Rape is manufactured and mass produced in the U.S. and is marketed all over the world. This is done, in part, by patriarchal and white supremacist men carrying their racist misogyny to other regions of the globe. White men, especially but not only from the United States, travel to many places, including Southeast and South Asia, with the express purpose to rape girls and young women. The men then hide this crime from everyone, including their spouses and children. Millions of girls are trafficked and sold as slaves because of white men's belief that girls and women ought to belong to them to be used and abused sexually, economically, and socially.
I have not written here about the preponderance of rape in India because as a white Western male, I know such news is misused in the West to promote an idea that misogyny is worse in other places than within the U.S. Misogyny is organised and expressed in similar and dissimilar ways around the world; in the U.S. rape, battery, the sexual sale and renting of women and girls, forced sterilisation, restrictive regulations on abortion, economic inequality and capitalist exploitation are among the many ways woman-hating violence manifests. Violence occurs disproportionately against women of color. Indigenous women, for example, are raped more than non-Indigenous women in the U.S., overwhelmingly by white men. But when non-white men, here and internationally, are identified as abusers of women, that is erroneously determined to mean that white men are less violent than other men.
Feminists of all colors have been explicitly and systematically organising against men's violence against women for the last several decades. They have challenged male supremacist entitlements to take what they desire; they have confronted the industries that promulgate the idea that women want to be raped and sadistically hurt; they have fought for economic justice and civil rights, the lack of which keep women vulnerable to men. And even with this level of resistance, men still rape and do other harm to women, mostly with inpunity and with the perverse idea, shared among men, that such violence makes them more of a man.
Men of all colors commit atrocities against girls and women although some cultures have not historically promoted and protected men's commitment to violence. Structurally, socially, and economically, white men are most oppressively empowered and are therefore the most dangerous. Nonetheless, white men promote the lie that men of color are more dangerous: more dangerous to women and more dangerous to men. It is against great and overwhelming evidence that white men believe this.
Such a distorted view ignores the reality that colonial/imperialist invasion by white men into India is part of the story of how rape happens there. It is not the whole story, but invasion by white men anywhere brings the rape of girls and women with it. Military invasion is one form of assault against a country that is carried out with sexual violence against female bodies. Male soldiers commit rape systematically--not all male soldiers, but too many for the rape to not be systemic and protected. U.S. male soldiers rape not only the girls and women of occupied countries, but the women who militarily serve along with them.
This doesn't mean were it not for white men, no rape would occur. It is to notice, however, that white men's chronic and cancerous invasions of other countries and human bodies is historically undeniable but ought not be assumed to be inevitable. White supremacy, male supremacy, and corporate capitalism intersect and become mutually reinforcing.
Below is a perspective directly out of India that takes into account how the sexism of economics factors into the preponderance of rape. It is by the great feminist, philosopher, and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva. I believe her voice is so important and that what she has to say ought to be centered in Western conversations about how to stop rape. I post her words here to hopefully bring her message to a few more people. (You may click on the title just below to link back to the source website.)
Wednesday, 23 January 2013 17:07
Vandana Shiva
Source: Yes Magazine
Violence against women is as old as patriarchy.
Traditional
patriarchy has structured our worldviews and mindsets, our social and
cultural worlds, on the basis of domination over women and the denial
of their full humanity and right to equality. But it has intensified
and become more pervasive in the recent past. It has taken on more
brutal forms, like the murder of the Delhi gang rape victim and the
recent suicide of a 17-year-old rape victim in Chandigarh.
In
India, rape cases and cases of violence against women have increased
over the years. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported
10,068 rape cases in 1990, which increased to 16,496 in 2000. With
24,206 cases in 2011, rape cases jumped to incredible increase of 873
percent from 1971 when NCRB started to record cases of rape. And Delhi
has emerged as the rape capital of India, accounting for 25 percent
of cases.
The
movement to stop this violence must be sustained till justice is done
for every one of our daughters and sisters who has been violated.
And
while we intensify our struggle for justice for women, we need to
also ask why rape cases have increased 240 percent since 1990’s when
the new economic policies were introduced.
Could
there be a connection between the growth of violent, undemocratically
imposed, unfair economic policies and the intensification and
brutality of crimes against women?
I
believe there is. I am not suggesting that violence against women
begins with neoliberal economics. I am deeply aware of the deep gender
biases in our traditional cultures and social organizations. I stand
empowered today because people before me fought against the exclusions
and biases against women and children: My grandfather sacrificed his
life for women’s equality, and my mother was a feminist before the word
existed.
Violence
against women has taken on new and more vicious forms as traditional
patriarchal structures have hybridized with the structures of
capitalist patriarchy. We need to examine the connections between the
violence of unjust, unsustainable economic systems and the growing
frequency and brutality of violence against women. We need to see how
the structures of traditional patriarchy merge with the emerging
structures of capitalist patriarchy to intensify violence against
women.
Cyclones
and hurricanes have always occurred. But as the Orissa Supercyclone,
Cyclone Nargis, Cyclone Aila, Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Sandy show, the intensity and frequency of cyclones has increased with climate change.
Our
society has traditionally had a bias against the girl child. But the
epidemic of female feticide and the disappearance of 30 million
unborn girls has taken that bias to new levels of violence and new
proportions. And it is into this context of the dynamics of more brutal
and more vicious violence against women (and multiple, interconnected
forms of violence) that the processes unleashed by neoliberalism are
contributory factors.
Firstly,
the economic model focusing myopically on “growth” begins with
violence against women by discounting their contribution to the
economy.
The
more the government talks ad nauseum about “inclusive growth" and
“financial inclusion,” the more it excludes the contributions of women
to the economy and society. According to patriarchal economic models,
production for sustenance is counted as "non-production." The
transformation of value into disvalue, labour into non-labour, and
knowledge into non-knowledge is achieved by the most powerful number
that rules our lives, the patriarchal construct of GDP—Gross Domestic
Product—which commentators have started to call the Gross Domestic
Problem.
National
accounting systems which are used for calculating growth as GDP are
based on the assumption that if producers consume what they produce,
they do not in fact produce at all, because they fall outside the
production boundary.
The
production boundary is a political creation that, in its workings,
excludes regenerative and renewable production cycles from the area of
production. Hence, all women who produce for their families,
children, community, and society are treated as "non-productive" and
"economically inactive." When economies are confined to the marketplace,
economic self-sufficiency is perceived as economic deficiency. The
devaluation of women’s work, and of work done in subsistence economies
of the Global South, is the natural outcome of a production boundary
constructed by capitalist patriarchy.
By
restricting itself to the values of the market economy, as defined by
capitalist patriarchy, the production boundary ignores economic value
in the two vital economies which are necessary to ecological and
human survival. They are the areas of nature’s economy,
and sustenance economy. In nature’s economy and the sustenance
economy, economic value is a measure of how the earth’s life and human
life are protected. Its currency is life-giving processes, not cash
or market price.
Secondly, a model of capitalist patriarchy which excludes women’s work and wealth creation in the mind, deepens the violence by displacing women from their livelihoods and alienating them from the natural resources on
which their livelihoods depend—their land, their forests, their
water, and their seeds and biodiversity. Economic reforms based on the
idea of limitless growth in a limited world, can only be maintained by
the powerful grabbing the resources of the vulnerable. The resource
grab that is essential for “growth” creates a culture of rape—the rape
of the earth, of local self-reliant economies, and of women. The
only way in which this “growth” is “inclusive” is by its inclusion of
ever larger numbers in its circle of violence.
I
have repeatedly stressed that the rape of the Earth and rape of women
are intimately linked, both metaphorically in shaping worldviews, and
materially in shaping women’s everyday lives. The deepening economic
vulnerability of women makes them more vulnerable to all forms of
violence—including sexual assault.
Thirdly,
economic reforms lead to the subversion of democracy and
privatization of government. Economic systems influence political
systems. The government talks of economic reforms as if it has nothing
to do with politics and power. Leaders talk of keeping politics out of
economics, even while they impose an economic model shaped by the
politics of a particular gender and class. Neoliberal reforms work
against democracy. We have seen this recently with the Indian government
pushing through "reforms" to bring in Walmart through FDI in retail.
Corporate-driven reforms create a convergence of economic and political
power, a deepening of inequalities, and a growing separation of the
political class from the will of the people they are supposed to
represent. This is at the root of the disconnect between politicians
and the public that we experienced during the protests that have grown
throughout India since the Delhi gang rape.
Worse,
an alienated political class is afraid of its own citizens. This is
what explains the increasing use of police to crush nonviolent citizen
protests, as we have witnessed in Delhi. A privatized corporate state
must rapidly become a police state.
This
is why the politicians must surround themselves with ever increasing
VIP security, diverting the police from their important duties to
protect women and ordinary citizens.
Fourthly,
the economic model shaped by capitalist patriarchy is based on the
commodification of everything, including women. When we stopped the
WTO in Seattle, our slogan was, “Our world is not for sale."
An
economics unleashed by economic liberalization—an economics of
deregulation of commerce, of privatization and commodification of seeds
and food, land and water, women and children—degrades social values,
deepens patriarchy, and intensifies violence against women.
Economic
systems influence culture and social values. An economics of
commodification creates a culture of commodification, where everything
has a price, and nothing has value.
The
growing culture of rape is a social externality of economic reforms.
We need to institutionalize social audits of the neoliberal policies
which are a central instrument of patriarchy in our times. If there
was a social audit of corporatizing our seed sector, 270,000 farmers
would not have been pushed to suicide in India since the new economic
policies were introduced. If there was a social audit of the
corporatization of our food and agriculture, we would not have every
fourth Indian hungry, every third woman malnourished, and every second
child wasted and stunted due to severe malnutrition. India today would
not be the Republic of Hunger that Dr. Utsa Patnaik has written about.
The
victim of the Delhi gang rape has triggered a social revolution. We
must sustain it, deepen it, expand it. We must demand and get speedy
and effective justice for women. We must call for fast-track courts to
convict those responsible for crimes against women. We must make sure
laws are changed so justice is not elusive for victims of sexual
violence. We must continue the demand for blacklisting of politicians
with criminal records.
We
must see the continuum of different forms of violence against women,
from female feticide to economic exclusion and sexual assault. We need
to continue the movement for the social reforms needed to guarantee
safety, security, and equality for women, building on the foundations
laid during India's independence movement and continued by the
feminist movement over the last half-century. The agenda for social
reforms, social justice, and equality has been derailed by the aganda
of “economic reforms" set by capitalist patriarchy.
And
while we do all this we need to change the ruling paradigm that
reduces society to economy, the economy to the market, and is imposed
on us in the name of “growth."
Society
and economy are not insulated from each other . The processes of
social reforms and economic reforms can no longer be separated. We
need economic reforms based on the foundations of social reforms that
correct the gender inequality in society, rather than aggravating all
forms of injustice, inequality, and violence.
Ending
violence against women needs to also include moving beyond the
violent economy to nonviolent, sustainable, peaceful, economies that
give respect to women and the Earth.
Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned activist for biodiversity and against corporate globalization, and author of Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; Soil Not Oil; and Staying Alive.
The last section of this essay was adapted by the author from “Forest
and Freedom,” written by Shiva and published in the May/June 2011
edition of Resurgence magazine. Shiva is a YES! contributing editor.
