Gang Rape in India

To the Editor:

Gang Rape, Routine and Invisible” (front page, Oct. 27) offers a compassionate perspective of the frustrated, impoverished men who committed a premeditated gang rape in India. Their crime exemplifies a terrible truth: When variables external to men’s lives (the economy, the environment, the religious climate) are in flux or are hitting humanistic and civil nadirs, men abandon empathy and hurt women.

Perhaps the fix isn’t providing these men better jobs and higher esteem but providing boys, from birth, the notion that all human life is of value. Wouldn’t it astound the world if women responded to stressors by humiliating, physically abusing, castrating and traumatizing men to the degree that men do to women and children?

Seeing such grotesque sexism in India, and heartbreaking examples across the globe, inspires me to inquire when we will address the sexist bottom line instead of seeking answers for different, more naturally cyclical and less timeless ills.

Boulder, Colo., Oct. 28, 2013

The writer is a clinical psychologist.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: Gang Rape in India. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe