Women are objectified - but being an object is the opposite of being human. When harm is both vicious and everyday, life becomes grim. Noticing the harm that is being done - insisting that it is harm - is the first step towards change.
There are some horrifying numbers of incidents of violence towards women. Globally one in three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime, and half of all sexual assaults are committed on girls under 16. In the UK a man rapes a woman every nine minutes. [2013 figures]
But numbers do not speak - they need human voices. The crimes that men commit against women are done because women are regarded as a subordinate class and to keep them in that subordinate class. Where women are subservient, there is silence. Sexual violence against children can take a lifetime to unwind, if ever.
Rape is the most traumatic form of torture. Women who have survived prostitution have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers who have survived combat.
The anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday studied 95 societies and found that almost half were rape-free, and identifying the common factors.
Rape-free societies are:
- cultures that value cooperation
- political and economic power are shared by the sexes
- the sacred has both female and male aspects
- anyone can assume positions of ceremonial importance
- cultures that reward competition
- women are dispossessed
- God is only ever male
- men exclude women from roles of spiritual intercession
Article Should this cruelty be normal? by Lierre Keith in the Church Times, 28 June 2013
Lierre Keith is the author of six books and a founding member of Stop Porn Culture.
