Have you noticed that when wars between men and their ideologies devastate a country, the incidents of rape of women skyrocket? Women all over the world since ancient times are targeted during times of war by the men on both sides of the conflict. This was true even in biblical times, WWII, and more recently in Serbia, Bosnia, Kuwait, Indonesia, Rwanda, the Congo, Sudan, South Africa, etc. What is it about women and girls that makes sexual violence against them so enticing almost to the point of normalcy during times of war?
In times of war, more than at any other time, the woman is objectified and placed on a pedestal. Actually, it is her honor, chastity, and purity that becomes immeasurably important. For a people who feel that they are at risk of losing their traditions and values, the burden of maintaining, even to an extreme, the values of the community is placed on the woman. On the other hand, the women who refuse to “toe the line” are also objectified but not into the virgin-saint category; these women are placed into the bitch-whore box in which they are less than human and their bodies are used only for the satisfaction of men and their impotence and rage.
Powerless men prey on women, and since the sense of powerlessness increases during times of war (especially for the occupied), women will be victimized more inside and outside of the home by the men in their lives and by complete strangers. Also, the men waging the war may feel powerful, but their hunger for more power surely urges them to use rape as a tool of war, especially because rape has been used as a tool of psychological warfare for so long. When the occupier/soldier rapes a local woman, he is doing so as a way to inflict damage on both the local women and the men. Violence against one woman is violence against all women, and the relationship between man and woman causes the males in the society to feel a deeper level of powerlessness when they have to “endure” the rape of “their” women.
My question for us in the U.S is this: Since we are not being occupied and we are not at war her at home, why does our country have such a high rate of rape and other violence against women?
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey and the RAINN statistics, 1 in 6 women will be raped (or attempted) during her lifetime and a woman is raped (or attempted) every 2 minutes in the U.S. EVERY 2 MINUTES!
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