Our criminal laws must uphold gender justice

livemint.com:

marital rape would still not be a crime, unless the wife is below 18, the age of consent. The archaic assumption that a married woman is the property of her husband, and that marriage equals irrevocable lifelong consent to sex on demand, therefore looks set for another lease of life, leaving women little control over their sexual and reproductive rights. This, despite India’s tightening of laws on violence against women and the Supreme Court’s taking up of petitions that seek to outlaw wedlock rape.

In a society of equal rights, consent must always be in real-time, regardless of all else. Any carve-out implies an individual can legally be deprived of free will—literally objectified, i.e. In some places, the wording is a giveaway.

Section 73 of the BNS, for instance, describes acts of assault in terms of “intending to outrage or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her modesty." Intended or not, such words reflect regressive ideas of women’s behaviour, chastity and defilement, and do not speak in terms of women’s rights. The Bills offer little recourse for men or non-binary citizens who face similar violations. Lack of clarity in some other clauses also requires a rethink.

Outlawing “deceitful means" for marriage, for example, will create new grey zones in judging guilt. Importantly, outdated barriers of matrimony should have no role in deciding what’s lawful. What we need is to rid the country’s crime book of its unjust relics, especially the diktats of patriarchy.