Sexual Violence, Religion and Women’s Rights in Global Perspective
Issue: Vol 36 No. 2 (2017) Religious Studies and Theology
Journal: Religious Studies and Theology
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
DOI: 10.1558/rsth.35156
Abstract:
This article cautions against spectacularising the sexual violence that takes place in non-Western places, without proper contextualis¬ation. I suggest that the inertia in local African churches and com¬munities against taking a stronger stand against the perpetrators of sexual violence, should be read against the global backdrop. This larger context contains, inter alia, western economic interests that contribute to destabilise African states, a globally dominant liberal legal order which in its turn also fails to address sexual violence, and African and western patriarchies that collude against women. Thus, if the influential African Christian Churches are to stand up against sexual violence against women, they face not only the likely resist¬ance of church leadership and local patriarchies, but on a higher level also the resistance of international economic and patriarchal powers covertly in cahoots with local male elites.
Author: Louise du Toit
References :
Baker, Aryn. 2016. “The Secret War Crime.” Time Magazine. http://time.com/war-and-rape/
Boulous Walker, Michelle. 1998. Philosophy and the Maternal Body: Reading Silence. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gqola, Pumla Dineo. 2015. Rape: A South African Nightmare. Auckland Park: Jacana.
Heberle, Renée J. 2009. “Rethinking the Social Contract: Masochism and Masculinist Violence.” In Theorizing Sexual Violence, edited by Renée J. Heberle and Victoria Grace, 125–146. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kroeger-Mappes, Joy. 1994. “The Ethic of Care vis-à-vis the Ethic of Rights: A Problem for Contemporary Moral Theory.” Hypatia 9(3): 108–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1994.tb00452.x
Le Roux, Elisabet. 2014. The Role of African Christian Churches in Dealing with Sexual Violence Against Women: The Case of the DRC, Rwanda and Liberia. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Stellenbosch University.
Mansfield, Nick. 2000. Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin.
Moffett, Helen. 2006. “ ‘These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them:’ Rape as a Narrative of Social Control in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 32(1): 129–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070500493845
Nedelsky, Jennifer. 2011. “Violence against Women: Challenges to the Liberal State and Relational Feminism.” In Law’s Relations: A Relational Theory of Self, Autonomy, and Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Noddings, Nel. 1989. Women and Evil. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Philipose, Elizabeth. 2009. “Feminism, International Law, and the Spectacular Violence of the ‘Other’: Decolonizing the Laws of War.” In Theorizing Sexual Violence, edited by Renée J. Heberle and Victoria Grace, 176–204. Abingdon: Routledge.
Rose, Jacqueline. 2014. Women in Dark Times. London: Bloomsbury.
Turshen, Meredeth. 2016. Gender and the Political Economy of Conflict in Africa: The Persistence of Violence. Abingdon: Routledge.
United States Department of Justice. 2013. Criminal Victimization in the United States. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv13.pdf
Westmarland, Nicole. 2014. “Not all messages about rape were welcome at Hague and Jolie’s sexual violence summit.” Durham University News. June 16. http://www.dur.ac.uk/news/allnews/thoughtleadership/?itemno=21476