. For some reason we have grown accustomed to the thought
that rape is a bad thing that only occurs in faraway places. This somehow gives
us the illusion of being superior and lets us judge others while ignoring our
own ignorance on this matter.
The issue of rape, I feel, will only attract those
who have same personal experience or those who will never do such an act. Therefore,
my target audience for this is those boys who have the potential of becoming a
rapist because of their upbringing or situations where they aren’t thinking
clearly (peer-pressure, anger, intoxication etc.) There is no reason why girls
all around the world have to go through such humiliation. Men think they can
just display their power and dominance by forcing themselves upon a woman when
she is at some disadvantage and take it as proof of their manhood; they refuse
to acknowledge how weak they really are when they do such a thing. It is worse
to think that, girls are still being blamed and punished as if rape isn’t a
punishment in and of itself.
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