Unit 6 Gendered Violence
In this unit, gendered violence is examined in both local and global contexts. The ideas stressed in this unit include those listed below.
o The causes, forms and consequences of gendered violence are socially constructed.
o Women’s and men’s silence around gendered violence leads to an inability to gauge the frequency of gendered violence.
o Gendered violence frequently differs from culture to culture.
o There are many myths about women that are associated with gendered violence.
o Descriptions and representations of gendered violence are frequently inappropriate.
o The state often perpetuates gendered violence.
Unit 6 Gendered Violence
Note:
see the Unit 6 DRR for the readings listed below.
Required Reading
Hof, Caroline, and Annemiek, Richters. “Exploring Intersections between Teenage Pregnancy and Gender Violence: Lessons from Zimbabwe.” African Journal of Reproductive Health, vol. 3, no. 1 (May, 1999): 51-65.
Study Questions
1. How do Hof and Richters define gender violence?
2. What is the relationship of teenage pregnancy with gender violence?
3. How is gender violence connected with social and cultural conditions?
4. How can needed improvements to adolescent sexual and reproductive health be brought about?
Required Reading
Bahar, Saba. “Human Rights Are Women’s Rights; Amnesty International and the Family.” Hypatia, vol. 11, no. 1 (Winter, 1996): 105-134.
Study Questions
1. In the past, what violations of human rights did the international human rights movement focus on? What violations did it ignore?
2. Feminist human rights activists are expanding the concept of human rights. What is the fundamental idea on which the idea of “rights” rests?
3. Before the 1990s, did Amnesty International have a focus on state-related violence against women?—on violence against women in the home? Why or why not?
4. In the 1995 Human Rights Are Women’s Rights report, what four new steps emphasize that government-sponsored discrimination against women contributes directly to human rights violations in the private sphere?
5. Does the 1995 mandate of Amnesty International radically redefine human rights, according to Bahar? Explain.
6. According to Bahar, what does the 1995 report overlook?
7. Why should reproductive rights be considered human rights (not private rights), according to Bahar?
8. How far does Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board go in recognizing women’s rights as human rights?
Required Reading
McNeill, Laurie. “Death and the Maidens: Vancouver’s Missing Women, the Montreal Massacre, and Commemoration’s Blind Spots.” Canadian Review of American Studies, vol. 38, no. 3 (October, 2008): 375-398.
Study Questions
1. According to McNeill, how does the official Virginal Tech Web page show the complexities of memorial responses?
2. How do Canadians remember the murderer and the act?
3. Why does McNeill choose to compare the Montreal Massacre and Missing Women serial killings?
4. Why is it important to analyse the debate about labeling events such as the Montreal Massacre?
5. What are some of the similarities and differences in the women victims of the two cases?
6. Why do memorial practices need ongoing examination?
7. What is the role of memorializing discourse?
8. What are “guerrilla memorials” (p. 390)?
9. Why do structures and practices of traditional memorializing have to change?
Required Reading
Jiwani, Yasmin. “The 1999 General Social Survey on Spousal Violence: An Analysis.” Canadian Woman Studies/ les cahiers de la femme, vol. 20, no. 3 (2001): 34-40.
Jiwani, Yasmin. “Erasing Race: The Story of Reena Virk.” Canadian Woman Studies/ les cahiers de la femme, vol.19, no. 3 (1999): 178-184.
Study Questions
1. What dangers lie in the use of the General Social Survey (GSS) on spousal violence? What did the GSS reveal?
2. How does the GSS differ from the VAWS and other previous surveys of violence against women?
3. What crucial element is missing from the GSS questions?
4. What are the important differences in the types of violence experienced by women and men? According to the GSS, which gender experiences more emotional abuse?
5. What might the high rates of violence reported by men indicate?
6. What might the declining rates of violence against women indicate?
7. What issues did media focus on after Reena Virk’s murder?
8. Why was it easy to overlook the racial dimension in Reena Virk’s murder?
Required Reading
Randall, Melanie. “Sexual Assault Law, Credibility, and ‘Ideal Victims’: Consent, Resistance, and Victim Blaming.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, vol. 22, no. 2 (2010): 397-433.
Study Questions
1. What has been the response to feminist efforts to achieve equality both in laws proscribing sexual offences, and in the enforcement of such laws?
2. What inaccurate beliefs were encoded in sexual offence law before 1970?
3. What are some of the positive results of decades of feminist struggle against gendered violence?
4. The 1983 rape law reforms “de-sexed” the laws and changed rape from a crime of “passion” to a crime of violence. What did the proponents of the rape law changes hope would happen as a result of these changes? Were their hopes realized?
5. What did the 1992 sexual assault law reforms do? What did a 1997 review of these reforms show?
6. What are some of the positive amendments within the area of sexual assault law?
7. What does Bill C-49 define for the first time?
8. Must a woman vigorously resist unwanted sexual touching to show that she means
no when she says no? Must she say no? What establishes non-consent to sexual touching?
9. Why has de-sexing legal language not achieved real, substantive equality for women?
10. What are the deficiencies regarding sexual assault in the Criminal Code of Canada?
11. What flaws remain embedded in Canadian criminal justice system?
12. Why does Randall think that law is only a partial solution in affecting social change to end sexual violence?
13. How are the “real victims” and “ideal victims” of sexual violence categorized?
Required Reading
Sheehy, Elizabeth. “Evidence Law and ‘Credibility Testing’ of Women: A Comment on the E Case.” Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal, vol. 2, no. 2 (2002): 157-174.
Study Questions
1. What does Sheehy mean by “evidence law”?
2. What is false memory syndrome (FMS)?
3. What are some of the issues related to the use of FMS in law courts?
4. What are some of the myths about women and rape?
5. How has FMS been used in criminal and civil litigation in Canada?
6. How was FMS used in the E case?
Required Reading
Razack, Sherene. “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society, vol. 15, no. 2 (2000): 91-130.
Study Questions
1. Who was Pamela George? How was she murdered?
2. Why did members of the Aboriginal and white communities object to the judge’s instruction to the jury after the trial of Pamela George’s murderers?
3. What are some current attitudes toward Aboriginal women? When did these attitudes develop?
4. What is Razack’s theory on why middle-class white men would murder an Aboriginal woman who is a sex-worker?
5. On what was the murderers’ sense of identity premised? What is Razack’s evidence for this conclusion?
6. What was the attitude of the murderers and their white friends toward Pamela George?
7. What did young white women do while the murderers negotiated for the services of an Aboriginal prostitute?
8. What legal arrangement sustains the view that violence toward prostitutes is natural?
9. According to her friends and family, what was Pamela George really like?
10. STUDY GUIDE
11. Unit 6 Gendered Violence
12. Commentary
13. There are conflicting explanations for gendered violence and these explanations result in conflicting policies and remedies. Therefore, in your work on this unit (as in the rest of the course), you must use your own critical abilities to evaluate various theories and actions. Such self-reflection and critical analysis with respect to information about gendered violence may better prepare you to choose and to take a course of action to reduce and eliminate gendered violence in your own local environment.
14. As you work on this unit, you may be affected by recollections of violence, or insights into your own past or current personal experience. We encourage you to respond to what you read in many ways. You might write recollections in a journal, or speak to a friend, or draw or paint, or cry, or pray, or exercise, or meditate, or have a massage, or sleep. Develop your own self-care techniques for handling the material (and any other difficult material in this course).
15.note that if you wish, you can contact an Athabasca University counsellor about issues raised in this unit (or any other unit). Your tutor can also help you to contact people who will support you in various ways. In addition, there are many books and pamphlets that can help survivors, and many groups throughout Canada and around the world through which women can find information and support.
16. Because it is often difficult for the victim or survivor of violence to name the violence against her, it is also hard to determine the prevalence of gendered violence in Canada and around the world. Recent statistics show that millions of women worldwide are affected by violence, and that violence against women is underreported (United Nations Statistics Division, 2010). For instance, the proportion of women experiencing physical violence at least once in their lifetime varies from about 12% in China to 60% in Zimbabwe (United Nations Statistics Division, 2010).
17. In her article “Human Rights are Women’s Rights,” Saba Bahar (1996) addresses violence against women as a human rights issue at the global level. She calls into question the distinction between the public and private spheres that has been the foundation of the international human rights movement. Bahar points out that as long as states and human rights organizations maintain a distinction between public and private activities, and operate only with respect to what has been defined as the public sphere, the violation of human rights in the private sphere will continue to go unchallenged, with the result that in many nation states, domestic violence goes unreported and unchallenged, because it happens in the private sphere of the home.
18. In a study on teenage pregnancy in Zimbabwe, Hof and Richters (1999) identify three main forms of gender violence: psychological violence, sexual violence and physical violence. They assert that “one of the causes of unwanted teenage pregnancies are power imbalances between men and women at both societal and personal levels” (p. 63).
19. Because the state takes a less hands-off approach to the private sphere in Canada, Canadian statistics on gendered violence are somewhat more reliable than those from other nations. The 1993 Statistics Canada study on violence against women was one of the first statistically significant studies of this issue at a national level in the world. Though the study did not report on violence against men (and was criticized for this omission), the study was ground-breaking in its size and scientific rigour. In 1999, Statistics Canada made its first attempt to measure spousal violence in a comprehensive way on a traditional victimization survey, asking both women and men questions concerning violence by their current or previous spouses and common-law partners. This survey is reviewed in the article by Yasmin Jiwani (2001). On the surface, the survey seems to suggest that men and women are equally violent. But when examined more closely, the GSS results show that the questions that were asked lack a social context and that they equalize all forms of violence. Jiwani points out that “the severity of women abuse outweighs the kinds of violence experienced by male spouses . . . more than twice as many women as men report being beaten . . . and more than six times as many women as men reported being sexually assaulted” (p. 37). In addition the GSS measures indicate that emotional abuse is far more prevalent against women than against men.
20. Thus, while the prevalence of gendered violence against women can only be estimated in Canada and around the world, it is widespread.
21. STUDY GUIDE
22. Unit 6 Gendered Violence
23. Commentary
24. Causes
25. There are three broad categories of explanations for male violence against women: physiological theories, intra-psychic (psychological) explanations and socio-cultural theories. Those who adhere to physiological explanations assert that male violence is genetically coded, inherent within brain structures of violent men, or both. A second category of explanation—the intra-psychic explanations of male violence—suggests that violent males are aberrant individuals who have deep-rooted psychological disorders. In contrast to the physiological and psychological explanations, feminist explanations of the cause of male violence are generally socio-cultural and specifically “social constructionist.” Social constructionist theories are held by those who believe that male violence is caused by patriarchal cultures which socialize males to be violent toward women. Very simply, social constructionists focus on social nurture, while the other two kinds of theorists focus on biological nature. In other words, masculine violence against women is a cause and a result of male power. It is both an outgrowth of, and supportive of, male power.
26. Razack (2000) points out that gender power is also racialized. In the murder of Pamela George, the murderers’ whiteness was as important as their masculinity in constructing their power over George, an Aboriginal woman who was a part-time sex worker. According to Razack, such racial power was also evident in the words and judgements of the participants in the trial. That the murderers were convicted of manslaughter, and not first or second degree murder, indicates, according to Razack, that the men were considered (as athletic, middle-class, white males) to be far removed from the spaces of violence. In contrast, Pamela George—an Aboriginal woman—was considered to be part of the space where violence and murders naturally happened. Yet the judge and attorneys were colour-blind to this socially constructed attitude toward gendered and racialized violence.
27. In her article on the murder of Reena Virk, Jiwani argues that media reports about the crime focused on “girl-on-girl” violence and overlooked racism; she asserts that we need to acknowledge that “racism is a form of violence that is endemic and pervasive” (1999, p. 182). As such, Aboriginal women and other marginalized women are also victims of discriminatory social systems. Differentiating between “real” and “ideal” victims, Randall notes that “racialized and marginalized women, who are less valued and less credible in a society characterized by racism, are, by definition, less readily identified as ‘ideal victims’ and more easily stigmatized as ‘bad’ or ‘undeserving’ victims” (2010, p. 410).
Unit 6 Gendered Violence
Commentary
Responses: Myths and the Law
Just as the root causes of men’s violence against women lie in the social structure, so do the roots of people’s responses to such violence. The major myths that have grown up in response to women’s claims of violence against them are that
o women lie about violence against them;
o women provoke violence against them; and
o good girls and women don’t get violated.
The inequality in sexual assault law that arises from these myths is thoroughly described in your readings. Randall (2010) and Sheehy (2002) report on the decades-long efforts of feminist legal theorists and activists to create equality and recognize women’s rights within sexual assault law. To do this, feminist activists have worked with survivors of gendered violence who have spoken out and used the Canadian courts to try to achieve justice. And, because violence is linked not only to the sexist nature of society but also to racism and classism, expertise from women of colour, Aboriginal women and women who work in the sex trade must be particularly sought, if appropriate legal reforms are to be made.
Grass roots consultations with sex-trade workers led to the passage of a 2003 motion in the Canadian House of Commons, sponsored by Federal MP Libby Davies, that empowered a special committee of the House to review the solicitation (prostitution) laws in order to improve the safety of sex-trade workers, and communities overall, and to recommend changes that would reduce the exploitation and violence against sex-trade workers (see, for example, O’Neil and Richards, 2003). Davies (2002) notes that “a majority of sex-trade workers have received treatment for a physical injury while working in the sex trade.”
Groups within the United Nations have also attempted to assist in the creation of an appropriate response to violence against women, based on the widely held myths that women lie, women provoke attack and only “bad” women get assaulted. For instance, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women was passed in 1993 (United Nations General Assembly, 1993). A special UN rapporteur on Violence against Women was established in 1994 to seek and receive information on violence against women, and to recommend measures to eliminate it (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2011).
The UN’s 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action identified violence against women as a critical area of concern (United Nations, 1995). UN work on violence against women since 1995 has included the establishment of the Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted in Rome in June 1998, which makes provision for the application of gender-sensitive justice both through the selection of judges and the establishment of a Victims and Witnesses Unit (United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, 2003). The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) entered into force in December 2000, thus entitling individual women and groups of individual women to petition CEDAW with respect to violations of the Convention (United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, 2009).
New ways of representing violence against women can be found in the work of young and third-wave feminists. These new feminists often work outside old structures, such as transition homes and state institutions. Most often feminists of the third wave, as indicated earlier in this course, advocate for an anti-racist, anti-classist and sex-positive approach to gender issues, including the problem of gender-based violence. Examples of third-wave anti-violence actions include specialized sentencing practices, mandatory counseling for batterers, and interdisciplinary approaches to wife assault (see Sheehy, 1999).
o The debate among feminists regarding responses to violence has occurred for quite some time. This debate evokes the following themes of this course.
o There are many debates and divisions among feminists. While all feminists believe that gender inequality is to a large extent socially constructed, they suggest different political actions to overcome this inequality.
o Feminists differ on whether to work inside or outside of state structures. Some feminists believe that working within state structures can create significant change.
o Problems associated with working within state structures include the appropriation of feminist analysis and discourse into state discussion.
o Debates about pornography, violence and other feminist theoretical and practical issues underline the connections between sexuality, state structures, reproduction, violence and women’s work.
o Feminist change proceeds from an examination of history across cultures and among different people, through the development of theory that is woman-centred, and then to action taken to eliminate the oppression of women and to create gender equality.
