Defining justice when the law is unjust: How gender imbalance affects women around the world

[redqueen]

Justice is supposed to confer equality, impartiality, protection for victims, and punishment for perpetrators. Yet as recently as the 1970s, spousal rape was not considered a criminal offense in some U.S. states. In fact, North Carolina law stated—until 1993—that “a person may not be prosecuted under this article if the victim is the person's legal spouse at the time of the commission of the alleged rape or sexual offense unless the parties are living separate and apart,” according to the Washington-based National Center on Violent Crime.

That marital rape still remains legal in many countries is just one marker of the way in which the law protects perpetrators of sexualized violence globally, and perhaps particularly in countrieswhere rape has been a significant feature of conflict.

We found legislation that seems to contravene the very principles on which the notion of “justice” is founded in the laws of many countries marked by sexualized violence. So what does justice mean when legal systems seem to enshrine the rights of perpetrators to commit abhorrent acts, while prescribing punishment for victims instead? How can justice be served when gender imbalance in the law is reinforced by impunity on the ground? What does justice mean then?

Justice should mean protection for victims. But in Sudan, where thousands of women have been raped since conflict erupted in 2003 and pregnancy is illegal, being the victim of a crime can result in punishment. According to a 2005 Doctors Without Borders report, many rape survivors have consequently been beaten, imprisoned, and forced to paya fine upon becoming pregnant “illegally.” One 16-year-old girl interviewed for the report recounted how the police forced her to go to their station at gunpoint. Despite explaining that her pregnancy was the result of rape, she says, “They told me that as I was not married I will deliver this baby illegally. They beat me with a whip on the chest and back and put me in jail. There were other women in jail, who had the same story.” Beyond such crude punishment for victimhood, those who choose to testify against their rapists are often threatened to the point of backing down from prosecution.

http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/defining-justice-when-the-law-is-unjust-how-gender-imbalance-affects-women

More at link.

[libinnyandia]

1. Why do so many men, everywhere in this world, hate women so much?

[redqueen]

2. The patriarchy defines women as objects.

Things. Possessions.

When someone expects to be able to control a thing and the thing doesn't respond in the expected way, frustration, anger and resentment are common reactions.

[Tumbulu]

3. My favorite theory is that are jealous of the power to create new human life,

a power that only women have. Notice how The Goddesses became gods and goddesses and then turned into one angry God over the course of a few thousand years? And it went from women producing children to men planting seeds within a woman's body, which now became synonymous with a fertile field.

Jealousy and wanting to control the life generating forces.