Transforming Vision: Explorations in Feminist Theology

5: Ties That Bind: Violence against Wo/men

97 5 Ties That Bind Violence against Wo/men1 Domestic violence2 is at the heart of patri-kyriarchal relations of oppression. Violence against wo/men and their children remains all-pervasive. It is not limited to one specific class, geographical area, or type of persons. Rather it cuts across social differences and status lines: white and black, rich and poor, Asian and European, Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon, urban and rural, religious and secular, professional and illiterate, heterosexual and lesbian, able-bodied and differently abled, young and old wo/men face daily violence in North America and across the world because they are wo/men. In a poem published almost forty years ago, the African American writer Ntozake Shange summed up this lifethreatening danger in which wo/men of all classes, races, religions, and cultures find themselves caught up daily: Every three minutes a woman is beaten, every five minutes a woman is raped every ten minutes a little girl is molested. Every day women’s bodies are found in alleys and bedrooms/at the top of the stairs . . .3 1. This is the published version of a talk given at the Intercontinental Women’s Dialogue on Violence against Women of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians in June 1995. It was published in Voices from the Third World 18/1 (1995), 122–67. 2. Ann Jones, Next Time She Will Be Dead (Boston: Beacon, 1993) problematizes the expression “domestic violence” as insinuating “domesticated violence.” However, I would argue that the concept of domestic violence underscores that the patri-kyriarchal household—the paradigm of society, religion, and state—produces, sustains, and legitimates violence against wo/men. 3. “With no immediate cause” in Ntozake Shange, Nappy Edges (New York: St. Martin’s, 1972). 98 | Transforming Vision In the intervening years feminist work has documented and analyzed the multifarious forms of violent attacks against wo/men just because they are wo/men.4 Such violence can take many forms and the list of abuse is endless: sexual and domestic abuse,5 child pornography, sexual harassment in schools and jobs, lesbian bashing, right-wing neo-Nazi terror against wo/men,6 eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalization, battered wo/men and children, incest, homelessness, poverty, intellectual colonization, spiritual exploitation, refusal of wo/men’s equal rights, HIV, impoverishment of widows and older wo/men, sexual abuse of the mentally ill, mistreatment of illegal aliens and imprisoned and disabled persons, emotional violence in all forms, cosmetic surgery, strip search and prison rape, sex clinics, forced sterilization, welfare harassment, surrogacy , incarceration of pregnant wo/men with substance abuse, witch burning, stranger rape, rape in marriage, acquaintance rape, food deprivation, serial murder , sadomasochism, soft and hard pornography, sexual objectification, psychiatric dehumanization, femicide. Despite the legislative Violence against Women Act and government offices to implement the law, wo/men still experience the same violence as twenty years ago when this essay first was written. For instance, in her February 2011 report, Susan B. Carbon, director of the governmental Office of Violence against Women, states: February marks the 2nd Annual Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month as dedicated by the U.S. Senate. Each year, approximately one in four teens reports being the victim of teen dating violence, ranging from physical abuse, to stalking, to emotional abuse to sexual violence. Women age 16 to 24 experience the highest rates of rape and sexual assault, and people age 18 and 19 experience the highest rates of stalking. One in five high school girls has been physically or sexually abused, not by a stranger but by a dating partner. This prevalence of teen dating violence is alarming and simply unacceptable.7 4. See J. Hammer and M. Maynard, eds., Women, Violence, and Social Control (London: Macmillan , 1987); Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz, and Roslyn McGullagh, Of Marriage and the Market : Victim’s Subordination in International Perspective (London: CSE, 1981); Roxana Carillo, Battered Dreams: Violence against Victims as an Obstacle to Development (New York: United Nations Development Fund for Victims, 1992); Margaret Schuler, ed., Freedom from Violence, Strategies from around the World (New York: United Nations Development Fund for Victims, 1992); Jessie Tellis Nayak, “Institutional Violence against Victims in Different Cultures,” In God’s Image 8 (September, 1989) 4-14. 5. Yvonne Yayori, ed., “Prostitution in Asia,” In God’s Image 9 (June, 1990); Elizabeth Bounds, “Sexuality and Economic Reality: A First and Third World Comparison,” In God’s Image 9 (December , 1990): 12-18; Mary Ann Millhone, “Prostitution in Bangkok and Chicago...