The Necessity of India’s “Priya’s Shakti” To Combat Rape Culture

 [ Trigger Warnings Up Ahead: Rape, Sexual Assault] I first learned about this comic book late last year in December on Twitter. I was delighted to hear that Priya’s Shakti was a comic book created to fight back against sexual violence against women. Co-creator Ram Devineni was reminded of the haunting memory of the vicious gang rape of a teenage girl on a bus in New Dehli that shocked the world a few years ago. He and fellow creator and writer Vikas Menon wanted to create something that would serve to combat the gender-based violence that was severely affecting women in their country. What they ended up with, alongside artist Dan Goldman, was a story with a character representing modern India’s fight against rape culture. This comic features a young woman named Priya who, after being raped, becomes a vessel through which an Hindu goddess works to right wrongs; but really the story takes a turn and Priya becomes a champion of her own and inspires change. Soon we transitioned into the new year. We crossed over into 2015 and I was instantly reminded that we still have much work to do when I saw that a certain hashtag was popping up. #ItsNotRape was trending and I was so disgusted I had to mentally log off life (and social networking) for the day because I was so outdone with what I was seeing. I saw a gross amount of people tweeting jokingly, making light of what is a terrible and traumatizing experience. I saw folks victim blaming. I saw several individuals clearly not knowing…