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Video Information: 20.09.24, VBC, Rishikesh
Context:
~ How do societal views on chastity shape perceptions of women's bodies?
~ In what ways does rape culture impact the way women experience their sexuality?
~ How can education play a role in changing attitudes towards consent and the female body?
~ What are the effects of media representation on the normalization of rape culture?
~ How does the concept of chastity intersect with issues of autonomy and agency for women?
~ What role do cultural and religious beliefs play in shaping attitudes toward female sexuality and chastity?
~ How can we create a culture that empowers women to reclaim their bodies and sexuality?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...
~~~~~
Video Information: 20.09.24, VBC, Rishikesh
Context:
~ How do societal views on chastity shape perceptions of women's bodies?
~ In what ways does rape culture impact the way women experience their sexuality?
~ How can education play a role in changing attitudes towards consent and the female body?
~ What are the effects of media representation on the normalization of rape culture?
~ How does the concept of chastity intersect with issues of autonomy and agency for women?
~ What role do cultural and religious beliefs play in shaping attitudes toward female sexuality and chastity?
~ How can we create a culture that empowers women to reclaim their bodies and sexuality?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Namaste Acharyaji. Acharyaji, I wanted to bring this case to this forum and discuss
00:14with you. It's about a woman, her name is Giselle Pileko. She's from France and she's
00:2272 years old now and she's in a public trial against her husband. So they were married
00:33for 50 years and it was a wonderful marriage in her own understanding till her husband
00:42was reported to take images, upskirt images of two women out in the open and that opened
00:52up essentially his media images in his phone where he was drugging his wife for 10 years
01:05and at least 72 men raped her. So her husband was calling men and he was allowing them to
01:15rape his own wife and this guy was, her husband was filming it or taking images and she at
01:26this age when she's 72, she's quite old in her vulnerable stage but still she has chosen
01:35to stand, to face these ugly facts and she's taking it to court and she has made it a public
01:44trial so that everyone can see. So I just wanted to discuss this and I wish that it
01:50could have been in Hindi also because I come from India and we know that we are taught so
01:58deeply that we have to preserve the image of our relatives or we, you know, tend to attach
02:08ourselves with our close ones, right? Like whether it's our father, husband, brother,
02:13whosoever and we just wrap their ugly facts of our lives and never stand up. So I just
02:22wanted you to, you know, take and discuss this. Which country are you coming from currently?
02:31I am, so me? Yeah. I stay in Switzerland.
02:44See what I found remarkable about this incidence
02:48is not that we have a pervert here who got his aging wife raped over a decade by 70 odd men.
03:07I didn't find that particularly remarkable because that is happening all over the place,
03:16all over the world since one does not know when. What I found remarkable was that the woman very
03:27daringly waived her right to anonymity. Victims in such cases in most countries including France
03:42carry the right to anonymous court proceedings, the whole trial. She said no, it needs to be public.
03:55Exactly. She made it a point. She said this thing needs to be public. I don't want to hide my face.
04:01I want to come out. I want to let my face be seen and I want the faces of my husband and those 70
04:15men too to be seen. That is remarkable. I could have said that what is also remarkable is that
04:25the whole thing spanned over a decade and none of these 70 men thought it fit to inform the police.
04:33I could have said that his husband must have contacted dozens or maybe hundreds of other men
04:42beyond these 70 as well. It's not that his success rate would have been 100%. He would have been
04:51contacting probably all and sundry. Come over and rape my wife. A lot of people would have refused.
04:57Even they did not find it necessary to inform the police. I could have said even this is remarkable.
05:03But even this is not very remarkable because even this is something not entirely rare. We know of
05:13crimes on women and who wants to stick his own neck out and inform the police or get into personal trouble.
05:27We know of the Ujjain rape case in India very recently. A woman was raped right at a busy
05:39crossing on a footpath and just so many from the crowd were standing there having fun.
05:48Even the act was videographed and circulated on social media. Unsurprisingly, it went viral.
06:03So all that is not remarkable. Public apathy towards this is not remarkable. The husband
06:13doing this is not remarkable. Nothing distinct or extremely shocking about these things.
06:21If we pretend shock on a husband deciding to rape his wife or deciding to get his wife raped,
06:28then we are lending credence to the idea of sanctity of marriage. You see, if you say,
06:38oh my God, how could a husband do that? You are reinforcing the belief that husbands do not do
06:45this but the husbands do this all the time. So there is nothing shocking about a husband involved
06:51in the rape of a woman. If the husband does not get a woman raped by outsiders, for sure the husband
06:57does rape the woman herself. And I also agree that women might also be raping men. Wives might
07:07also be raping husbands. That too is quite likely. Rape is not just the narrow domain of sex without
07:23consent. You also have to look at the nature of consent. If the consent is out of fear or greed,
07:34the act ought to be called as rape. Absolutely. I can extract consent from somebody by terrorizing
07:52that person and there would be consent. And this terrorization need not always be very visible or
08:01crude or open or conscious. If the woman knows that she will be homeless, shelterless and moneyless,
08:09if she refuses consent, the consent will come. The consent will come. The woman herself might
08:19not know where the consent is coming from. The consent is coming from her fear. That is rape.
08:26So rape is happening all over the place. Husband raping a woman is not something new. Public
08:36apathy, nobody reporting the rape, that is again not something new. What is new is the woman standing
08:42up. And standing up not just in a way that displays raw courage. Standing up in a way that
08:52displays something deeper. She is challenging the very notion of female honour. That is what is to
09:03me remarkable about this case. One more point which I really liked about this woman is that
09:17she lived with him for 50 years, essentially which is more than the lives of many of us,
09:27the age of many of us. And whatever, even if this was sexual abuse, of course the case was clear,
09:35but there are so many forms of violence or things which we should not be confirming too.
09:44And what I find so beautiful is that even 50 years and even the age of 72,
09:51whenever she got the facts, and as you say many times that facts are door to truth,
09:57and she saw the facts, she is not neglecting the facts. I will live up to it. And one place she
10:05also says that people are calling me strong, but I have to rebuild myself. And I see this
10:13as a clear case of destroying your own ego or own identity. She was holding in illusion.
10:24But as soon as, and I think that's so quite beautiful to see.
10:30At the age of 72, you are usually too tired to even attempt rebuilding anything.
10:39And you are too habituated, too accustomed to the kind of life you have lived and to the person
10:46you have lived with. You don't want to drag your companion of 50 years into courtrooms and media
10:55trials. You want to just, you know, you say, oh, I'll forgive and forget. Anyway, one of us is going
11:03to drop dead in the next few years. So, what's the point in raising an entire show now?
11:10But she has chosen otherwise. And that's what is remarkable about this case.
11:14Very remarkable. What she is doing is, she is decoupling
11:22female consciousness with the social concept of female honour.
11:39She's saying, my consciousness need not be dependent on the definition of honourability
11:50that you provide me. I am neither just this body nor am I product of this society.
12:01Nor am I product of this society. She is challenging both the biology and the society.
12:10So, you could say biology and psychology. Both are being challenged. She's saying, no,
12:14I am on my own. My consciousness need not borrow its definitions from you or tradition.
12:24My honour is not dependent on how you look at me.
12:28And in that, she is, in fact, redefining honour itself.
12:38How is a victim losing her honour in the event of a rape?
12:52In the event of a rape.
12:57Not so much in France, but much more in India and other developing countries
13:05where there is just so much of victim shaming.
13:12And the victim is thought of as having lost something irrevocably.
13:22Yeah.
13:25It intrigues me. Whose is that? Is that his honour? Whose is that?
13:33How has the woman lost her respectability?
13:42If there is someone who has lost his dignity, his self-worth, his self-respect,
13:50it is the perpetrator of the crime. It is the rapist.
13:54But no one says, the rapist lost his honour.
14:01If you're a rapist, nobody will say, he has lost his respect.
14:06If you're a rapist, no one says, he has lost his respect.
14:13Instead, if a woman has been raped, we are saying, he has lost his respect.
14:19And that is very bemusing.
14:27On this earth.
14:31And that is again not just related to something particularly feminine.
14:37You see, if I'm sitting here and you come and spit on my face,
14:42there would be a lot of people who will say, oh AP lost his respect.
14:50You come and you spit on my face. How is it that I have been belittled?
15:00If you spit at the sky, what does the sky stand to lose?
15:06But don't we operate it that way? Someone yells and abuse at you.
15:13And you see how you feel a pang of guilt within,
15:16especially if there are others who have heard the thing.
15:22You feel something wrong has happened to you.
15:26The fact is, if something has happened in a despicable way,
15:34if someone has fallen, it is not you but the other one.
15:37The very notion of respect, honour has to be understood in a deeper way.
15:50There was this man abusing the Buddha. We know of this story.
15:54But somehow we never want to apply it to ourselves and especially women.
16:01Anything related to the Buddha, we don't want to apply it to ourselves.
16:04And again, anything related to the Buddha is not applicable to women.
16:10That has been the custom. I don't know how.
16:13As if the Buddha belongs to a particular gender.
16:17As if the Buddha is masculine.
16:20So there is the man who comes to the Buddha and he is doing all kinds of things.
16:25Abuses and he also spits on the Buddha's face.
16:29Remember, the Buddha does not react.
16:33Does not react.
16:34So people around him, they get angry.
16:38They are all actually warriors by upbringing.
16:41They get very angry.
16:43The Buddha is calm but his disciples are getting extremely angry.
16:47They say, you know, we will forget that we are monks.
16:53This chap has abused our teacher, we will kill him.
16:55The Buddha says, he cannot do anything to me without my consent.
17:06Yes, he did abuse but I was not abused.
17:11I have not gone down.
17:15He abused but I was not abused.
17:19Nothing can happen to me without my consent.
17:23And look at the deep wisdom contained in it.
17:27I am not the body.
17:29Even if you destroy my body, I have not been reduced.
17:33If you have raped my body, how have I been reduced?
17:37First of all, I did not do anything.
17:40Secondly, whatever you did was confined to my body.
17:46First of all, it was you who executed the rape.
17:51Executed the rape or whatever crime it was.
17:56I was not involved in that crime.
17:59Secondly, whatever you did pertained only to my body.
18:04And how does my honour lean on my body?
18:11What kind of way it is to look at a woman only at her body?
18:15So much so that even her honour is dependent only on her body.
18:20Specifically, not even on the body.
18:22Specifically, on the genitals.
18:29Somebody touches your hands or somebody does something to your arms.
18:33You will not say that honour is gone.
18:36Somebody does something to your sexual parts and then honour is gone.
18:43First of all, the woman is the body.
18:45And even in the body, she is just the sexual organs.
18:50That has been challenged now.
18:53That has been challenged several times before as well.
18:56But this is a very remarkable case.
19:03The woman is declaring upfront,
19:06yes, by body I am a woman.
19:09By reality, I am consciousness.
19:12I do not feel belittled.
19:14I do not feel blemished.
19:18I do not feel that something has been reduced from me.
19:24In fact, I want to make an example of this case by coming out in the open.
19:32I want to make an example of this case by coming out in the open.
19:36I want the entire world to see who has been reduced.
19:40These are the 70 odd people
19:44who have shown themselves to be small, petty, violent,
19:50unworthy of being called humans.
19:55I am alright.
19:58If this change can come, it will be such a big change.
20:03If this change can come, it will be such a great liberator.
20:09Biology and society get together to condition the woman in a way that
20:14she becomes almost entirely just her body.
20:18Just her body.
20:21Her life energy is sapped by her body.
20:25And that is what the rapists use.
20:32This is just the body.
20:34Even if we rape her, the rape will go unreported
20:37because her honour is tied to her body.
20:41She will not come out in the open.
20:46We know of the number of rapes that are reported.
20:49One rape per 15 minutes.
20:51We also know the number of unreported cases is many many times than the reported ones
20:57because the woman feels that if I come out,
21:02then it is I who stands to lose, not the rapist.
21:06In fact, the rapists often take this as a tribute to their masculinity.
21:14They will often openly declare that we have raped that woman
21:19and that adds to their social power.
21:23It does happen in many regressive societies, small towns,
21:28villages. It is still happening at least in North India.
21:32You rape a woman and then you go out and declare it in the open.
21:40And that in fact adds to your popularity and respectability.
21:47People grow in awe of you.
21:51Oh my God!
21:53See, look at his virality.
21:56If you offend him, he can even rape.
22:03So, let's be respectful.
22:09Are you getting it?
22:10And women internalize this notion very very deeply.
22:16One, I am the body.
22:19Secondly, my honor depends on my chastity.
22:27I must remain sexually very pure.
22:29And what does this purity mean?
22:32This purity means that I will reserve my body only for the socially sanctioned one.
22:38Not for reasons of love.
22:40No, not for reasons of wisdom.
22:43Not for reasons of the spirit.
22:46Not for reasons of the spirit but for reasons of the society.
22:51I am honorable if my body belongs to the socially sanctioned rapist.
23:02Not that there are rapes and no rapes.
23:06There are socially prohibited rapes and socially sanctioned rapes.
23:11Very few instances of sex, copulation involve no rape.
23:18Very few instances.
23:20We cannot have data on this.
23:22But my hunch is that less than 10% cases of sex do not involve rape.
23:32Otherwise, sex is just rape.
23:34It is rape with consent.
23:35Rape with consent.
23:37The woman has two kids.
23:40The woman never got educated properly.
23:43The woman does not earn.
23:45The woman has no property of her own.
23:47The husband demands sex.
23:48Will the wife ever refuse?
23:51And how is that not rape?
23:52That is rape with consent.
23:56And the woman has two kids.
23:59The woman never got educated properly.
24:01The woman does not earn.
24:03The woman has no property of her own.
24:05So, we are saying socially sanctioned rape and socially prohibited rape.
24:12What is socially prohibited rape?
24:14You are supposed to reserve your body for such person.
24:17If your body goes to somebody else, then that is prohibited.
24:22And you will be ostracized.
24:24And you will have to pay all kinds of prices.
24:2850% of humanity, women, have been chained to their own bodies.
24:34To their own chastity.
24:37They do not know what love means.
24:41And if one half does not know what love is,
24:43how can the other half know what love is?
24:45What is love?
24:47Is it possible?
24:51So, the entire planet has become loveless.
24:55You talk of ecological destruction.
24:57You talk of climate change.
24:58You talk of the nuclear Armageddon.
25:03Are they all not manifestations of our lovelessness?
25:10Thousand species getting extinct every passing day.
25:13Is that not clear evidence that we are loveless people?
25:18And if we are loveless people, obviously we are loveless in our relationships as well.
25:22The husband and the wife,
25:24obviously we are loveless in our relationships as well.
25:27The husband and the wife, they are a loveless lot and then there is rape.
25:41It requires a fundamental shift in consciousness to see
25:47that the husband is not the body, the wife is not the body
25:50and the body is not something that is to be controlled by the society.
25:57The body is to be controlled by consciousness that which you really are.
26:03I am not the body.
26:06I am my understanding.
26:08I am consciousness.
26:11And then who will control the body?
26:14Not the society but consciousness.
26:16And if the consciousness is to drive the body,
26:21then there is love, the possibility of love at least.
26:26We are a special species.
26:35We are a conscious species.
26:39We are a liberation seeking species.
26:43Everything that we do, everything that we have has to be for the sake of liberation.
26:50In other species, sex is for the sake of reproduction.
27:00Sex is for the sake of reproduction.
27:07The cow and the bull,
27:11the male and the female wolf,
27:14they meet so that the cycle of the species can keep.
27:24But that's not so in the case of human beings.
27:28Human beings can do much better than animals or they can do much worse than animals.
27:37Human animals meet for the sake of reproduction.
27:43Human beings can fall much below animals and they can meet for the sake of recreation.
27:52This falling involves rape as well.
27:57Rape, at least from the point of view of the rapist, is recreation,
28:02entertainment, something that will supply him with pleasure.
28:06All human beings can rise above animals and meet and mate for the sake of liberation.
28:18Unfortunately, because we are not conscious people, our sex becomes just recreation.
28:27Animals, reproduction.
28:31Most human beings, recreation.
28:36But if you are a conscious person, then even sex is for the sake of liberation.
28:42Liberation is not something that excludes sex.
28:46No, not at all.
28:48Liberation is something that includes choosing the right person for sex.
28:56Because if there is a man and a woman,
28:59it is quite possible that there would be physical intimacy
29:03and physical intimacy brings all kinds of repercussions, mainly bondages.
29:11The moment you choose the wrong person, you are finished.
29:17But if you can have the right partner in life, that can be the greatest blessing as well.
29:22And by life, I do not mean the entire life.
29:25Life is a flow.
29:33Our animalistic notions have to be challenged.
29:38And the lady in the case here deserves respect for doing exactly that.
29:48I just wish that this case is able to inspire a lot of women, in fact human beings,
29:54to look at themselves, their bodies, the social norms, and their all identities,
30:00the very purpose of their consciousness in a fresh light.
30:08So probably the act of sex is not a problem, but the act of imagination of sex is a problem.
30:16And that probably is what I understand.
30:20That probably is what I understand from this narration.
30:25And that is the reason we see how Japan is suffering.
30:30And maybe I should not even take the name of a country,
30:33but it's the idea or the imagination of the act of sex is probably creating a whole lot of,
30:43I think, psychological issues around it.
30:46If you are having sex, that's not a problem.
30:49You just have the act of it.
30:52I don't know, maybe.
30:56When you don't have the right purpose in life, sex becomes recreation.