Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

On Sunday 30 November, Indian model, actress, and reality TV star Gauhar Khan was presenting at the finale of Raw Star, a reality TV singing competition, when Akil Malik, a 24 year old man in the audience, began teasing and heckling her. When she protested, Malik stood up out of his seat, approached Khan, and slapped her on the face.

Police arrested Malik immediately and booked him with assault (under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code), causing hurt (Section 323) and criminal intimidation (Section 506); he is due to appear in court today, Dec 1.

Shortly after the incident, Mumbai police quoted Malik justifying his outburst. He reportedly explained that “being a Muslim woman, [Gauhar Khan] should not have worn such a short dress.”

Though the particular circumstances of this incident are remarkable – namely that there is a celebrity involved, and it occurred while filming for national television – Malik’s sentiment itself will ring all-too-familiar to any Indian woman. With multiple cameras watching, Khan fell victim to a mindset that the rest of us encounter privately in our living rooms and offices and on our daily commutes: the mindset is an ugly Venn diagram overlap of moral policing and body policing and sexism, resulting in the constant lurking threat that if you do not fall into the conventions of how a woman must dress, you could – at any point – drive a man to violence.

(The aforementioned conventions, by the way, can spring from anywhere. In this case, for Malik, it was Islam. For some, it’s Hinduism. For others, it is simply that amorphous, nebulous, unspecified, intangible, almost-certainly-totally-made-up bane of every Indian woman’s existence: “Indian culture,” or sanskaar.)

This is the same mindset that’s at play when our mothers tell us, growing up, to dress conservatively because they trust us, but they don’t trust the world they’re sending us out into. It is the same mindset that rears its ugly head when some or another low-level politician blames jeans and t-shirts for causing men to rape and then bans them district-wide. It is the same mindset that we ourselves eventually internalize, donning scarves and sleeves in searing summer weather just to remain modest. In other words, to remain safe.

It goes without saying that such a culture victimizes the women it keeps under constant scrutiny and policing. Headline after headline paints India as a country that, to its girls and women, is less “home-sweet-home” and more a death threat.

Moreover, it is a culture that paints Indian men as primal, dictated by a carnal pursuit of sex and violence, lacking the very basic tenets of respect and self-control that any functioning society assumes of its members. Whether it is banning college girls from entering a library because they’ll distract the boys from their studies, banning bikinis to protect their wearers from getting raped, banning cell phones because they make it easy for men to lure women into traps, or banning mannequins because they “provoke” men to attack women, a cursory glance at at the Google search results for “India rape prevention ban” paints a grim picture: Indian women’s fundamental rights are under siege because apparently Indian men possess incorrigible libidos that can be stirred by any number of inanimate objects and random circumstances.

We all know Indian men who defy the assumption that they are all rabid sex-hungry animals who will stop at nothing – not even, in too many cases, murder – to get their fix. Why, then, do our leaders continue to legislate as if they are?

Khan’s attacker proved, once again, that India needs to stop responding to its women’s safety crisis by wrapping its female half in thicker layers of surface-level protection while permitting its male half to lapse into violent policing of women’s bodies whenever convenient, justifying those lapses with the increasingly destructive mandate that “boys will be boys.”

A short dress is neither an invitation to rape nor to slap. Heck, it isn’t even an invitation to stare or comment or catcall. And any man who blames a woman’s clothes for his own acts of violence is admitting a resounding, astounding lack of agency and intelligence.

At the end of the day, girls will be girls. Women will be women. Boys may even be boys. But men, surely you can do better.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/men-will-be-men (http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/men-will-be-men)

Saudi Arabia's national airline to introduce gender segregation after a string of complaints from male passengers

By Emily Payne for MailOnline

Saudi Arabia's national airline is allegedly planning to separate male and female passengers on its flights, in accordance to strict rules enforced by the Gulf kingdom.

Gulf media report that Saudia will keep men and women segregated onboard, unless they are close relatives.

The move follows a spate of complaints from male fliers unwilling to allow other males to sit next to their wives and other female family members.

Complaints were also recently made when male passengers claimed a flight attendant was being too 'flirty'.

'There are solutions to this problem…we will soon enforce rules that will satisfy all passengers,' Saudia assistant manager for marketing Abdul Rahman Al Fahd, told Saudi daily, Ajel.

It is thought that the airline will include instructions to flight booking staff at Gulf airports to keep these new rules in place.

The carrier's policies are already in tune to the strict Islamic practices of Saudi Arabia: no alcoholic beverages or pork dishes are served onboard, a prayer of verse from the Quran is read before take off, and many international flights have a designated men's prayer area.

In addition, Saudia does not employ Saudi women as cabin crew, opting to recruit women from other countries such as Pakistan, the Philippines, Albania and Bosnia instead.

But moves are being made to employ females on the ground in November, the airline opened its fourth women's section staffed by entirely by females at its office in the Murooj district of Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The country is known for its gender segregation, with women requiring a male guardian approval to travel or work outside of the home. 

In public spaces such as restaurants, beaches, amusement parks or banks, women are required to enter and exit through special doors.

Women who are seen socialising with a man who is not a relative can even be charged with committing adultery, fornication or prostitution.

The majority of Gulf operated airlines abide by Islamic laws, but vary over strictness.

For example United Emirates carrier, Etihad's new A380 aircraft includes a prayer area in Business class, but the new cabin crew uniform, launched last month, does not feature a veil.

Chief Commercial Officer, Peter Baumgartner, told MailOnline Travel: ‘Modern Arabia is what is going on in Abu Dhabi, we are inspired by what’s going on in the rest of the world, but through the lens of the local DNA.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2894229/Saudi-Arabia-s-national-airline-introduce-gender-segregation-string-complaints-male-passengers.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2894229/Saudi-Arabia-s-national-airline-introduce-gender-segregation-string-complaints-male-passengers.html)