Within the West, we are sometimes advised horrible tales about ladies within the World South nations being subjected to male violence after which punished afresh by “neighborhood leaders” and the courts.
Most feminists in Europe and the US, for instance, would know that premarital intercourse is criminalised in Saudi Arabia and that hospitals and well being centres are compelled to report the pregnancies of single ladies to police – together with these ensuing from rape. They might additionally find out about “honour killings” of ladies and women in nations like Albania and Kurdistan for breaking patriarchal guidelines, corresponding to having sexual relationships outdoors of marriage.
Some who decry such abuses and atrocities within the World South, nevertheless, seem to not bear in mind that the sort of sexist sufferer blaming shouldn’t be confined to the World South; it additionally occurs within the World North. So-called “honour killings” also occur within the UK, for instance, inside each conservative spiritual communities and secular ones.
I’ve lengthy been working to lift consciousness on this situation and forestall it occurring to ladies in my residence nation, the UK. In 1990, I co-founded Justice for Women in response to the cruel remedy meted out to ladies who defended themselves in opposition to rape or sexual violence – by the felony justice system, the media, and wider society. I had seen a number of circumstances of males killing their wives for spurious causes, and strolling free from courtroom. Excuses corresponding to “She nagged me”, or “I discovered her in mattress with one other man” have been accepted by judges and jurors as affordable grounds for males to “snap” and kill ladies. In the meantime, ladies who have been pushed to kill or maim their male companions after years of violence, usually in worry for his or her lives or these of their youngsters, have been handled as cold-blooded murderers and punished as such by British courts, focused by the media, and shunned by society.
We’ve undoubtedly made some progress in shedding gentle on the difficulty up to now three a long time, however the criminalisation of survivors of male violence within the UK, by the courts in addition to society at giant, is way from over.
In the present day, at the very least 57 % of ladies in jail within the UK are survivors of home abuse, and for a lot of of them, this abuse is immediately linked to the explanation for his or her incarceration (whereas, normally, their abusers stay free). The true quantity is probably going considerably increased as a result of many select to not disclose their sufferer standing, even when it may assist clarify the motivations behind the crimes they’re accused of. Regardless of this, felony justice companies not often acknowledge {that a} girl has been a sufferer of male violence, and deal with this as a mitigating issue, when prosecuting her for a associated offence (together with defending herself in opposition to the perpetrator).
Examples of such re-victimisation and criminalisation of survivors of male violence by British courts are throughout us.
A film by the UK-based Centre for Girls’s Justice (CWJ), titled Cease Criminalising Survivors, launched earlier this month tells the tales of 5 such ladies, convicted of offences starting from perverting the course of justice to homicide, all on account of the abuse they endured by the hands of a male companion. CWJ hopes the movie will assist educate felony justice companies and girls’s help companies on the explanations feminine victims of male violence find yourself in jail.
One of many ladies featured within the CWJ movie is Farieissia Martin who, aged 22 and with two young children, killed her extraordinarily violent companion, Kyle Farrell. Farrell had raped her repeatedly, and he or she had undergone a number of abortions consequently. Household and associates had commonly seen her face coated in bruises. The evening she killed him, he had given her one other beating, convincing Farieissia that if she didn’t do one thing, she was going to die at his arms. Getting access to all this data, and understanding nicely that she acted in self-defence, the courts nonetheless convicted her of homicide. Farieissia served seven years in jail earlier than efficiently interesting her conviction. The one purpose she was capable of overturn her conviction was that she was represented at attraction by feminist attorneys geared up with an in-depth understanding of the results of home violence.
Lately feminists are routinely blamed for exaggerating male violence, making ladies “petrified of males”, and inflicting them to restrict their lives by taking precautions. In the meantime, ladies are blamed for being raped (“she was consuming/flirting/carrying revealing clothes”) or struggling home abuse (“she wound him up/loved the drama”). Ladies are blamed, and shamed, for being abused into prostitution. This sufferer blaming, nonetheless prevalent in most societies, reaches its final type when ladies are punished and despatched to jail for being victimised or defending themselves in opposition to their abusers.
After we are blamed for what males do to us, we get a double dose of punishment – whereas our male abusers are handed free rein. This occurs routinely within the World South, but it surely occurs within the North too.
Lesbians in South Africa expertise horrors like “punishment rape” for daring to reject males, however so do ladies within the UK. It’s true that girls are killed in Iran for supposed missteps like talking to a person outdoors the household, however so do ladies within the UK – one girl is killed by a person recognized to her each three days in England and Wales.
Males’s violence in the direction of ladies and women is international, and wherever it happens, the blame is usually diverted onto the victims. It’s essential that we converse of the rapist greater than we do of the raped, and of the batterer somewhat than the battered. Let’s place the blame firmly on the responsible, and guarantee we by no means, ever, look to the actions of the victims in an try and justify such atrocities in opposition to ladies. Girls ought to by no means be criminalised and punished, wherever, for being subjected to male violence or defending themselves in opposition to it.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.