Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday LIfe in Ciudad Juárez

Chapter 2. Culture and Globalization: Male Backlash at the Border

culture and globalization: male backlash at the border Chapter 2 [E]very decrease in power is an open invitation to violence. —hannah arendt (1959, 87) Violence against women has touched most people in the world, through their own experiences or those of their mothers, daughters, sisters, and/ or friends. Violence against women occurs in many forms, from rape, sexual assault, and battering to psychological and verbal attacks including threats and intimidation. Sexual and other physical violence is now considered a crime in most civilized countries. In some countries, even verbal and psychological conflicts are legally actionable, but those forms of violence leave less evidence and make prosecution difficult. Conflict is the product of social learning, that is, failures in learning to interact with respect, responsibility , and accountability. Criminal violence is overwhelmingly male-on-female, while verbal conflict is equally shared, at least in the United States (Straus 1990). Violence against women has been magnified as a border problem due to the widespread international attention to the murders of girls and women in Ciudad Juárez. Consequently, attention to domestic violence and homicides resulting from it has been muted, although this terrifying but “normalized” part of everyday life is found not only in Juárez but around the world. Border social movements have framed and prioritized the hundreds of femicides, coupling numbers with grim and horrifying testimony from victims’ mothers about shockingly irresponsible police behavior. In so doing, activists initially missed the opportunity to stress the ordinariness of everyday violence against women and its victims and survivors. While analysts and activists are attentive to “opportunity structure,” they must also consider “missed opportunities” (Meyer, Whittier, and Robnett 2002, 17). In this book I do not miss the opportunity to link femicide and domestic violence. 30 violence and activism at the border Here I examine violence against women, grounding global and cultural perspectives at the border. In reviewing conceptual, definitional, and methodological issues in relevant studies, I analyze how violence against women has become so common as to call it “normalized” behavior in the Americas. A closer look at cultural studies then allows a better understanding of the contexts and symbols that perpetuate violence at the border. I tread into the cultural territory of gender power relations and the defensive, oppositional backlash generated among a minority of men who “perform” gender apart from legality and women’s discourse, neither of which legitimizes nor tolerates violence. Violence against women is a relic of male dominance, legitimized by government policy or government inaction until the latter part of the twentieth century. Government inaction represented policy, that is, a hands-off policy on violence within households. As Smithey and Straus starkly say (2003, 245), “the marriage license was a kind of implicit hitting license provided there was no serious injury” (also see Robles Ortega 2005). Yet even after domestic violence was criminalized, its practice has persisted on a massive scale. defining and measuring violence against women The World Health Organization (WHO) defines “intimate partner violence ” as behavior that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm to partners in a relationship; these behaviors include: Acts of physical aggression, such as slapping, hitting, kicking, and beating Psychological abuse, such as intimidation, constant belittling and humiliation Forced intercourse and other forms of sexual coercion Controlling behaviors such as isolating a person from family and friends, monitoring a person’s movements, and restricting a person’s access to information or assistance (WHO 2002, 89, my emphasis). Governments typically define physical and sexual violence as illegal, for such violence provides evidence that makes intervention actionable. I define and measure physical violence in this book’s analysis, including rape, beating, slapping, and other actions. Violence has multiple psychological consequences on its individual witnesses and survivors, such as depression, anxiety, fear, and apathy. The 1995 World Mental Health report linked broad societal upheaval culture and globalization 31 and debilitating poverty to increased alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, and violence against men, women, and children. In the context of chaotic modernization, rigorous economic restructuring, and political violence, a vicious circle emerges wherein “violence begets violence” (Cohen, Kleinman, and Desjarlais 1996, 13–15). Although weapons like knives are easily available, the widespread presence of firearms enlarges the threat of harm, especially in the United States, with easy access to guns. The former U.S. Surgeon General considered firearm access a public health problem of the late twentieth century, when more than half of homicides...