[Fwd: violence against women]

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FriggaHaug@xxxxxxx wrote:
Dear Frigga, thank you for your informative post. I have a few comments,
which I'll set out here:

> Within the editorial group I am responsible for feminism, >women, gender etc.

But isn't that part of the problem? It seems to me your project is
replicating in its form the very difficulty you complain about!  Balibar
writes about 'violence," not discussing gender, then you come in with a
discussion of 'violence against women"--now conceptualized and
marginalized as something outside the framework of "violence" in
general. "Violence" is not gendered, only "violence against women." Once
again, a man ignores the issue, and a woman takes it up -- but in a way
that reifies its lack of connection to the main body of thought. It's
the whole story of women and marxism all over again!



> Now The problem of >violence against women<.  The term speaks on the level of
> a phenomenon which is there to an extent that we should deal with it in a
> liberatory perspective. But at the same time it is posed in a phrasing that
> it leads us to thinking of women as victims, men as actors

  What exactly is your problem with seeing it in this way? AREN"T women
the victims and men the perpetrators?  It sounds like you object to
"victim" as a word -- because to be a victim is shameful and implies
passivity.  But it needn't-- victims often take action on their own
behalf, and that is increasingly the case i think with sexual violence.
To call someone a victim is a way of saying it isn't their fault.

. On the other hand there will be an
> entry on >violence <. It will be written by Etienne Balibar and he will
> probably forget women altogether and with this that there is something more
> to understand. So my question is, how can we research >violence against
> women< without just presenting a list of all these different violations all
> over the world but understanding the structures, the shifting of problems,
> the language of sexual violence? The most convincing piece I have read is the
> small essay by the Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith , where she tries to
> connect the fact of domestic violence with the male breadwinner and his
> >right< to expect a good cared for house for his effort etc.

that's funny -- because the violence of certain groups of men -- blacks,
the poor, the unemployed-- against women is often "explained" by the
frustration of those men at not being able to fulfill the breadwinner
role. And the violence of men in two-earner couples is "explained" by
their being threatened by their wives' independence. Seems like men have
it every which way!

> Somehow we need an
> approach which ties the special violence against women to both capitalist as
> well as pre-capitalist modes of production, and then it should also allow to
> understand womens activities within this field.

 Where do you put the Soviet Union,China,cuba and other socialist (or,
according to some on this list, not so socialist) states in this schema?
All those countries have plenty of violence against women.

> And as a short answer to the first two answers not understanding and
> rejecting the term >victim-discourse< . I thought that every marxist would
> know, that this discourse of describung others as victims which have to be
> liberated by sombedoy else - poor people by noble acts of richer ones, third
> world countries by >help< of developed countries, women by men etc - was a
> way of liberal pity and thinking and not at all part of our winning agency.

But who says women are to be liberated from male violence by men?  I
can't think of any serious thinker or activist who takes this  view.
Feminists think that men should take responsibility for their
aggression, which men show not too many signs of doing,  and that women
should liberate themselves.  The legal changes that have benefited rape
victims and batttered women, the shelter movement, the anti-violence
education movement, Take back the Night marches, rape crisis centers,
moves to deny child custody to wife-beaters, moves to get doctors to
look for signs of abuse, etc -- these are all women-led struggles.

Looking forward to continuing this discussion,
Katha Pollitt