Nita Bhalla writes:

"When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives.

(snip)

"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night. When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand," said Munni, who had managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor."

(snip)

"Social workers say decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the population of women in some parts of India, like Baghpat, and in turn has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers."

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/idINIndia-60150320111027

I am embarrassed to admit this surprised me. When they started aborting girl babies in China, I projected my American views on to the situation. I figured with a shortage of women, women would be able to call the shots.

::shakes head::

This is so disturbing, I have no words.

That is so shocking. Sounds primeval, but then you realise this is a tragedy - a situation of anti-women abuse promoted by anti-girl methodology. They have created this situation.

Not blowing own trumpet here (as a woman) but without women and men in roughly equal measures, the world ends. The solution is not continuing abuse. It's a realisation that women hold the power of life.

So disturbing.

This is so distressing!  I can't imagine this practice but I  know these things happen.  I also  have  no words!

wow. another veil..gone for me

God - that's just AWFUL!  :-(  Thank god she got way!

Yeah, the whole aborting a babay due its gender thing is basically genocide of a gender, IMO.  I'm not even sure that it controls the population, either, because with wife-sharing like this the women that are there are still reproducing - maybe moreso if they're being raped like this by many men.

I would flat-out kill a man who violated me in this way - I would fight with all my strength or die trying.  Something about rape inspires a very primal response in me - my Mars in the 8th gets fired up big time! 

Here is writer, Nita, on Twitter.

I've read about that before and contrast it with Nepal or Tibet where there was a tradition amongst the upper classes of the woman taking a pair of brothers as husbands to conserve land and property ownership within a very resource limited country.  The land was not fertile enough to subdivide and so the peaceful solution was this.

I can't imagine it was a perfect situation but it reduced the number of children competing for land ownership and seemed, from reports, that for the most part the woman was very well treated.

I asked one of my Chinese renters if the situation in China was that the woman got to calll the shots because there are so few women and so many men and she just got wide eyes and shook her head.  All in all, horribly sad, hurts my heart to watch.

Well...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women

It's not like there's not a long history of this kind of thing.  A "shortage of women" is a desperate situation.

I knew of this, I just hadn't heard any of the horror stories I imagined went with some of the marriages. I also knew of the Tibetian, and further east traditions, and haven't heard a lot of negativity associated with those marriages.

Personally, for me it comes down to looking at what happens in societies that literally, by the numbers, are dominated by men in the extreme: prisons in America for example. Things don't go well. In my women's studies classes a professor once said, that that most powerful thing a woman can do against a man is withdraw from him, and his world. In this case, I can see the point as society has declined to a primitive, backwards, dangerous place. But the price the few women that remain pay is also too high imo.

I'm not shocked, as I've read about this before. But I am deeply saddened that any of my fellow sisters must live in a society that abuses them, and their powerful feminine energy so horribly. Men created their own problem, and their version of fixing it has only made things worse.: (

Thanks for posting this, Elsa. I was aware of the human trafficking link but it is always helpful to learn more and think of other humans around the globe and what they face. There are laws in India that forbid the practice of prenatal screening to determine gender but these rules are easily circumvented.

http://www.loc.gov/law/help/sex-selection/india.php

Women are losing ground here too, just tremendously.  If we don't clutch it up, I expect our society to be unrecognizable in 30 years.

Reading this snapped me out of the state of my delusion. I am glad I won't be here to see it but I sure feel for the younger women.

My God, this world is fucked up.

I'm not surprised one bit. Consider it a guarantee: "Guarantee that this social network will eventually go extinct." Fewer women to procreate , fewer babies.

Or at the very minimum.... the women will die quite young due to the "baby factory mentality". (aka: perpetual pregnancy , each man "expecting" equal number of kids).

Yes, I believe it. I don't know why more people can't see this. This (western) society is already unrecognizable from what it was 30 years ago.

So sad and so sick. Thank you for putting this out here.

Tip from Twitter

Mathrubhoomi — A Nation Without Women

I was unable to watch this but you may have a stronger stomach or a more controlled imagination.

I have to stop here.

My husband said that infanticide is a twisted thing to do and you can't help but have a twisted result from it.  Put this way, it seems inarguable.

I agree with him. Something I learned of recently:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15414796

"More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean "unwanted" in Marathi have been given a fresh start at a mass renaming ceremony in Maharashtra state.

They had been called Nakusha by parents who would have preferred sons.

Hundreds of people committed to fighting gender discrimination attended the ceremony in rural Satara district."

The one child policy decimated women so badly in China.  Repercussions include:  steep rise in STDs, rape, prostitution, kidnapping and wife-sharing.  I'm sure India is seeing similar repercussions.  Both cultures have a long history of treating women like 3rd class citizens.

Women don't call the shots in societies like this on an individual level because they aren't physically strong enough to fight off the men.  Even if you had a great husband, there's no guarantee the rest of the men in the extended family are.

Yes, I remember reading about Mathrubhoomi, and how the makers didn't come up with the idea from the thin air. Never had stomach to watch the film, though, either.

I also remember reading articles about the Chinese situation. About the huge manufacturing industry there draining the countryside of young women. Parents prefer to send their girls to make money to be sent home in one or another of the big, industrial cities, rather than marry them off to a local farmer and pay the dowry. And yes, work conditions in these factories may be horrible, but still, I can see how many country girls would prefer them to village living. They have a salary and access to all sort of freetime activities they don't have back home. The bad thing is, of course, that it makes things worse for women staying behind, but at least, in China, they have a better chance to escape than in India.

Well, we teach girls to be sex objects here now, and boys have little choice but to see them that way since their dicks respond. We already see plenty of consequences of this but anyone who wants to roll anything back is insulted, and effectively tarred and feathered so we just progressing, if you can call it that.

Agreed Elsa, and unfortunately we are exporting that belief of sexualizing little girls through mass media and technology.  It's moments like these that I don't think it'd be a bad thing for me to reincarnate as a house cat or dog to some very nice people.  It could very well be a step up from being human. 

Jennifer, that's shocking but well said and true at least to a point.

Elsa, which part is only partly true?  The part about reincarnating as an animal?

Jennifer, yeah, that's what I meant but it was a remark made in 2 seconds rather than something I thought though. I do understand animals are treated better than people in some cases, I have been in the circumstance myself. But I also am not ready to give up my human qualities because  I value them.

But anyway, my comment was incorrect, not yours. Sorry! :)

Yeah, I do that too.  Or I accidentally leave out important details to the story and confuse people. 

My comment referred to my disgust with human beings.  Sometimes I feel ashamed to be human and would rather be an animal so I don't have to be a member of this species lol.  It's like a club I'm not sure I want to be a part of sometimes, except I already paid my fee and I'm here so...

I like that you're not ready to give up your human qualities - that's a good thing.  :-D

This unfortunate and horrible phenomenon isn't news to me, but I'm glad more light is being shed upon the issue. The people of these countries being 'allowed' to murder their newborn daughters, could only lead to this. Personally, I'd LOVE to know that the now-grown men that were being allowed to live past birth; are now standing there with their collective dick in their hand -- just desserts. It's just too bad that they have to abuse the women left standing. I say, arm these chicks with a gun and an education, in the short term -- it's what I'd like to see, anyway.

I do hate to see two different situations get lumped together in one thread, though. The marital arrangements in Nepal/Tibet are completely different from the disasters in India. In polyamory, the woman DOES call the shots, the poor women in India are not empowered in any way, by their multiple-partner situations, and it's more than likely against their will to be in them. So sad.

disturbing...

Very disturbing.

i'd heard about this but i think i blocked it out.

I remember watching the film Once Were Warriors. Different but similar. I waa 27 and had left a marriage of physical abuse, had two babies. Felt powerless. I caught a glimpse of the lives of women far worse than mine.

I guess now that the kids are grown and I have the time, it is having learned about these incredibly, horribly egregious situations that makes me want to be as involved as I can with volunteer work related to the abuse of women and children. It's local. It's necessary. And it's not like I can fly out and save the world.

This thread just really brings forward that there are women everywhere that suffer horribly. And it makes no sense to me. No sense at all. Especially that despite all the powerful women working to change these things they only seem to get worse.

I'm babbling. Mostly because I have no clue how these grave problems can be solved. There are so many factors that lead to these behaviours... How to adress them all as one people? At the same time respecting cultural differences and values?

Too big for my brain.     

I have no words how to desribe that how grave this is in rural India, this has been going on for centuries and yes the land is one major factor to this. however as le_soleil said these women are anywhere close to be empowered in any sense. The female infanticide has been prevelant for long and has created a gender disparity and cases have been seen in the more progressive urban centers as well. This is twisted and 100s of million people are biased towards the male sex. there are many campaigns going on to irradicate this menace, however as mentioned by Michelle cultural values make it even more daunting. I can only say based on my knowledge gained through books and media, whatever is known is being cleaned or contained, i am sure there exists an underbelly that is not even known.

This is disheartning and a matter of great shame. 

i think india is really a weird/interesting case. on one hand, women have held positions of power in indian society for a long time.  but then there is a very large very poor part of the population and things are obviously different for them.

It continues to amaze me just how stupid people can be.  No common sense.  No basic morals.  No one in those societies ever stopped to think about what will obviously happen when you murder all your girls, or call them "unwanted" and treat them like garbage?  Duh. 

I keep thinking what Dr. Lerma has said about the predictions of a girl named Syriana, and his other patients that were dying.  He is a hospice doctor. He is the author of "Learning from the Light" and other books.  He has a website and is preparing to list all of the predictions.  Some of them he was prevented from including in his books.  Typical. 

He has said that 2000 years of female repression is going to be rectified.  Our society will prosper again when we have our female President (and it's not Hillary Clinton). 

Once Were Warriors was a great movie.  Very sad, but I though it gave insight into what's going on in Maori culture.