Did the foreigners see me trying not to cry? I am 42, with a family of my own. I've crisscrossed India, usually alone, for nearly 20 years. The stories women tell me, and the daily stories of my own life, are of a society in which public space has been marked as the territory of men.
那些外國人有沒有看見我在強(qiáng)忍淚水?我穿梭往來于印度各地,通常是只身一人,已經(jīng)將近20年。那些女性告訴我的故事,以及我自己每天的生活故事,都發(fā)生在一個(gè)公共空間被劃為男性領(lǐng)地的社會(huì)中。
I remember being a teenager, trying to make myself invisible inside oversize clothes, hiding from catcallers on the street. Two decades later, as a working professional, I was still hiding away, slipping low in the driver's seat of my car to avoid the intrusive eyes of men.
我記得青少年時(shí)期的我把自己包裹在寬大的衣物中,想要隱去自己的面目,躲避著街上發(fā)出噓聲的騷擾者。二十年后,作為一名職業(yè)女性,我仍然在躲避,開車時(shí)把自己陷進(jìn)駕駛座深處,以避開男性侵犯的目光。
For women in India, the safety statistics are grim. The National Crime Records Bureau in 2011 reported 228,650 crimes against women, including murder, rape, kidnapping, and sexual harassment. That year an international survey ranked India the world's fourth most dangerous country for women, behind only Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Pakistan. The treatment of women in public has been a frustration for generations, but it was the case of Jyoti Singh, the woman also known as Nirbhaya, that caused something to break in India -- a long-held willingness to accept danger to women as part of daily life.
對于印度的女性來說,與安全相關(guān)的數(shù)據(jù)很不樂觀。2011年,印度國家犯罪統(tǒng)計(jì)局報(bào)道了22萬8650起針對女性的犯罪行為,包括謀殺、強(qiáng)奸、綁架及性騷擾。那一年,國際上的一場調(diào)查列出全世界對女性最不安全的國家,印度名列第四,僅在阿富汗、剛果民主共和國和巴基斯坦之后。多年來,公共場合中的女性待遇一直是令人煩憂的問題,但是喬蒂·辛格(人們也把這個(gè)女孩稱為“尼爾哈亞”)案件的發(fā)生,讓印度的某種觀念發(fā)生崩塌--長期以來,人們一直默認(rèn)女性面臨的危險(xiǎn)是日常生活的一部分,如今人們不再愿意接受這一現(xiàn)實(shí)。