Why men rape?

Once my Swiss friend Mat Berthod had narrated an experience that shocked him. He is a regular in India, in one of his visits to Kovalam,Kerala,he went to a poor family where the man of the house was resting on the only bed they had while the woman was lying on a mat on the floor. It might be a normal sight for us and many of us do not feel anything unusual about this. But my friend told me it is very impolite to make your woman sleep on the floor while you are sleeping on bed.That day I thought about the status of women in our family, of course family is a mirror to our society.True, we must learn to respect women from our family. Why men rape? This question arise a thousand times in my mind while seeing all the sexual violence around me. Is this lack of respect for women?male aggression? Lust? lack of self-respect,Perversion? All together?I am not able find an answer though I feel lack of respect for women is the main reason of rape and other violence against women. When you respect women you cease to view her as an object for your entertainment or a piece of meat. People all over India is demanding death sentence to rapists, though punishment is important,I think to root out a crime we must know the cause, otherwise it is like applying pain killers for pain, the pain would retrieve. Rape is a heinous crime not only the body, but soul too is assaulted here. Our culture doesn’t respect women,often they suffer silently at the hands of an abusive husband.Beating a woman is very normal in our culture and many times it is used as a weapon to silence women. . Change must begin from within about the way women are treated and the kind of values we give to our children. India is very much patriarchal where a girl is considered a liability and a boy is considered an asset purely due to financial reasons. So that female is considered inferior and male child is pampered especially by the mother. Besides our society is too conservative even to accept a healthy friendship between a boy and girl, and often create a ‘Berlin wall’ between them. There is no sex education in schools or colleges and women are looked as commodities and men treat them as if they are made for their entertainment, modern day main stream films, advts etc also promote this concept of ‘commodification’ of a woman’s body,obviously to feast the male eye’s on. Last, but not least is the social stigma attached to rape, so that many cases go unreported. It is not the rapist, but the victim who is alienated from society by our medieaval mentality. Society must support emotionally and socially the victim