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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201chow everything turns away \u201cThe stampede at New Delhi Railway station on February 15 that resulted in 18 deaths and left many injured was caused by a lethal combination of factors<\/a>.\u201d Of the 18 deaths reported thus far, 14 were women. Once again, there was no stampede, but there were many deaths, mostly women and then children. The purported cause will be disputed or determined, but what will not be examined is the gender composition of the mass of the dead. No one will ask, \u201cWhy did 14 women die that day, in that way?\u201d In order to find the causes, the cause, of this disaster, it\u2019s important to name it correctly. There was no stampede. There was a massacre of women and children \u2026 again.<\/p>\n Stampede is a relatively new word, and it seems to be North American. According to the\u00a0Oxford English Dictionary<\/a><\/em>, it was coined early in the 1800s, Cowboys in the United States borrowed the Spanish word,\u00a0estampido<\/em>, which means crash, explosion, or report of a firearm, and\u00a0estampida<\/em>, which means a stampede of cattle or horses. It was an early example of transnational\u00a0vaquero <\/em>cowboy culture. The word didn\u2019t come from Spain, it came from Mexico. Stampede, or stompado, was a \u201csudden rush and flight of a body of panic-stricken cattle\u201d or horses. Later, stampede came to mean a \u201csudden or unreasoning rush or flight of persons in a body or mass\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAt its inception, stampede meant a thundering herd, powerful, dangerous. Today, when referring to people, it means a mass of people in flight who are threat mostly to themselves. At the beginning, stampede was virile, masculine, big roaring animals and big riding cowboys. People stampeding was panic. In fact, the word in Spanish for the phenomenon of people rushing as a crowd and crushing one another in the process is precisely\u00a0p\u00e1nico<\/em>.\u00a0Panic<\/a>. Sudden, wild, unreasoning, excessive, at a loss and out of control. And what is the term for mass panic?\u00a0 Hysteria, the women\u2019s condition: \u201cWomen being<\/a> much more liable than men to this disorder, it was originally thought to be due to a disturbance of the uterus and its functions\u201d.\u00a0 Hysteric: \u201cbelonging to the womb, suffering in the womb<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n What began as an articulation of masculinity, the enraged capacity to destroy all in its path, became the embodiment of womanhood, the helpless implosion of self. What began as a roar became a whimper. When you read that a group was in a stampede, know this. It is not a neutral word. It is a gender, and the gender is woman. Know this as well. There was no \u201cstampede\u201d in India. There was a massacre of women and children in a space and place of human construction.<\/p>\n
\nQuite leisurely from the disaster\u201d
\nW.H. Auden, “Mus\u00e9e des Beaux Arts<\/a>“<\/p>\n