Why Men Rape: An Indian Undercover Investigation

by Tara Kaushal

I found it very telling that Dipu Yadav used the word “upyog”‡ for all marital and consensual sex—“Maine usska upyog kiya.”§ Women are used in the service of men and their needs. Here, in marital rape of the garden variety (ie, non-violent and not coming from a place of anger), objectification and dehumanization is clearly at play. Though establishing power is not the primary motive for such rape, its imbalance is the cause of it. When in doubt, he asserts his personal interests over hers. He is the entitled, superior human; she is denied the right to make an autonomous decision about participating in sex, and human rights in general. And power, though not the primary motive for such rape, is established by it. But when marital rape is about festering sores, as it sometimes tends to be, the wives are fully human again…