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I haven’t had much time for the blog lately and I just found out a couple days ago that it’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month! Here is an article I read a long time ago thanks to Monika at The Curious Escapades of Dee-Dee the Cat. Bold is my formatting!!!

ETA: I’m sad to realize that I probably didn’t find out from most of the blogs I read about one of October’s themes because they’re always covering issues concerning domestic violence and rape. It’s not exactly an issue that, if properly dealt with, would have an awareness month. (And the same can be said of some of the other themes as well.)

Why Doesn’t She Leave?

by Marie De Santis - Women’s Justice Center

There’s a seemingly simple little exercise we’ve done dozens of times at workshops on violence against women. The usual responses, however, are anything but simple. They’re confounding and cause for concern.

Recently we repeated the exercise with a conference room full of 70 social workers, advocates, therapists, and mental health workers. “Why don’t some domestic violence victims leave the relationship,” we ask? “Call out the reasons!”

The answers, as always, come fast and freely. “Because she doesn’t think she can make it on her own.” “Not enough money to feed the children.” “She feels obligated to her marital vows.” “It’s learned helplessness.” “She doesn’t believe she deserves better.” “She doesn’t know where to go.” “She wants the children to have a father.” etc.

I jot down the familiar list until the group exhausts their thoughts. And there, again, is the enigma. How, at this date, with this group, - with almost every group - do so many miss the obvious? To be sure there’s truth and need for remedy in every reason given. But the one thing that should top the list, the thing that freezes so many women in place, is not even mentioned at all.

Women often don’t leave domestic violence because they know that when they do leave the danger of more severe violence increases dramatically. Violence, and the sheer terror of it, is one of the principle reasons women don’t leave. And the women are right!

The women know these dangers. They know them because they’ve already experienced the violent responses when they’ve attempted to assert themselves, even minimally, within the relationship. They know because the perpetrators have usually threatened precisely what they intend to if she does try to leave.

“Instead of Helping Me, They Sunk Me Even More”

The women also know these dangers are heightened still more because so many officials, first responders, and courts are also in denial of the gravity of her situation. And she’s right again. Despite the modern-day rhetoric about treating domestic violence seriously, the reality is that the critical protections she needs when leaving are still as precarious and unpredictable as a roll of the dice. One responder may help effectively. The next may ignore, mock, underestimate, misdiagnose, walk away, blame her, take her kids, shunt her into social services, arrest her, send her to counseling, or one way or another refuse to implement real power on her behalf, abandoning her to a perpetrator who is now more enraged than ever.

The paths leading up to so many domestic violence homicides are paved with officials’ failures to protect. Just weeks before she was murdered by her estranged husband, Maria hauntingly summed up her own, and so many others’ experiences with officials. “Instead of helping me,” she said, “They sunk me even more.”

You can work tirelessly and compassionately to social work, counsel, and support the victim. But if you ignore this critical piece of making sure the system puts failsafe brakes on the perpetrator and his violence, it will be for naught. The perpetrator will continue to stalk and terrorize or worse. The victim will still be trapped in the violent relationship no matter where she has moved and how much independence she has attained. In fact, the freer she is, the angrier he gets.

And if you look just a little closer, you’ll see that for domestic violence victims there really is no such thing as leaving, or escaping, until the system does, in fact, step up and effectively stop the perpetrator. There is no Mason Dixon line over which women can run and escape and be home free. The perpetrators can and do hunt her down anywhere.

Domestic Violence! Not ‘Domesticated Violence’, nor ‘Violence Lite’!

It’s interesting. When you do the same exercise, but merely shift to other forms of violent relationships, a group’s responses are dramatically different. “Why doesn’t the field slave,” for example, “Run away from the plantation in the middle of the night while the master sleeps?” The answers are immediate and unequivocal. “Because the slaves know they’ll get hunted down.” “Because they know if they’re caught they’ll get beaten like never before.” “Because they stand a good chance of getting killed.”

The first answers out are never ‘learned helplessness’, ‘low self esteem’, or ‘not enough money’ even though there’s no question these same psycho-social factors are just as much at work. In fact, if one were to lead off their explanations as to ‘why slaves don’t leave’ with the ‘learned helplessness’ or ‘not enough money’ aspect, the insult of it would ring perfectly clear.

Whether you ask the question in regard to slaves, prisoners of war, kidnap victims, concentration camp captives, or residents of violent regimes, etc., the horrific dynamics and dangers of attempting to escape are well understood by everyone. Some victims of these violent relationships do, in fact, make a run for it. Some succeed. Some are killed. Some are recaptured and punished unmercifully.

Most victims, however, never go beyond an initial evaluation of the risks. The obvious dangers are just too great. They stay. Violence works. Violence, and the sheer terrorizing threat of it, has always, everywhere, worked better than anything else to keep victims compliant and pinned in place.

So why the glaring blind spot in regard to domestic violence victims? Why are women denied even the validation of the dangerous dynamics of her dilemma? Why do so many people still hold a view, as cloaked as it may be in paternal tones, that is more in sync with the perpetrator’s stance than with the victim’s? The view that the problem rests with her. That it’s she that needs to be propped up and fixed.

As if this violence that plagues women around the world is a ‘domesticated violence’, or ‘violence lite’!

The Patriarchy Still Rules! And Still Needs to be Upended!

The glaring blind spot is rooted deep in the self-preservation mechanisms of patriarchal rule. If the violent repression of women were to be recognized on a par with other violent repressions it would require nothing short of upending the missions of law enforcement, prosecutors, courts, and service organizations, and not just the adjustment of rhetoric we have now. The male-dominated power structure resists implementing its real powers on behalf of women in order to preserve the power for itself. That’s fairly obvious.

But what about the blind spot of so many social workers, advocates, and therapists? Those who care about the women, and dedicate their lives to helping them? Perhaps it’s one more layer of the battered women’s syndrome that needs to be exposed. Because if we ourselves truly recognize the gravity of women’s plight, we, too, have to move beyond the safety zones of the nurturing, supportive roles we find so comfortable.

We will be compelled to step out, challenge, watchdog, fight, demand, and make sure that the powerful, male-dominated institutions are, in fact, upended, and that they, indeed, begin to implement their full powers on behalf of women, and against the perpetrators. Only then will domestic violence victims truly have a real choice to leave.

Malalai Kakar - “Malalai Kakar, prominent Afghan policewoman. Murdered in Kandahar” - AFP - From the article Women Who Took on the Taliban - and Lost (I am not sure how to cite an AP photo, so gave as much info as possible - but will continue to look for the proper way.)

Malalai Kakar was a police officer in Afghanistan murdered by the Taliban approximately 2 weeks ago. (Couldn’t find an exact date.) I suppose you can say that the US stint in Afghanistan has been a huge success if you think that violence against women and girls and the resurgence of the Taliban is of no consequence. All of these articles about Kakar are worth reading in full, but I’ve excerpted many of them here. Bold formatting is mine.

The first time I saw Malalai Kakar was in Kandahar city, at a women’s conference organised by a group of spirited young Afghan-Americans determined to give the Taliban a symbolic bloody nose in their spiritual homeland.

It was the autumn of 2003 and, as the country’s only policewoman, Kakar was already a celebrity. She walked into the room wearing a blue burqa and, as she began unloading her things, a pistol emerged from underneath the traditional garment, held in a hand graced by immaculate, red fingernails.

It was an arresting, symbolic image.

‘Just another woman who can be killed.’ - Hamida Ghafour

In an attack claimed by the Taliban, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed Afghanistan’s most high-profile female police officer on Sunday as she prepared to leave for work in the southern city of Kandahar. The police in the city said she died instantly from gunshot wounds to her head. Her 18-year-old son, driving her car, was seriously wounded and taken to the hospital.

The police officer, Malalai Kakar, who was in her mid-40s with six children, was an iconic figure among women’s groups in Afghanistan and abroad. Often profiled in the Afghan and foreign news media, she was one of the leading totems for the wider freedoms gained by women when the Taliban, with their repressive policies toward women, were ousted from power by an American-led coalition in 2001.

The attack was the latest in a wave of attacks on women across Afghanistan for which the Taliban have claimed responsibility. After scattering in the wake of the 2001 offensive, the Islamic militants have regrouped over the past two years.

“We killed Malalai Kakar,” a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, told the news service Agence France-Presse in a telephone call.

Ms. Kakar, with the rank of captain, was head of Kandahar’s department of crimes against women. She joined the police in the city in 1982, following in the footsteps of her father and brothers, but was forced out after the Taliban captured Kandahar in the mid-1990s and barred all women from working.

Taliban Claim Responsibility in Killing of Key Female Afghan Police Officer - John F. Burns

Commander Kakar, 40, knew her work made her a Taliban target. She led a unit of 10 policewomen specialising in domestic violence cases. She was uncompromising with suspected abusers, men who in the past had relied on male police officers to turn a blind eye.

“I’ve been accused of being rough with husbands who beat up their wives” she said. “But I’m angry, we try to apply the law in the right way and the constitution is supposed to protect women’s rights.”

Women who took on the Taliban - and Lost - This article elaborates on 3 of the 5 women in public life they had interviewed when the Taliban was ousted who have since been assassinated. Highly recommended read. (As are all the articles.)

Yesterday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for Kakar’s killing, saying she had been a long-term target. In a perverse nod to gender equality, in killing her, they acknowledged that an Afghan woman can be as deadly an enemy as any man.

Unusual as she clearly was, Malalai Kakar was also part of a long-standing tradition of Afghan women who “outman” their men in bravery. These are women who take sides in wars, taking up arms for or against the government. In the past, such women used to be mainly the stuff of legends. They were admired and held up as role models but not feared, since they weren’t real.

Early Afghan historical works are full of such women. Reminiscent of the epic German poem the Nibelungenlied, these tales of warriors, horses and fortresses feature young women such as Shah Bori, described as a girl with a taste for male clothing and horse riding. She is said to have liked living the life of a warrior, refusing for a long time to get married. She is also said to have died fighting the troops of King Babur, in the 16th century.

Then there’s Nazauna, who, legend has it, single-handedly protected the Zabol fortress with her sword; that was in the 18th century. And in the 19th century, there was the original Malalai, after whom Malalai Kakar was named: Malalai of Maiwand, who turned her headscarf into a banner and led a successful rebellion against the British.

The Fighting Women of Afghanistan by Nushin Arbabzadah

Kandahar’s Woman Detective

I worked very briefly on helping to design an awareness campaign during my time at Human Rights Watch about the Taliban targeting girls’ schools. And yet the dominant narrative seemed to be how much of a success the US tour in Afghanistan was. Not so fast.

Installments on Palin-Mania/Republican hypocrisy is slow going, and at this point I think the intended two part post may go into three.

In the meantime, an incredible speech showed up in my feed from the Association for Women’s Rights in Development. It is about how integral it is for “peacekeepers” in Africa to take stronger measures to STOP the horrifying sexual violence and rape that women are experiencing. It feels absurd that I’m even typing something like that, as if this shouldn’t be obvious or something.

More long quoting, and I’d like to plug the Association for Women’s Rights in Development a bit more. I added their site to my reader a little while ago, but forgot to categorize it so it languished at the bottom…. Noticed it today and have been looking through it… seems like an amazing site with news concerning women all over the world.

The title of this speech resonated with me - “Peace is a mere illusion when rape continues.” I don’t want to belittle what African women are going through. It is a horrific nightmare. But it also made me think about the concept of rape tourism, where white men seek out Native American women on reservations for the specific purpose of raping them - knowing that they won’t have to face any consequences. It made me think about how certain women are deemed “unrapeable” due to their color or their profession. The numerous GANG RAPES that have occurred in the US in the past few years that have gone unpunished. It made me think of the low convictions of rapists in general, how the deck is stacked against a woman who seeks to press charges and the number of women who don’t report their cases at all.

This is terrorism.

So, onto quoting some excerpts of the speech by Stephen Lewis, or read the full text here.

Here is an unassailable truth: if sexual violence is not addressed during the course of a conflict, then sexual violence will haunt the post-conflict period, and make of the ostensible peace a mockery for half the population.

Three days ago, I returned from Liberia. While in the country, I met with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, with senior officials of the Ministry of Health, with the Minister of Gender, with the leadership of the Clinton Foundation, with the consultant who drafted the legislation for the special court to try sexual offences, with the UNICEF Representative and significant numbers of the UNICEF staff. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to meet with UNMIL, but the UN Mission in Liberia and its peacekeeping forces were inevitably a part of every conversation.

She was speaking about the contagion of sexual violence that currently engulfs the country and causes such intense concern. The statistics are horrifying: a recent study by UNICEF indicated that more than fifty per cent of all reported rapes are brutal assaults on young girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. The gender advisor in UNICEF felt that the percentage was probably on the rise, and it’s feared that increases in the HIV rates among female youth will not be far behind. The Minister of Gender showed me figures for March, 2008, indicating that the majority of reported rapes in that month were committed against girls under the age of twelve, some under the age of five, and she narrated stories of gang rape so insensate and so depraved that it reminded me of exhibits in a Holocaust museum. A further survey, of all fifteen counties in the country, found that girls and boys were united in their conviction that young girls were the most endangered group in Liberia, and incredibly enough, that there was no place and no time of day or night where adolescent girls could be considered safe.

The context of my discussions is encapsulated in the words of the Deputy UN Envoy for the Rule of Law in Liberia when she said, as recently as May 20th: We cannot expect the future leaders of Liberia, the doctors, nurses, and engineers of Liberia to be brought up amongst men who are rapists and women who are angry, degraded, frightened, depressed, embarrassed and confused. Predictably, President Johnson-Sirleaf is thunderstruck by the force of the sexual violence. In a very real sense she is staking the integrity of her tenure on her ability to confront and subdue the war on women.

—————-

You may succeed in manufacturing a semblance of peace, but for the women of the country, the conflict continues in the most painful and eviscerating of ways.

In the case of Liberia, it isn’t a matter of a contentious mandate: as I said, Resolution 1325 is built into the obligations of peacekeeping. Anyone would argue that when a peacekeeper in the field knows of acts of sexual violence having been committed, or has reason to believe that acts of sexual violence have been or will be committed, then he or she has the obligation to intervene or, to use the language of the day, the responsibility to protect. But let me be even clearer about this. Peacekeepers aren’t mere passive observers of the human family. Peacekeepers move into a country; they learn its social architecture; they watch the roiling political terrain on a day-to-day basis. They come to know the foibles, to know the extremes, to know the anomalies. More often than not, they can tell when trouble is brewing. They can intuit when men might hurtle out of control. They have the pulse of the culture. When it unravels, they’re there to bear witness. I’m saying that when patterns of sexual violence emerge, peacekeepers are rarely surprised. In some cases, they alone have anticipated the atrocities in the offing. And with that knowledge comes obligation. With that insight comes responsibility. It isn’t enough to stop the shooting when the raping continues apace. The only worthwhile armistice restores peace for the entire population, male and female. There can be no satisfaction in claiming a truce or a peace treaty which is soaked in the carnage of the women of the land.

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo will be airing on HBO on April 8th. I just wanted to pull out some of the commentary here, as I find there’s rarely any effort to make connections when you read about these things -

As Jackson shares her own gang-rape story, we’re potently reminded that in America we’re in no position to point fingers. The monstrous escalation of rape in the Congo doesn’t exist in a vacuum; around the world, human beings perpetrate new heights of barbarity - against the planet and themselves.

And in this short article:

Unfortunately, as a human-rights activist notes, good intentions may not be enough to end what appears to be an institutionalized outrage: “The rapists of yesterday have today become the authorities. And they encourage sexual violence because for them it has become a lifestyle. That is why the violence doesn’t end.”

As far as feminism, I really haven’t looked much into the topic. Hence, your allusions to specific ideas are lost on me because of my lack of background. However, many of the arguments I’ve heard for feminism appear to be the search for a skapegoat on which to cast the blame for problems. I can understand and sometimes agree with arguments I’ve heard, but this isn’t a one directional issue. In fact, it’s surprising that there isn’t a loud masculanist movement considering many of the unfair expectations and biases against men. I myself wouldn’t subscribe to any such group, but it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to consider its existance.

Consider education. Before feminist movements, males had the large share of educational attention, and had higher scores on average than women. The feminist movement has swung the pendulum in the complete opposite direction, where women are outpacing their male components in academia (at least in early education through high school).Don’t misunderstand the purpose of the statement; the fact that women are performing better in school is an excellent and laudable fact. I’m simply pointing out that there is always injustice and there are always biases, and you must be very careful about which fights you pick.

As you said in your entry, there are so many things wrong with the world, feminism does seem like a narrow focused issue. It’s a real issue (as is, perhaps to a lesser extent, “masculanism”), but is it as bold as the pursuit of more impactful issues such as the World Bank and its impositions on 3rd world countries? Or modern colonialism? Environmental impact and sustainability? Poverty and starvation? Worldwide disease?

I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to deal with my rebuttal, but I decided that making a post would be nice, as I would like to make you do some work. I’m adding some supplementary posts to what I had to say originally, as there are people who have said things better than I ever will.

First, I’ll address that there is a “masculinist” movement, otherwise known as the MRAs - Men’s Rights Advocates. The idea that we need an MRA movement is pretty much on par with the idea that we need white supremacists. (Please note that I am not equating the two groups, so much as explaining their existence.) While feminists aim to right a VERY REAL power imbalance going on between men and women, the former groups are looking to hold on to their power and the perceived injustices they suffer when this power imbalance is corrected. When you lose the privilege (<— link) you have of belonging to a certain group you are going to have to give things up to right the wrongs that other people suffer on account of that privilege. MRAs demonstrate a severe lack of critical thinking skills, and it’s difficult for me to do anything besides pity them.

We live in a patriarchy. (<— link) This is a cultural construct in which men dominate. Under patriarchy things flow disproportionately in yes, one direction. We live in an incredibly misogynist (and racist) culture. To be honest, although the feminist movement has done a lot I think it’s significantly stalled and undergoing an incredible backlash and assault. I don’t agree with you that feminism has moved the pendulum to the complete opposite direction in anything at all, actually. If you are talking education, just a few years ago we had the president of Harvard questioning women’s biological capacity to do well in math and science. Imagine that, in 2007. And yet many people still espouse views about women’s ability to do things BASED ON the fact that we’re women. You’re incredibly lucky that you’ve never had to deal with that because of your sex, something innate.

I actually found an excellent article awhile back on the hand wringing that has accompanied the “crisis” our boys are currently facing. He also addresses what feminists have to say about men and the ways they are hurt under patriarchy.

A War Against Boys? by Michael Kimmel

I will expand a bit on the way that issues of poverty and globalization effect women. Most of the sweatshops that have proliferated in the third world employ women because they are seen as easier to control. As a consequence, they suffer countless abuses (<— link) and are paid less than their male counterparts would be. Typical patriarchal ideology in which “women’s” work and time are devalued.

A particularly horrific example of what women deal with in the face of increasing globalization is what is happening in Juarez and other towns along the Mexican border. Many corporations moved their factories, otherwise known as maquiladoras down there to take advantage of cheap labor and an exploitable work force. Women, many of them in their teens (The younger they are, the more pliable!) have moved there for work. This has created a perfect environment in which 450 women have been found brutally mutilated, raped, and murdered over the past 15 years. Hundreds more are missing and it still continues today. There has been no justice for these women or their families. Often the police will write off their murders or disappearance to the fault of their own “behavior” much of which is fabricated. (As if a woman deserves that fate because she was out late partying, or was a prostitute.) These attitudes are also prevalent in the US.

More Than 450 Women Have Been Murdered in Cuidad Juarez and 600 are missing. All since 1992

At Your Service: Latin Women in the Global Information Network by Coco Fusco - This is an incredible essay that touches on so many things - corporate co-optation, racial hierarchies, Juarez, misogyny masquerading as art. I saw Ms. Fusco speak. She is simply incredible.

A Small Post at Brownfemipower about the plight of women farm workers.

US: Dyncorp Disgrace - Men from a U.S. corporation enslaving and raping women overseas.

Johann Hari: Why Do We Ignore the Abuse of Women?

And here I’ll sidle into territory where I’ll probably hear from most people “wow Erin, you’ve really lost it this time.” When it comes to the abuse and degradation of women, there are no “bad apples.” This is all part of a continuum. Instances like Juarez are at the extreme end of the continuum, (Dyncorp and BFP’s post, not so much) granted, but they are part of a larger system and pattern. When I see this, it is the result of cultural constructs that categorize women as “other.” It is the result of ideas that brand us as commodities, always sexually available, that we are not full human beings. It is the result of the culturally sanctioned devaluation of women. These ideas are manifesting themselves fully in a place where breaking the law comes with no consequences. Further, though white women have been lucky to at least get their issues out there, women of color are pretty much nonexistent in the greater scheme of things. (Scratch that - women of color are visible when people feel the need to tell them to “stop breeding”, and when they’re generally being connected to harmful stereotypes!)

To me, there are VERY FEW isolated incidents. Perhaps that is my greatest weakness. My love for studying culture and making connections has made it very difficult for me to let the “little” things go. I can not walk past a group of men who are laughing at how wasted a woman got the other night, hear “dude, you should have taken advantage of her” and see this as merely a classless group of guys. I can’t see men belittling and degrading other men by likening them to women - by using words like “pussy”, and not see that as part of a much bigger system that routinely belittles and degrades women in BIG ways, ways that hurt. It continually amazes and disgusts me how misogyny is built into our language and the way we express things. I can’t write off the way that things classified as women’s interests are routinely regarded as frivolous and off limits to men, while it’s perfectly ok for women to take up “men’s” interests that will never have the same stigma. These are the “little” ways that reinforce the structures and thought processes that our lives are built around everyday.

I had a whole laundry list of additional issues, both globally and in the US… but I think I’ll leave you with this post, which will give you just a sampling of some more of the crazy shit that women have to deal with. As well, I like what she has to say about anti-feminists and MRAs!

Thanksgiving, Life and Death, and Anti-Feminism at Reclusive Leftist

And hey, she covers global issues as well:

The U.N. reports that most of the 800 million illiterate adults in the world are women; most of the 100 million children not in school are girls. Women earn three-quarters of what men do and their unpaid labor would, if calculated, equal trillions of dollars. Women hold only 17% of the parliamentary seats in the world, but they constitute 70% of the people living in poverty.

For reference, I am throwing in my response comment to you, since it was meant to go in my rebuttal. As well, I’d like you to think about it.

A big problem is the idea that women are “special interest.” We’re not. We’re roughly half the world’s population. This is part of patriarchal ideology - that issues that effect men are important issues, while issues that effect women are peripheral, “special” and generally ignored. This springs from the pervasive idea that man is default and woman is “other” and part of the reason a person can honestly ponder the idea that standing up for women’s rights is not “bold” enough, not “impactful” enough, or that it’s “too narrow.” What makes standing up for a woman, a human being, and the issues she faces in particular, any damn less urgent than standing up for the environment or poverty? Apologies if I seem combative here, but that idea just really frustrates me. As well, as a side note, if we’re speaking of poverty I can probably make a very good case that it’s women who bear the brunt of the negative effects of poverty worldwide.

And a post that touches somewhat on the issue: Stan Goff: [Prison] Rape

What I’m most interested in at the moment is intersectionality. In short, making connections between these oppressions - of women, people of color, gays, lesbians, transgendered, (Ok, if I wasn’t already a newb in matters of race, I’m a TOTAL newb when it comes to LGBT stuff.) of class matters, of poverty. Etc. etc…. I really want to focus on things where I deal with and try to uproot it all.

I feel like I haven’t properly addressed some of the points you brought up, such as scapegoating etc. But honestly, every time I think of the concept that feminism is merely “scapegoating” my brain implodes. Perhaps I didn’t truly answer your comment either. I feel as though I explained the little things and big things, but didn’t quite connect the two with middle ground. And the argument that things aren’t “one-directional issues”, again, bit of a brain implosion there.

Feminism FAQ 101: What’s wrong with saying that things happen to men too?

I’ll leave you with that, as I’ve proof read and been editing/adding to this thing for about 8 days (it is 6 pages in word) and though I don’t feel like I accomplished my goal, I’m thoroughly sick of this post!!!