It's been all over the news for a few days, the woman in Delhi who was gang raped and beaten to death on a public bus. The thing I wanted to talk about was the amount of coverage it's gotten in the US media - why does this particular brutal crime on the other side of the world get so much attention?

I've noticed an ugly thread running through a lot of the comments on the news stories: lots of negative generalizations about India and Indians, how they're uncivilized and backwards, how their culture is screwed up, their religion is screwed up, how they'll never become a superpower with these kinds of attitudes. It makes me uncomfortable, and gives me the feeling that this coverage is feeding some kind of appetite for for schadenfreude porn - "Hey, at least there's other countries more screwed up than we are! Let's all feel smug about ourselves! We may be in the worse recession since 1929 and have a completely dysfunctional political system, but those guys over there rape women in buses!"

Am I being too sensitive?

I have not particulary followed the India rape story myself.

But what you describe is somewhat similiar to the dynamic the discussion of honour killings get.

Basically it is a matter, where both the leftwingers and the rightwingers agree, that it is evil and we should be happy that it does not happen in our culture. And because it would be against the natrual order of things, if rightwingers and leftwingers simnply agree on anything, the leftwingers insist that it does not happen in our culture, because our culture is more progressive and feminist, implying that the rightwingers are closer to the evil others, while the rightwingers insist that this is an effect of our traditional culture and religion and the leftwingers are endangering it, by being too multicultural.

So they run a competition, who despises the honour killers/rapists more, and try to associate the other native camp with them.

I agree that badmouthing other countries, cultures or religions is not exactly enlightened conversation, especially generalizing about them based on the actions of some its members. On the other hand, I have absolutely no doubt that people on the other side are doing the same about the United States a lot, too. Some of it is probably deserved. Still, as dysfunctional as I know my government is, I recognize that we've comparatively got it pretty good in the U.S.

It's getting alot of media attention for a few different reasons.

India is seen as a reliable allie in an otherwise hostile region.
It's also where we outsource alot of jobs.

On top of that...We've had our 10th mass shooting in 6 years. It's not like we couldn't do with seeing the crazy our allies put up with. Misery loves company, or something to that effect.

arcosh, I do think you are right.

Generally speaking though, how careful do you think people should be when criticizing another country or culture? I mean, if you criticize too harshly, you come across as a racist !$@%. On the other hand, you don't want to go too far the other way by insisting that all cultural practices are equally valid just because they're cultural.

I think you should be spezific about what you criticize. Critisize one aspect of their culture, not their culture because of that aspect. Especially keep from bashing irrelevant folklore. You should be diligent, at analyzing root causes of thoose negative aspects. No jumping on the bandwagon, if someone sees Hinduism as reason for the rapes, unless you have a consistent argument to back it up. And if someone else disagrees with your analysis of root causes, consider his arguments, before calling him a rape apologist.

Kea, I've been following this story as well, and the write-ups I've read remind me of the coverage of groping and rape during the protests in Egypt. It seems that U.S. coverage of the treatment of women in non-western cultures tends to discuss this treatment as backwards because of cultural and religious traditions as opposed to, say, coverage of the treatment of women in western cultures which discusses this treatment as backwards in spite of our "progressive" culture.

I think the U.S. discovered this election cycle that we need to take a closer look at rape apologists in our own nation. And I'd like to point at the New York Times's report of the gang rape of an 11 year old in Texas a couple years ago in which the community was reported as generally believing the girl had it coming - and the NYT write-up seemed to support the community's position. I do think that discussing treatment of women in the framework of culture or religion is valid. But the pot calling the kettle black thing going on in the media is unsettling.

I some how missed all the stories about it. I wouldn't even have known about if I didn't see it on the bottom of the screen crawl during one of the countless redundant fiscal cliff stories.

Same here... Only heard about it from this forum.

I heard about the story but I'm my circle it was always tied to the fact that the same crimes (though maybe to a lesser scale) still happen in western society as well.

Same.

I did see headlines reacting to it, but without knowing what was behind them, the headlines weren't informative enough for me to understand.

Huh.

I think I may get too much of my news from Slate.

I saw in on the front page of the Washington Post website and also on the BBC website. I just checked CNN.com and it was also there on the front page. I thought that TV news outlets covered it prominently as well, but I guess I was mistaken. Front page =/= lots of airtime.

By the way, I visited Delhi a few months ago, and in the very short time I was there, I could already see that this was a sexist society. The male to female ratio on a public street in broad daylight was something like 19:1. There were public bathrooms for men, but not women. While I was visiting a monument, a lot of men, sightseers who weren't even attempting to sell anything, thought it was all right to come over and hassle me. "Hey, Chinese! Are you Chinese?" They had an all-female train car in the subway, and I was advised not to ride the subway at night.

Edit: Ah. When I go to CNN.com, it automatically takes me to the international edition. Probably different for Americans, then.

I saw something in passing on the NY Times site; but mostly I learned about it from the BBC. Granted that I watch nothing either broadcast or cable, have mostly given up on physical newspapers, and I don't listen to the radio much (mostly for classical music); but from what I have seen surfing around only foreign outlets and fringe sites put this story above the fold in any serious way. That said, I must note that my supervisor at work had heard about it somewhere, and I don't think she visits any overseas news sites if and when she does surf the web; so it must be playing somewhere locally for those who are paying attention.

That's always annoyed me. Apparently CNN thinks we Americans aren't good enough to get the news everyone else gets.