Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.7 9/23/84; site nsc.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!nsc!srm From: srm@nsc.UUCP (Richard Mateosian) Newsgroups: net.women,net.flame Subject: Morley Safer on Burning Brides Message-ID: <1851@nsc.UUCP> Date: Mon, 12-Nov-84 03:29:06 EST Article-I.D.: nsc.1851 Posted: Mon Nov 12 03:29:06 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Nov-84 01:30:08 EST Distribution: net Organization: National Semiconductor, Sunnyvale Lines: 48 * Tonight I saw Morley Safer's report on "60 Minutes" about the practice of burning Indian brides to death. Here's a quick summary from memory: Dowrys are illegal in India. So is Murder. Nonetheless, in New Delhi alone, a woman is burned to death every twelve hours for failure of her family to make ongoing "dowry" payments. There are groups working to stop the practice, but it is deeply ingrained. Such deaths are reported as accidental (the stove exploded). The pattern is that a marriage is arranged. Continual and increasing payments from the bride's family are extorted until there is no more to be had. Then the bride is burned to death and the husband is free to remarry. This avoids the scandal and support expenses associated with divorce. The main point of this posting is to comment on (flame about) Morley Safer's editorial commentary. He begins by contrasting the fight against this practice with the fight here for the ERA -- implying that American women's problems are small by comparison. He fails to see the parallel between the horrors that he's reporting and the systematic terrorizing of American women. Rape. Violent pornography. Domestic violence. Lobotomy and shock treatment. "Random" violence. Mass murders. Do you remember the appeal in net.general the other day for help in locating a young woman who'd disappeared? Later she turned up dead. There are a lot of such disappearances in the news. The story usually ends with the discovery of a young woman's body and the revelation of details that frighten every woman. I wonder how the frequency of such stories compares with two women per day from the enormous population of New Delhi. Is Morley Safer's smug chauvinism justified, or are there horrors in America as bad as those in India? Safer ended his story by saying that India has a lot of REAL problems, so it's not surprising that they haven't solved this one. Well maybe this problem isn't large numerically, but the underlying hatred of women that it shows so dramati- cally is a worldwide problem--and the USA is far from exempt. -- Richard Mateosian {amd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!srm nsc!srm@decwrl.ARPA