Call It What It Is — MALE Violence Against Women

by Elaine Charkowski

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Breaking the silence by naming an atrocity — and its perpetrators — is the first step toward ending it. Patriarchy is a 6,000 year-old, male-supremacist social system. To maintain it, “Women’s agony at the hands of men must never be revealed. If women steadfastly and courageously began to tell the truth and would not stop, would not be co-opted, would not become afraid, the truth of our enslavement would be undeniable and the jig would be up,” said Sonia Johnson in “Telling the Truth,” which is chapter 10 of her book Going Out of Our Minds-The Metaphysics of Liberation.

MALE violence against women must be named specifically in order to isolate it so it can be eradicated. Women, who outnumber men, are the single largest group of oppressed humans on the planet. Men have oppressed women nonstop for the longest length of time of any oppressed group, roughly 6,000 years (The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler).

A young woman once told me that dealing with male violence “was just part of being a woman!” However, it’s the moral responsibility of the group holding the most power to keep its members from oppressing people in groups holding less power. Thus, ALL men are responsible for stopping male violence against women. Violent men must stop assaulting women. Non-violent men must not sit by and allow male violence against women to continue. To do so is to condone it. Their inaction-or indifference-is passive male violence against women.
Silence is complicity.

Here are nine of the most popular evasions often used to avoid naming MALE violence specifically and to avoid holding ALL men responsible for ending male violence against women:

1. “Not all men are violent.”
No one said they were. Since men collectively hold more power than women, and since all men benefit from living in a sexist, male supremacist society, non-violent men are also responsible for stopping male violence against women. In the same way, whites, who collectively hold more power than people of color (in the U.S.) are responsible for ending racism, even whites who don’t commit racist acts. This is because all whites benefit from living in a racist society that gives whites unearned advantages.

2. “Women are violent too.”
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Mary Daly calls this “universalism.” Muddying the waters, it blurs the specific focus on male violence against women by blending it with violence in general (universal violence) and casting it as a gender-neutral human issue (see examples of universalism in excuse #3 below).

Also, under patriarchy, women are blamed for their own degradation (being violent, collaborating with men against women, etc.) As Mary Daly wrote in her book  Pure Lust, (p.365) “Within the Virulent State of phallocracy, women have been attacked and divided against our Selves. From the earliest times of the patriarchy, countless mothers have been broken and the resulting broken daughters have carried on the chain of fragmentation. . . .

“They have been reduced to responding to the fettered/fathered urge to reproduce their altered–(that is, patriarchally identified selves)– in an endless circle of Self destruction. Such forcibly altered women have appeared to be normal within the man made milieu.”

Although it exists, female violence pales in comparison to male violence. Men commit 88 percent of violent crime (US Bureau of Justice statistics). Women don’t build rape camps to torture and molest men to death. Women don’t control the U.S. government which spends more than half a trillion dollars a year on mass murder (war). Globally, women can’t walk alone without the possibility of men assaulting them. The reverse is not true. Even though some broken token women may collaborate with patriarchal men to gain power (Condi Rice, Margaret Thatcher etc.) it doesn’t change the fact that patriarchal men are in charge and allow selected token “honorary men” into the boys club–if they identify with, and behave like, patriarchal men.

3. “Since violence is a human problem committed by both sexes, and since women also commit violence against women, MALE violence against women doesn’t have to be isolated and named specifically.”

Here are some examples of universalism (“women are violent too” etc.) The power disparity between women and men is the reason for some women’s dysfunctional behavior. It is not an excuse for it:

• “Some lesbians also better their partners”
This results from internalized dysfunctional heterosexual behavior absorbed from a patriarchal society in which the dominating partner (the man) batters the woman. Male violence against women is the blueprint for lesbian vs lesbian battering.

•“Some women also commit racist violence against women”
Racism (male violence based on race) was created and implemented by dysfunctional men to “divide and conquer.” Male violence based on the “otherness” of the oppressed is the blueprint for racist attacks inflicted by some women upon “other” women. This results when women internalize racism and identify with the dominating race (including men)-instead of bonding with oppressed women. Racism is only possible when inflicted by the race possessing the most political and economic power (racism=prejudice+power over). Thus, women of dominated races cannot commit racism against women of the dominating race-only prejudice. Male violence against women of the same race is clearly seen as sexism. However, male violence against women of different races is often obscured by being seen as just racism instead of racism and sexism.

•“Some women also exploit women sexually and economically.”
Hatred and contempt of women-including themselves-is the underlying issue. Women who exploit other women identify with and see themselves through the eyes of the oppressor (male supremacists who have contempt for women).

4. The absent referent.
The “absent referent” refers to something without naming it. Mary Daly in her book “Quintessence” wrote, “Naming the agent is required for an adequate analysis of atrocities.” As linguist Julia Penelope has shown in her book, “Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues,” “agent deletion is a dangerous and common mind-muddying flaw.” Agent deletion is common, concerning male violence against women. Timid terms such as “sexual violence,” “domestic violence” “gender-based violence,” and “violence” refer to men without naming them, even when describing instances when it was obviously men who raped hundreds of thousands of women in Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda and many other nations. Even Amnesty International, which calls it “a global scourge,” uses the term “violence against women” and “sexual violence” instead of “male violence against women.”

5. “Men also rape men and boys.”
Rape is a male hate crime against women. However, the use of universalism (see #3) attempts to portray rape as a gender-neutral atrocity. The fact that men also rape men and boys doesn’t change the fact that in every nation on earth, in all levels of society, men rape women. Even when men rape males, contempt for women is the underlying issue. Men rape males to degrade them by treating them like raped women.

If white supremacist men batter or murder a black man, it’s clearly seen as a racist hate crime, even though white man also batter white men. In the same manner, rape is a hate crime against women, even though men also rape men.

6. “What we resist persists.”
Supposedly, opposing something directly “gives it more power.” If racism and sexism were not opposed directly in the U.S., black people would still be enslaved. Women would still be men’s property, unable to vote, own a business or keep their own wages. If the Nazis were not opposed directly, they would now run the world.
Opposing women’s oppression directly is only one tactic. Another is being proactive by supporting women in their efforts to gain universal human rights. This can be done by volunteering at women’s shelters, donating to groups that help women in impoverished nations and many other ways. Both tactics are necessary.

7. The “passive voice.”
In English grammar, using the passive voice (women were raped by men) instead of the active voice (men raped the women) shifts the focus from the perpetrators and their actions (men doing the raping) to their victims (the women being raped).

8. “Boys will be boys.”
Patriarchal cultures promote “nature over nurture” (biological determinism) and claim men are “naturally violent.” This legitimizes and perpetuates war and men’s abuse of women. Abnormal violent “manhood” is regarded as the norm. However, men are naturally peaceful. Archaeological evidence shows men enjoyed and maintained 1,500 years of peace in ancient Crete! It’s proven today by famous non-violent men such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other men who organize against warfare and who speak out against male violence against women. It takes years of traumatic conditioning (while being immersed in a violent society) to make men violent. “Military training camps, police academies and even some self-defense pros are constantly searching for more effective methods of suppressing the human revulsion to taking human life.” – See “The Science of Creating Killers”
If men were “naturally violent,” years of brutal conditioning by violent media and in boot camps would not be needed.

9. “Societies were always patriarchal and men have always dominated women.”
Thousands of years of women’s history has been nearly erased by patriarchal men. Marija Gimbutas, the world renowned archaeologist who wrote Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe unearthed many relics from around the world that proves men didn’t always dominate women and that women and men once shared power in peaceful non-patriarchal Goddess worshipping. societies. Riane Eisler’s book The Chalice and the Blade cites many more instances proving this.

“Democracy does not yet exist anywhere”

Robin Morgan wrote The Demon Lover which is a study of the link between terrorism in the home (“domestic violence” or more accurately, MALE violence against women in the home) and global terrorism. Terrorism, (MALE violence against women) both in the home and in ALL the societies of the world, supports patriarchy and is a necessary component.

Morgan said, “The majority of the population in virtually all nation states is female and is forced by patriarchy to obey, be silent, and acquiesce-which means that ‘democracy’ does not yet exist anywhere.”

The necessary foundation for the creation of democracy is universal human rights for women. This cannot be achieved unless global MALE violence against women is eradicated. The question is how can we accomplish this? Men have had more than 6,000 to stop their endless war against women, and they haven’t stopped. So it falls to women to accomplish this.

From The Ship that sailed into the Living Room by Sonia Johnson:

“My formative years were spent during men’s so-called Second World War. From that war and from reading since, I learned some of the tactics that had had to be invented to prevent the escape of prisoners.

Generally, when a group of men was captured, as soon as possible the captors got them into some sort of holding corral—some cordoned-off space—and set guards to watch them.

“Among the prisoners, leaders would soon arise, those men who might, for instance, urge others around them not to cooperate with the enemy until they were all given water. In some way, those who were less afraid, surer of themselves, and therefore most likely to organize rebellions or escapes, soon identified themselves.

“Their captors discovered through trial and error that to prevent trouble they had either to execute these leaders immediately or to put them in solitary confinement—one man to one cell with his own private guard. The analogy is obvious.

“When men dreamed of controlling women and hence the world, every woman was just such a leader—one of those who would disrupt and defeat the hell-plans. So during the war men have fought against us for thousands of years, they have had either to kill us or to put us in solitary confinement—one woman to one guard in one cell . . . .”

There has been only ONE war fought literally worldwide, affecting every living thing, and that has been men’s all-out, non-stop, millennia-long war against women, a war that not only continues to this moment without the slightest abatement but intensifies hourly.

Biblical “Morality”, Rape, and Serial Killers

Jacqueline S. Homan, author: Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: the Truth is a Lie

Chilliwack, BC is home to many First Nations peoples such as the Sto:lo who are part of the many bands of Coast Salish in the Pacific Northwest. Chilliwack is also home to many non-aboriginal people as well. Unlike the US, which is a Third World country, Canada has a welfare safety net for its poor and social medicine.

Canadians are really lucky. And many are spoiled insofar as they feel justified in maintaining racism against their aboriginal communities while they hypocritically wag their scolding finger at the US for being a social mess.

I am referring to the racist and rude February 14^th letter by Sandy Van Eysinger published in the Chilliwack Progress. Ms. Van Eysinger complained that the artwork commissioned by the hospital for its newly renovated emergency room didn’t belong in the hospital because the Sto:lo artists displayed Native spiritualism reflecting their culture. She said:

“No one will deny, least of all our community’s aboriginal folk; that these artworks are of a spiritual nature and embody or represent spirits in the local aboriginal tradition. I would like to point out that many conservative people of the three great monotheistic faiths (Jews, Christians, and Moslems), and possibly others such as Sikhs and atheists might find such public depictions not only deeply disturbing but also against the tenets of their belief system…”

She then cited the Bible/Torah/Quran verses prohibiting idolatry and the worship of other gods and the making of images, asserting that many non-aboriginal Canadians might even forego care at the ER because of wanting to avoid the “sin” of seeing something reflective of Sto:lo spiritualism. I have more than just a few rebuttals for Sandy Van Eysinger, and I hope she reads what I’m about to say because she’s long overdue for a reality check. I hope other Canadians read this, too.

The Cultural Effects of Christianity in the US — Poverty and Suffering is God’s Will:

In my country (the US) there are about 60 million poor, jobless and low-income working Americans who are without access to health care. As a long-term unemployed middle-aged woman, I am one of them. Many without access to health care are poor pregnant women who are not getting any pre-natal and pre-birth gynecological care at all. We have a maternal disability and death rate and infant mortality rate that rival that of many Third World nations.

The same militant Christian “pro-lifers” who have bombed family planning clinics and murdered doctors because they believed their “god” commanded it, got laws passed that are hurting women in the name of their Christian “moral beliefs.” They have also flexed their political muscle to prevent any real universal health care measure from being passed and have also pushed for the cuts in programs of critical importance to the survival of poor pregnant women and poor children.

Per the most recent US Census, 84% of the US poor unable to afford housing, food, utilities and medical care are women. An estimated six to ten million poor US households are without at least one life-sustaining utility and thousands of poor Americans freeze to death in the winter because of deregulated “privatized” utilities and a real lack of adequate help for the poor.

We have no social medicine and no welfare safety net thanks to the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Funding for subsidized housing was eliminated during the Reagan Revolution. The life expectancy among the poor in the US is the lowest in the West, second only to Haiti. And it’s not just those without educations suffering in poverty without job opportunities and hope; many poor people have gone into steep unaffordable student loan debt for “marketable” degrees. I am one of them.

Last year, 50,000 Americans died for lack of access to health care. My 37 year-old unemployed neighbor who died from an abscessed tooth was one of them. Those of us here in the states who are suffering life-threatening deprivation and inescapable poverty due to deeply entrenched classism, racism, sexism, misogyny, and theocratic fascism would be more than grateful to have access to medical care.

Remote Area Medical, which normally goes to places like Haiti and the Congo, have added the US to their growing list of poor countries’ people without access to basic medical care. The last US region where Remote Area Medical visited was downtown Los Angeles, California in 2008. Those of us who have been economically excluded and socially marginalized — regardless of the superhuman efforts we’ve made escape poverty and the utter despair that goes with it from being told every day that we don’t count and that we’ve got no chips to get into the game of life — we would be damn grateful for access to medical care like our more fortunate Canadian neighbors.

Canadians like Sandy Van Eysinger whose biggest health care gripe is having her delicate sensibilities “offended” by First Nations/Native American art and cultural expression in a renovated emergency room need to get a grip.

I don’t find the blatant racism against the First Nations/Native American communities to be “civilized” and brimming with the effervescence of humanitarianism. How can any Canadian reconcile its disease of racism while proclaiming Canada’s moral superiority to the US?

The God That Promotes Rape, Torture, Pillage, Murder Sexism, Genocide, Colonialism and Slavery:

Let’s talk about those “values” and “tenets” of the “three great monotheistic faiths” versus the values and cultural traditions of First Nations/Native American spiritualism and traditions. All three branches of Abrahamic monotheism derive from the mad ramblings of misogynist, sexist, racist, Bronze Age men with camel shit for brains.

The very same Bible — the Old Testament in particular — is the basis for all three imperialism-promoting, rape-condoning, genocide-justifying cults of cruelty and misogyny centered on an angry vindictive male god who is an obsessed sexual sadist and social deviant. The same “holy” book cited to justify griping about aboriginal artwork promotes rape, incest, murder, treachery, deceit, thievery, and the oppression of women and people of different races and beliefs.

It also promotes child sacrifice and calls these men “righteous.”(Abraham’s almost-sacrifice of Isaac to God in Genesis 22:1-19, and Jepthah’s sacrifice of his virgin daughter as a burnt offering to God in exchange for fame and glory in Judges 11:31-39). Abrahamic monotheism promotes an unhealthy loathing towards love-making and humanity in general. Genesis 3:16 sets women up as “less than” where “god” blames women for the entrance of “sin” into the world and leading her man astray, resulting in the death of men. This “moral” male god curses women with painful (and even sometimes fatal) childbirth and domination by men, justifying misogyny, tyranny and patriarchy.

This verse was not only used to justify centuries of legal discrimination against women by depriving women access to educations and good jobs, it was also used to justify the anti-atheism laws with the jailing of any physician who used any medical remedies to ease women’s pain and trauma during childbirth. These laws prevailed in the US well into the 20^th century.

The practice of denying women sexual and reproductive autonomy, adequate pain relief, and denying women safe and non-traumatic (or at least, less traumatic) childbirth experiences has become normalized as acceptable oppression and cruelty towards women in modern obstetrics and gynecology even today. This same male god promotes one of the most heinous human rights violations: rape.

Anyone who gets their moral guidance from a book centered on a god that not only approves of rape, but even commands it, is someone whose moral compass lies between “criminal misogynist” and “criminal sociopath.” In many Biblical passages there are references to “taking a wife” by force. These are not voluntary marriages — murder and force was used to “take” these “wives.” Here are just a small few of the Biblical passages where “the Lord” approves rape, commands rape, orders the “honor-killing” of women, and the stoning of non-believers:

1. Murder, rape, and pillage at Jabesh-gilead (Judges 21:10-24).
2. Murder, rape, and pillage of the Midianites (Numbers 31:7-18). “The Lord” commands Moses to kill all the Midianites, sparing only underage virgin girls who are to be taken by the Israelites as war spoils and raped. Before Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, he was on the lam for killing an Egyptian overseer. It was a Midianite who gave Moses shelter, employment, and his daughter Zipporah for a wife while Moses was in hiding. So when Moses led a genocide and child rape campaign against the Midianites in the name of “divine right”, he raped and killed his wife’s people and her family. What a way to show gratitude for hospitality.
3. Colonizing a community, rape, murder, and slavery (Deuteronomy 20:10-14). God tells the Israelites to feel free to enjoy raping the virgin girls and the loot of conquered peoples. It’s beyond offensive to claim that a religion centered on a god that orders genocide, theft, rape, and slavery and the treatment of women and children as livestock to be bartered and disposed of as men see fit deserves any respect at all. Especially when that religion justified the most egregious human rights violations throughout history. And this same deity held by Christians, Muslims and Jews as the only legitimate moral arbiter even set the standards for how “righteous” men are to rape in a “holy” way (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and how the victims are condemned to accept it. What kind of psycho would force a rape victim to marry the cretin who brutalized and raped her? Answer: the “god” of the Bible.
4. The “divine” blueprint for the “honor-killing” of rape victims who fail to cry out loud enough by stoning them to death (Deuteronomy 22:23-24).
5. The stoning of non-virgin women (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
6. Stoning unbelievers and “idolaters” and Sabbath-breakers to death (Exodus 31:14-15, Exodus 35:2, and Numbers 15:32-36).

The “pro-life” Christian Reconstructionist movement, which has been aggressively influencing all branches of the US government, admittedly seeks to supplant the US Constitution with Mosaic Law. They plan to impose this without any regard to the human rights of women or other people who do not share these beliefs, customs, or traditions.

This is no different than the Islamic theocracies that impose Sha’ria Law like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan where female rape or incest victims are routinely brutally “honor-killed” as punishment for violating the Biblical/Quranic “modesty laws” for the “dishonor” to their male owners and masters — their husbands, fathers, or brothers.

The Bible is a sick book written by sick men about a sick god that doesn’t give a damn about women and children’s human rights. The only concern is for the violation of another man’s “property.” And Christian Reconstructionists and other Christian Dominionists want this to be the Supreme Law of the land!

Their “god” and their Bible heroes are immoral and inhumane — and so is anyone who uses their belief in this “god” and the Biblical code of ethics to justify their actions in the name of “divine right” and “morality.”

The Bible is pregnant from Genesis to Revelations with sexual sadism, genocide, rape, slavery, incest and murder. The god of the Bible represented by the “three great monotheistic faiths” despises women, relishes cruelty, savors rape and abuse, and approves of crimes against humanity. Hell of a way for such a “god” to show his love for his creation, isn’t it?

Abraham — the “founding father” of all three branches of monotheism —pimped out his own wife, who was also his sister (Genesis 12: 11-13), and was called a “righteous man.” Abraham’s nephew Lot, whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt (killed) for the “crime” of looking back at the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah they were fleeing, had incestuous sex with his daughters to preserve his line. (Genesis 19:32-36).

Before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot offered to hand over his virgin daughters to a violent rapacious mob and tells them to do whatever they want to his daughters so his male guests would not be harmed (Genesis 19:32-36). Lot was called a “righteous man.”

Any sentient human with an IQ above a houseplant who has actually read the Bible cannot ignore the blatant misogyny and cruelty aimed at women. The prominent “men of god” who wrote the Bible were the products of a patriarchal, violent, bigoted and tribal society. Their “god” and “moral” teachings reflect the ignorance and inhumanity of that society and fundamentalists and conservative adherents to Abrahamic monotheism insist that everyone be bound by that same society’s biblical law.

The doctrines of Abrahamic monotheism promote contempt for women’s bodies and natural functions. Even the acts of making love and giving birth is held in contempt — the Bible commands women to bring a “sin offering” to the temple after she is purified from her post-childbirth bleeding when the priest makes atonement on her behalf for her “sin” of having sex and giving birth. (Leviticus 12:1-8).

Women are nothing but disposable sexual and reproductive livestock that aren’t human enough for harm to us to matter. That is the esteem the “three great monotheistic faiths” confers on women. Cultures which press women into sexual and reproductive dhimmitude while demanding chastity and virginity in women have a double standard morality code as their bedrock. If men are encouraged to view women as depreciative chattel, they will never see women as human. And in disregarding women, all kinds of atrocities and injustices are permissible against us.

The Christian Right in the US uses the Bible as the authoritative manual for the enslavement of women. The Bible is infested with sexism, racism, violence and perversion. Under the guise of Christian “morality” and “family values”, the Christian Right is succeeding in reversing all of women’s hard-won gains towards human rights and full citizenship:

1. The right to own property.
2. The right to an education.
3. The right to paid employment and equal pay.
4. The right to childcare.
5. The right to plan their families.
6. The right to sexual and reproductive autonomy, including safe childbirth with dignity.

It’s time women saw the Bible for what it is. And despite apologists’ attempts to sugar coat or white-wash the Bible with endless excuses, it does not change the fact that the Bible is anti-women. And the New Testament Jesus with his message of “forgiveness” no matter what evil or what harm a man has done is the ultimate license for abrogating personal responsibility.

Serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton is a Christian. Christianity teaches that Pickton only has to hit the “Jesus Forgives Me” reset button and then he’ll get to sit at the right hand of god in heaven when he dies. It was the Bible that helped inspire Pickton to feel justified in slaughtering 49 poor and marginalized women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, according to some of Pickton’s prison cell writings.

Of course, the Bible’s “god” approved of a concubine being gang-raped and butchered (Judges 19) — giving Christian sexual sadists and psychopaths like Robert Pickton and Gary Leon Ridgeway the green light to murder women; especially poor women from the very bottom of the socio-economic heap that were forced into the sex trade for lack of other options for economic support due to a legacy of discrimination and misogyny. As a feminist and incorrigible atheist, I think I rather prefer the company of “heathens”, “infidels”, fellow atheists and heretics.