Dear all,
This week (from June 10 to 13) London is the venue for an international summit on sexual violence in conflict. It’s being co-hosted by the British foreign secretary along with the wonderfully gutsy actress Angelina Jolie, so no doubt it will generate a good deal of publicity.
Over the course of the summit, there will be not just formal meetings but also many free events open to the public which "will explore a broader range of issues related to sexual violence in conflict including conflict prevention, women’s rights and participation, men and boys, children affected by conflict, international justice and wider issues of violence against women and girls".
Sexual violence in conflict is pretty well documented as a weapon of war. It is used to humiliate and subjugate and, unfortunately, does not seem to be a practice that our 21st century ‘civilisation’ is outgrowing.
Although any vulnerable person can be the target of such violence, the fact that it is largely women who are the victims indicates that a basic level of misogyny remains built into even our modern psyche.
What I find extraordinarily disturbing is that misogyny seems to be increasing -- even though we like to think that generally the world has become a less sexist place. Education, financial independence and employment status are often cited as factors that will improve the status of women in society but what we see now is a backlash against this. Having women in positions of authority and power seems to be viewed by a large cadre of rather unpleasant men as a sort of aberration.
One recent and disturbing example was the venomous reactions to a British woman’s campaign to get a woman’s picture on the new British five pound notes. It doesn’t sound like too controversial or offensive a suggestion but after this the campaigner, blogger and journalist Caroline Criado-Perez, was subjected to the most horrible abuse on Twitter -- abuse which involved not just death threats but also disturbing and graphic threats of rape and sexual violence.
The vicious nature of that nasty campaign reveals the age-old male belief that women must always be subservient to men. It is what drives woman-hating internet trolls, who bully and threaten women they have never even met and, it is what allows males to kill their sisters, daughters and mothers merely because the women try to move away from male domination.
The case of the pregnant woman who was beaten to death outside Lahore High Court last month is a tragic illustration of a deep-rooted misogyny. She was killed by her father and other members of her family simply because she chose her husband and they took this to be an insult to the ‘family honour’.
In a strange twist to the whole story, it later came out that the husband had actually murdered his first wife, so in fact the husband’s attitude to women seemed not that much better than her murderous family’s.
Misogyny in society is evident all around us, often built into behaviours we sometimes do not even think to question. Rape and sexual insult remains the weapon of choice even outside of war. Rape is used to silence and humiliate, and the murder of daughters, sisters or mothers is something that men in Pakistan seem to be getting away with almost routinely.
This is the 21st century, but evidently we still have a very, very long way to go…
Best wishes