Survivors of sexual abuse are frequently met with cultures of silence which make it difficult for their experiences to be acknowledged. Furthermore, many have been subjected to threats and intimidation in efforts to ensure that they remain silent about what has happened to them. One response to such experiences is to keep oneself busy and avoid ever being quiet enough to experience a sense of silence within. However, many spiritual traditions promote the embracing of silence as essential for those seeking (...) spiritual development. This paper explores these diverse experiences of silence for survivors of sexual abuse and considers why spiritualities which promote silence can be problematic. (shrink)

This chapter examines sexual assault from the point of view of a survivor, indicating that its consequences extend beyond the emotional or physical. Philosophical issues are raised by this experience, such as its effects on personal identity, notions of “harm“Notions of "harm", the role of denial, victim blaming, as well as its political implications for gender equality. Given the significance of these concerns and the extent of sexual assaults, it is imperative the harms of violence against women be taken more (...) seriously by philosophers. (shrink)

This article argues that the specifically sexual nature of the political violence of the 1947 Partition of British India installs women's bodies as unambiguously sexed and ethnic. Through an analysis of Kirti Jain's 2001 theatre production of Aur Kitne Tukde (How Many Fragments?), I consider how Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs appropriate colonialist and nationalist ideologies surrounding the notion of ‘woman’ as repository of cultural value. The women in Jain's play are not a priori subjects who experience violence but rather the (...) experience of violence makes (and unmakes) them as gendered, ethnic and national subjects. I argue that they come into subjecthood after a violent objectification and are re-constituted by their experience of national and sexual violence. The performance of nationalism – through embodied acts of sexual violence, conversion, martyrdom and state violence – is enacted upon female bodies that are transformed into political artefacts. I ask how bodies are staged and commodified by acts of political violence and argue that marking female bodies through acts of political violence constitutes a mode of transcription to communicate with other men that will encounter this body. (shrink)

There has been much academic work outlining the complex links between women and the nation. Women provide legitimacy to the political projects of the nation in particular social and historical contexts. This article focuses on the gendered symbolization of the nation through the rhetoric of the ‘motherland’ and the manipulation of this rhetoric in the context of national struggle in Bangladesh. I show the ways in which the visual representation of this ‘motherland’ as fertile countryside, and its idealization primarily through (...) rural landscapes has enabled a crystallization of essentialist gender roles for women. This article is particularly interested in how these images had to be reconciled with the subjectivities of women raped during the Bangladesh Liberation War (Muktijuddho) and the role of the aestheticizing sensibilities of Bangladesh's middle class in that process. (shrink)

Islam is a religion of vast dimensions which has inspired great civilizations and today offers many men and women comfort and ethical guidance. In this paper I suggest that the tension between the Qur'an accepted as the perfect timeless word of God and the encultured dynamic Islam of nearly a quarter of the world's population results in contending perspectives of women's role and rights. The Qur'an gives men and women spiritual parity, but there are verses in the Qur'an that some (...) feminists find difficult to reconcile with the modern rights of women. Most Islamic feminists make a clear distinction between cultural practices and the pure word of God. 1 There are profound differences in the status of women within and between predominantly Muslim countries. In some countries it is illegal for women to drive a car, or to move freely outside the home, in others women have become heads of state. The decision to wear the veil, often a sign of empowerment in Europe, is in parts of the Islamic world obligatory. Voices representing an exclusivist, literalist understanding of Islam have entered the mainstream of Muslim lives due in part to the fact that Wahhabism imposes a narrow, sectarian view of Islam, and the Saudi government with its massive oil wealth propagates this puritanical form of Islam across the world. Some traditionalist maulanas and maulvis are concerned above all with women's modesty and enforce customs that refine, purify and protect their chastity. They, like some Islamic feminists, position Islamic rights and roles for women with regard to the exoticized and eroticized `other' — in this case Western civilization, Western imperialism and the rise of Western feminism. `The West' becomes for traditional interpreters a kind of contemporary jahilya. There are also many progressive Muslim scholars who seek to articulate a historically accurate, non-idealized, now challenged, now challenging, view of Islam with an uncompromising emphasis on social justice, equality and pluralism. This paper argues that the ongoing, postcolonial battle against Western `imperialism' demands epistemological humility. Nevertheless, women are fighting for basic human rights and freedoms in parts of the Islamic world where the State, religious authorities and the patriarchal family assume the right of legal and moral surveillance. In considering the nature of violence to Muslim women in Pakistan and the UK, I hope to show that accusations of orientalism should not deter us from recognizing the courage of women activists who themselves risk imprisonment and of the struggle of women victims of rape and domestic violence to overcome feelings of shame and dishonour. I argue that both the private and public spheres need to be made safe for all Muslim women, and not just a professional elite. This can only be achieved by a fuller recognition of women's rights encapsulated in law and all aspects of public life. (shrink)

The article argues that the prohibition of abortion in Chile, other than when the mother's life is in danger, is a form of human rights violation targeting women specifically. The Pro-Birth Policy was established in Pinochet's Chile as a response to the previous government's attempts, under Allende, to encourage family planning and to educate and inform women about their choices. This had been done to put an end to the increase in back-street abortions with the inevitable toll on women's lives. (...) Pinochet's regime reversed these women-oriented family planning policies, and criminalized abortion, on the basis of costs to the state and, more importantly, the need to increase the birth rate for reasons of national security. Women's bodies were used by the Pinochet regime, both by sexual violence and torture, and by the denial of women's reproductive and sexual rights, as a means to impose discipline and order on society. The fact that this is still not acknowledged in the construction of a collective memory indicates that the issue has not yet been resolved in democratic Chile. (shrink)