Women Against Violence Against Women

by Dusty Rhodes (Editor), Sandra McNeill (Editor)

Book by

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1985

Reviews

[fausto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best introduction to radical feminist analysis of male sexual violence.

The book have around 59 "conference papers" (that is, short -some very short- papers that show the politics of groups or individuals, and written for the purpose of a political conference), which came from three different radical [revolutionary] feminist conferences: "Sexual Violence Against Women Conference of 1980", "Male Power and the Sexual Abuse of Girls Conference of 1982" and "Women Against Violence Against Women Conference of 1981". Also have the three conference announcements, the three conference posters and one conference coverage by the radical feminist newspaper off our backs.
Besides the conference papers, WAVAW includes some excerpts from articles of Laura Lederer's 1980 anthology, "Take Back the Night: women on pornography"

The topics of the conference papers are very diverse (covers virtually all the forms of male sexual terrorism), for instance: pornography, prostitution, rape, marital rape, the sexual abuse of girls, critiques of heterosexual fantasies, incest, wife battering, sexual harassment, the social construction of sexual pleasure, S/M and feminist tactics of resistance (feminist marches, women's centers and self-defence groups).

Most of the papers are very insighful, and due its shortness are a very direct (they go to the point).

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually really liked this book. I thought it was an excellent collection of papers, very intense and upsetting to various degrees. The contributions were predominantly of short length, thus the content was concentrated and penetrating, but there were still enough contributions that I felt everything was covered thoroughly (280 pages). I also really liked the font and type-set, and the paper was of a nice texture (worn from age), flexibility (not stiff at all), and color (more yellow-tinted than white), plus the book smelled super good. I don’t base my enjoyment of books on these outward details, obviously, but, as a book fanatic, they definitely do maximize my enjoyment when present. I thought that the editors chose a super wide array of papers on the topic, and they were all very pertinent. I didn’t mark that many sections for quotation, even though I liked basically the entire book, but that was because most of the articles didn’t have sections that could be quoted in isolation – I would’ve had to quote entire essays. I would definitely recommend this book. However, it may be too intense for newcomers to second-wave feminist theory… The authors don’t pull their punches. It’s easier to gradually work your way up to books like this, or else your mind might automatically, indiscriminately reject what you’re reading without actually critically evaluating it. Should you disagree, you should be doing so not because of an automatic, unthinking, trained process, but because you have thought deeply about what you’re reading and have rejected the opinion presented by the author after intense scrutiny and examination. While I read this in the library, I kept making these utterly horrified expressions, especially in the second section focusing on sexual abuse of female children. And when one of the contributors was talking about infibulation, which, though it is a subject I am familiar with, never fails in provoking an emotional reaction in me. So, note that the entire book really does not provide a lighthearted read; a lot of gruesome and disturbing details are provided. But the coverage of the range of issues is amazing. And I think that the sparsity of length of the papers means that you’re not entrenched in any one topic for too long, so you’re less likely to have to take a break to pace yourself emotionally. That is basically it, anyway. Great book! I enjoyed it. As much as one can enjoy a book on such a topic…

Quotes:
“Rapes have been documented from very early times, but until the end of the 13th century, in Britain at any rate, they were not treated in law as crimes against women, but as violations of male property. In early Hebrew law virgins were sold into marriage by their fathers for 50 pieces of silver. A man who raped a virgin outside the walls of the city had to pay the bride-price to her father and they were commanded to marry. If, however, the rape took place within the walls of the city, both rapist and victim were stoned to death, the argument being that if the woman had screamed she would have been heard and rescued. Under Assyrian law, the father of a raped virgin was allowed in return to violate the rapist’s wife.

During the early Middle Ages in England, the rape of an heiress became a common method of men of power to extend their wealth and property. On the continent, meanwhile, a manorial lord had the right to take the virginity of the bride of any of his serfs (the jus primae noctis), unless the bride and groom paid a certain fee.” (26)

“The fact of rape itself reveals first that a certain number of activities are in fact forbidden to women: that a woman who is not ‘protected’ by a man (who doesn’t have a protector/pimp), cannot move freely. She cannot go to the cinema, for a walk, camping, hitch-hiking or out in the evenings without the ‘risk’ of being raped. Lesser sanctions against these independent acts by women are endless questioning, catcalls and demands that she justify being alone in these places by men who try to pick her up. These are the inquisitors, the cops, the wardens of the patriarchal system, who want us to be ‘protected’ and sanction us if we are not.

In theory and according to the letter of the law (with the exception of marriage laws) NOTHING is specifically forbidden to women. But in fact and in jurisprudence, society has a ‘risk of rape’ which increases with the woman’s independence of behaviour. That this risk has been socially established and measured is not accidental. It is part of the whole rewards and punishments which make up the system of control of women. This system ensures that women stay in their place in the patriarchal order. Violent sexual aggression represents the extreme on the continuum of punishments: the penal (physical and violent) sanction par excellence. Social control of women thus includes the threat of rape.” (36-7)

“In Britain the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was set up in 1974 to enable those who are sexually attracted to children to get in touch with each other for mutual support and to campaign for the legal and social acceptance of paedophilia. Not surprisingly, its membership has been compromised almost entirely of adult males (97%).

In a skillful tactic towards the end of the seventies PIE changed direction, and instead of campaigning for the right of adult men to have sex with children, it now campaigned for the right of children to have sex with them. This was to prove a shrewd move because it enabled PIE to present its case under a banner of children’s rights and accuse all those who opposed its aims of being anti-sex moralists out to control or crush childhood sexuality.

Much of the so-called ‘radical’ argument put forward in this country to legitimise adult males having sex with children is presented as though it sprang from a broad-based sexual politics movement encompassing the women’s movement, the gay movement and the left. As feminists, we reject this claim and insist that these issues be discussed and understood within the framework of a society where men have power over women and children.” (148)

Just like today's MAPs.

“The much used words ‘mother collusion’ suggest not only that mothers are involved in the sexual abuse but that they have an equal share of power within the family. In reality mothers have very little power. Professionals argue that they almost always know that the sexual abuse is going on (consciously or unconsciously – the mother can’t win), and she, not the abuser, is held responsible for not protecting the child and stopping it.

If mothers are told/know about the sexual abuse they have to decide where to intervene to stop it. They currently have to act alone, without support. They must face the prospect of bringing up children without a male wage and without the security of a man in a world where much social acceptance is attached to being in a heterosexual loyalty to her husband and her daughter. She may be afraid of his anger and violent abuse. There are many possible reasons for her inaction. The irony is that other family members and neighbours and professional workers may also know of the abuse and not act. We are not saying that it’s all right for mothers to know and not act, but as feminists and mothers we must work out ways to help mothers and children act to end sexual abuse.” (153-4)

“As with rape, the true nature of child abuse is clouded by myths. Offenders are stereotyped as psychotic, or mentally subnormal strangers who tempt children with offers of sweets and rides in cars. If they molest boys, they are stereotyped as homosexual, either unable to relate to adult males or recruiting young boys into homosexuality and probably as only abusing boys.

However, in the majority of reported offences the man is already known to the child (and as men have control over their children, no doubt many cases must also go unreported) and the myth which makes children wary and scared of strangers puts them more into the control of the authority figures, giving men more opportunity to abuse them. It also makes mothers more afraid for their children and in particular their daughters (although also their sons) who are more subject to abuse so keeping them more dependent for their protection on the men who are known to them. The men who sexually abuse children may be teachers, friends of the family or relations. In incestuous child abuse (including uncles etc. not legally included) one study by Susan Forward found that father/daughter abuse made up 75% of all reported cases, and she states that her colleagues’ estimates of the incidence of incestuous sexual abuse by fathers of girls of all families with daughters ranged from 7.5% to 40%.

The portrayal of men who sexually abuse children as insane, mentally sub-normal, or impaired by the use of drugs or alcohol is also unsubstantiated. In fact, according to case studies by Ann Burgess et al., less than 5% showed evidence of psychotic illness except in as far as the abuse itself is seen as symptomatic. But then to say that sexual abusers are psychotic because they sexually abuse says nothing. There is no evidence that I have encountered that shows that offenders are likely to be impaired by either drugs or alcohol.

Girls are much more likely to be molested than boys. According to Brownmiller they are 10 times more likely to be molested. Burgess et al. suggest the difference is smaller; nevertheless it is still large.” (165-6)

“The fact that men who molest boys may also molest girls and are likely to be heterosexual suggests that such a man is unlikely to be acting purely for sexual gratification of his sexual desires. It seems likely that he would be specific as to the sex of the child if this was so. It seems to me that he is trying to assert his authority over the child and demonstrate that the child is under his control. While a girl is most likely to be abused by also being a woman whom he feels he has the right to control, a boy is someone he also feels he has rights over. This is shown by the attitude of offenders who have molested boys. They often describe the child as sexually passive and are frequently horrified by the idea of adult homosexuality, or the idea that their behaviour could in any way be considered as such. Their intentions are the control and suppression of those weaker than themselves by coercion and physical violence if necessary.

Where the offender is living in the child’s home or is a relative, she has no escape, nowhere to run to, and the very people whom she would normally turn to for help are either the perpetrator or related to him so that she is afraid to accuse him. So she is trapped in a web of continuing horror with no escape.

Where the offender is the child’s father, he may consider her his sexual property, a view which is only an extension of the traditional view that a daughter’s virginity was her father’s property until he ‘gave her away’ when she married and so any loss of virginity of hers was an offence against him. Presumably if he wishes to take her virginity himself by raping her, this is only an extension of his rights. He just may not be able to get such a good husband for her later.” (168)

“Child pornography is very big business. According to researchers and reporters, child models are not difficult to recruit: many magazine publishers and film producers use their own children; others advertise to parents. A recent advertisement in Al Goldstein’s magazine SCREW offered $200 for young girl-child models. It brought dozens of response from parents with female children. A writer who followed up the ad reports:

Some parents appeared in the movie with their children; others merely allowed their children to have sex. One little girl, age 11, who ran crying from the bedroom after being told to have sex with a man of 40 protested, ‘Mommy, I can’t do it’. ‘You have to do it,’ her mother answered. ‘We need the money’. And of course the little girl did.

The last two years have brought much attention to the growing problem of child pornography, and fairly quick action has been taken by legislatures in our country. But while protecting our children is an important part of the feminist battle against pornography, educational and legal activity should not stop there. It is easier for us to become enraged by what is happening to young children than by what happens to grown women. We forget that young girls grow up to be women. About the time they reach the age of consent, what protection there is stops and the legalised exploitation starts again.” (170)

“Of the $2.5 million porn industry, about $1 billion is from kiddy porn.” (177)

“I suggest that the whole ideology of sexual liberation can be to a large extent to [sic] be seen as a backlash against women's resistance and the feminist challenge to the form taken by male sexuality. Most of the early sex reformers completely accepted Ellis's theory that male sexuality is biologically based on the urge to dominate, and female sexuality on the urge to resist in order to be conquered; that the sex drive in women and men is spontaneous (= uncontrollable); and that the link between sexual pleasure, pain and violence is harmless and inevitable. The effect was not only to justify male sexuality as the control of women, but to undermine woman's resistance and the feminist challenge by conscripting women into heterosexuality and training them to enjoy being fucked, and to experience their sexual colonization as ‘sexual pleasure’.” (222)