Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives - Chapter 6 Notes

Violence Against Women

Finding Out More on the Web

• Research the use of the web to support beliefs about violence against women.
• Research U.S. and international organizations working to end violence against women, including their goals, strategies, activities, and theoretical frameworks.
  • Green Dot: www.livethegreendot.com
  • Madre: www.madre.org
  • Men Can Stop Rape: www.mencanstoprape.org
  • National Organization for Men Against Sexism: www.nomas.org
  • Women Against Violence Europe: www.wave-network.org/start.asp?ID=22650
  • Women Living Under Muslim Laws: www.wluml.org/english/index.shtml

Taking Action

• Discuss the issue with peers and contribute to public discussion.
  • Inquire about college policies on sexual assault and their enforcement.
  • Identify local rape crisis centers, shelters, and support groups to provide information to those coping with sexual assault.
• Volunteer with a rape crisis project or a shelter for victims of domestic violence.
  • Men students: collaborate with other men on this issue.
• Support campus or community events focused on violence against women.

Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (1999) by Andy Smith

• Andrea (Andy) Smith is a scholar, writer, and activist, cofounder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.
• The silence surrounding sexual violence in Native communities, particularly the sexual assault of adult women, is pervasive.
• Despite the pouring of millions of dollars into tribally based domestic violence programs, virtually no tribes have developed comprehensive sexual assault programs.
• Native survivors often find no support or are told to disassociate from their communities.
• The white-dominated anti-rape movement's notion that rape is a tool of patriarchal control fails to consider its role in racism and colonialism.
• When Native survivors seek healing within their communities, they are sometimes accused of undermining Native sovereignty.
• A major difficulty in developing sexual assault programs is the belief that sexual violence is "traditional".
• Historical evidence suggests sexual violence was rare in Native communities before colonization and has been a weapon in the U.S. war against Native nations.
• Sexual violence is an attack on Native sovereignty itself.

The Colonial Context of Sexual Violence

• Ann Stoler argues racism is a permanent part of the social fabric and a tactic in the internal fission of society.
• Racism is internal to the biopolitical state.
• Kate Shanley notes that Native peoples are a permanent "present absence" in the U.S. colonial imagination, reinforcing the conviction that they are vanishing and conquest is justified.
• This "absence" is effected through the metaphorical transformation of Native bodies into a pollution.
• Examples of viewing Native people as dirty and sexually sinful in the colonial imagination are provided through historical accounts and advertisements.
• Because Indian bodies are considered "dirty," they are sexually violable.
• The history of mutilation of Indian bodies illustrates the lack of bodily integrity afforded to Indian people.
• Examples of mutilation include President Andrew Jackson ordering the mutilation of Muscogee Indian corpses, Tecumseh's skin being flayed, and soldiers mutilating victims of the Sand Creek Massacre.
• Colonizers attempted to eradicate Indian identity and humanity, transforming them into objects for white consumption.
• The elimination of "degenerates" and "abnormals" strengthens the lives of those who speak.
• Native women pose a supreme threat to the imperial order.
• Historical examples of sexual violence against Native women are provided from various sources.

Colonization of Native Women's Bodies Continues

• Instances of continued subjugation, harassment, and violence against Native women's bodies are described, including a sign saying "Save a fish; spear a pregnant squaw" and the Mohawk crisis in Oka.
• The video game "Custer's Revenge" is cited as an example of the colonial desire to subjugate Indian women's bodies.
• Colonizers argued they were freeing Native women from "oppression".
• Prior to colonization, Indian societies were not male-dominated for the most part; women served as spiritual, political, and military leaders.
• Historical accounts suggest that the real roots of feminism should be found in Native societies.
• Just as colonizers claimed Indian men were the real rapists, white men often make this claim today.
• Native men do commit acts of sexual violence due to the internalization of violence from colonialism and boarding-school experiences.
• The U.S. is engaged in a "permanent social war" against Native bodies, particularly Native women's bodies, which threaten its legitimacy.
• Colonization and abuse of bodies lead to internalized self-hatred.
• When the bodies of Indian people are inherently sinful and dirty, it becomes a sin just to be Indian.
• Native peoples are portrayed by the dominant culture as inherently violent, self-destructive, and dysfunctional.
• Completing the destruction of a people involves the destruction of the integrity of their culture and spirituality.
• A strong cultural and spiritual identity is essential for Native people to heal from abuse.
• Native women's healing entails healing from the history of abuse against her family, her nation, and the environment.
• Indigenous spiritual traditions can restore survivors to the community and their bodies to wholeness.
• Effective programs for healing revolve around reviving indigenous spiritual traditions.
• Christianity, the colonizing religion, has made Native women more vulnerable to sexual violence.
• The Christian boarding-school system, which began in the 1600s, subjected children to constant physical and sexual abuse.
• Abuse became endemic in Indian families after the establishment of boarding schools.

Anti-Colonial Responses to Sexual Violence

• The struggle for Native sovereignty and the struggle against sexual violence cannot be separated.
• Conceptualizing sexual violence as a tool of genocide and colonialism leads to specific strategies for combating it.
• Relying on the state to solve problems it created is a contradiction.
• Native people are the most arrested, incarcerated, and victimized by police brutality of any ethnic group.
• Communities are developing their own programs for addressing criminal behavior based on traditional ways of regulating their societies.
• Native domestic violence advocates are often reluctant to pursue traditional alternatives to incarceration.
• Survivors are often pressured to "forgive and forget" in tribal mediation programs.
• Traditional approaches are often successful in addressing child sexual abuse.
• The community makes a pro-active effort in holding perpetrators accountable.
• Everyone affected by the crime is involved in developing the healing contract and holding the perpetrator to it.
• Elizabeth Barker notes that the criminal justice system diverts accountability from the community.
• The threat of jail places the community more at risk.
• Traditional methods of justice are insufficient and must be backed up by the threat of incarceration.
• Medicine men have come to programs saying they have not been successful in changing offenders and they need to join batterers' programs.
• Traditional approaches to justice presume the community will hold a perpetrator accountable, but in cases of violence against adult women, they often do not.
• Community education programs are needed to change attitudes about these issues.
• Traditional alternatives to incarceration might be more harsh than incarceration, including banishment, shaming, reparations, and sometimes death.
• Memories of traditional penal systems are tainted with the experience of being in boarding school.
• If a Native man rapes someone, he subscribes to white values and should suffer the white way of punishment.
• Difficulties in pursuing incarceration include few rapes being reported and the criminal justice system rarely having the opportunity to address the problem.
• Rape cases are generally handed to the State's Attorney, who then declines the vast majority of cases.
• Many tribes have not developed codes to address rape because the "Feds will take care of rape cases."
• There is inadequate jail space in many tribal communities.
• Incarceration has been largely ineffective in reducing crime rates.
• Most men are implicated in our rape culture.
• Relying upon the criminal justice system to end violence against women may strengthen the colonial apparatus in tribal communities.
• Sexual violence is a fundamental attack on Indian sovereignty.
• Both Native and non-Native communities are challenged to develop programs that address sexual violence from an anti-colonial, anti-racist framework.
• Nothing less than a holistic approach towards eradicating sexual violence can be successful.

Radical Pleasure (1998) - Aurora Levins Morales

Sex and the End of Victimhood

• Aurora Levins Morales is a feminist writer and historian who identifies as Puerto Rican and Jewish.
• She writes and creates visual art about sustainability, community, and connectedness.
• She was sexually abused and tortured as a child.
• Her abusers manipulated her to break down her sense of integrity.
• They interfered with her sexuality as a method of accomplishing this.
• We are vulnerable in our pleasures and desires.
• The abusers induced physical pleasure in her against her will, which allowed them to shame her and persuade her that her sexuality was untrustworthy and belonged to others.
• Her sexuality has stuttered ever since, flaring and subsiding in ways she has not known how to manage.
• This place of wounded eroticism is honored in survivor culture.
• The unsteady rhythms of fascination and disgust, obsession and revulsion through which we experience sex is evidence of what we know to be true.
• It is important to reclaim sex because it is part of aliveness.
• As survivors, we have an obligation to think about the healing of the perpetrators, who are, after all, our kin—victims who survived in body but were unable to remain spiritually intact.
• We pay a high price when we settle for being wronged.
• Victimhood absolves us from responsibilities.