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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