16 demands to end violence against women

Some time has passed since we marked 16 Days of Violence Against Women. Uncharacteristically articles are still appearing in the local media about the commemoration. In fact, this year the 16 Days of Violence Against Women commemorations obtained decent coverage in the local media and the coverage did not just end with the issue of violence against women (VAW), but also the related issues of HIV/AIDS, human rights violations, the rights of people with disabilities especially in the context of the killings of albinos; and gender-based violence (GBV) generally.

But does all this acknowledgement and hype comfort me or make me feel any more empowered? Sure it gives me heart that there is greater visibility of the issue at different levels but whether this translates into change in attitudes and political will to arrest violence against women is a different matter all together.

And it is not just about the reports of the countless women who are systematically raped in the Congo and in other contexts of civic strife. Nor is it about the unusually high rates of sexual assault suffered by women in South Africa that has come to typify the political, economic and social transition. Or about the obsessive regulation of women’s conduct through flogging or stoning in Somalia, the Sudan and northern Nigeria among others. The attack on women and women’s bodies is not just gruesome in nature but also covered in charm and luster as is evident in the myriad beauty pageants sold as the 21st century salvation for young women.

As a woman, assaults of a sexual nature have come to signify my daily existence, such that I often find myself bracing automatically when I walk in certain places, or when I greet certain people, because the risk of unwelcome touching or comment is great.

To be clear lest we make it a class issue, inappropriate sexual conduct is not something ‘uneducated men from the low classes’ engage in, it is the ultimate sophistication of the educated class who think that their social status privileges them to claim any woman they may fancy. It is also a tradition that successful people – be it in politics, business, academia and all the other prestigious professions – feel obliged to pursue, lest their ultimate credentials as virile men come into dispute.

My intention is not to make generalisations and put all men in one basket. However, my personal experience strongly suggests that something is amiss and needs to be fixed as the viciousness with which young men – and well-to-do men in particular – attack women is alarming. My fingers and toes are not enough to count the incidents that would amount to violence against women my five-foot frame has endured this year alone. Nor are they enough to account for all the incidents amounting to violence against women I have witnessed on the streets, on television and other media, at places of work and in learning institutions. To my chagrin, these incidents are largely ignored and in some cases justified as ‘normal’. In fact, society becomes angry when you object, protest or fight back.

I attended my first 16 Days of Violence Against Women commemoration in 1991, when I was a student at the university. A fellow student, Levina, had just committed suicide after some male students harassed her incessantly and the university authorities did not respond accordingly to help her end the abuse. It was also a time when I began volunteering for the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) Crisis Centre and I became acquainted with the phenomenon of spousal abuse and other types of domestic violence. Hence began a decade long process of activism against violence against women specifically, and later gender-based violence more generally, that culminated in the passage of the Sexual Offences (Special Provisions) Act in 1998 in Tanzania.

But almost two decades after the issue of violence against women and gender-based violence was bared and the legal framework reformed the situation has not changed nor improved. What angers me more is the extent to which violence against women and gender-based violence is being normalised in different spaces. Political speech, for example, is loaded with anti women-epithets and relegates religious leaders who are normally associated with anti women language to an amateurish level.

Also, new media – including the local sitcoms that are modelled after the ‘Nollywood’ genre of drama – are replete with sexist stereotypes. These productions are replayed in most local stations during prime time as well as in upcountry buses where the audience is glued to their seats and unable to escape its message. The music scene is not immune, with young local and foreign wannabe divas assuming poses that are clearly pinup style to impress a sexed-up audience, while young and old male performers re-enact their sexual fantasies in lyrics and performances that are but pornographic. If there is no grinding, it is not a hit. If there is no cleavage or naked hips, it is not chic. Our weak protests are silenced by claims of: ‘This is art!’

Perhaps one area in which I have felt increasing violated in the last year is dress. My body has been metamorphosing, necessitating new apparel. But to my horror, ‘comfort and fit’ is no longer what sells lingerie any more, but SEX appeal. All bras I touched came with a MUST cleavage and push up. ‘I am amply endowed,’ I complained, ‘give me something with firm support’. Store after store I searched, nothing. The specialty stores with something I thought comfortable wanted me to pay heavily for choosing to dress out of style. And even then, suffice to say, I have been suffering a lot from heart burn lately, as my breasts are squished together unnaturally and I find myself going braless more often that with one.

I don’t want to even begin with the pants in style. I was sickened when very recently I saw a prepubescent girl wearing the pants that the fashion world now compels consumers to buy hugging her young body in a vulgar, very obscene embrace. Indeed, the cut of these new pants for women are nothing but vulgar, emphasising the posterior and the crotch, sexualising all bodies 24 hours at a stretch. Consequently, in the past year I have seen more naked bottoms than I care to see. I have seen more skimpy underwear than I ever hope to wear. I have seen more waist flab than I care about. If this is not vulgar what is? Who told the fashion industry that women necessarily want their bodies exposed or made grotesque to be fashionable?

I wish to add another type of violence that although less visible is devastating in the brutality it unleashes against African women and women of colour. This violence concerns the messages conveyed about our human worth as women relative to others, messages parroted either in political speech, in development speak, in the global media, in common speech, in activist rhetoric, in global governance institutions and many more.

Indeed the face of poverty is of an African woman. The face of hunger is of an African woman. The face of illiteracy is of an African woman. The face of sexual brutality and deprivation is of an African woman. The face of dispossession is of an African woman. The face of conflict is of an African woman. The face of HIV/AIDS and other diseases is of an African woman. The face of sexual ambiguity and caricature is of African woman. The global obsession with sexuality is meted on the bodies of African women. Epithets such as ugly, ignorant, insolent, loud, filthy, passive, dumb, powerless, whore, victim and primitive are commonly associated with African women or women of colour. Rarely are we celebrated as survivors, despite strong odds. I find this assault on our integrity as a people, on our pride as women and on our confidence as a gender debilitating, an unwelcome legacy to bequeath our daughters (and sons).

Perhaps it is time for another message à la The Vagina Monologues. I will not attempt to be as artistic but I will try my best to convey that which I think is pertinent to raise alarm over this intolerable multi-dimensional culture of violence I experience as a woman. I make a series of demands, sixteen in all, for each day of the commemoration but really to underscore fundamentals in changing an ideology and deeply seated culture of VAW. And while I speak and write as an African woman from a particular region, background and persuasion, I have no doubt that women from other corners and contexts will strongly identify and possibly act on some of the demands.

My sixteen demands to end sexual impunity and violence against women and girls are as follows:

1. Of immediate effect, I demand all orifices to STOP taking the Vagina in vain. I do not want to hear the mark of my womanhood continuing to be the key reference of every verbal abuse; and foul and vile language on mother earth and the linguistic cultures that permeate it. How is the site of pleasure and life reviled so mercilessly? Perhaps we need to consider criminalising this indiscriminate taking the vagina in vain, urging instead that it be accorded well deserved respect!

2. My body is mine, every centimetre of it and no one else’s. I therefore don’t want to be touched or handled in an inappropriate manner or without my invitation or consent by people who may think that they are being macho, up to date, cute, charming or exercising misplaced chivalry.

3. I am an intelligent person with a healthy appetite for respectful and open conversation. I don’t need nor want to be addressed or spoken to in a vulgar/unflattering sexually explicit or suggestive manner/tone as if this is the only way I can heed to or respond to light conversation; or someone coming on to me.

4. I believe in the inherent equality of all people no matter their outer or inner differences. I strongly protest my sex being used by my country, my community and my family as a basis to continue to put me at a disadvantage, at risk or in a position of heightened vulnerability instead of my amplifying and affirming my humanity. Surely, in this age, we cannot continue to uphold discriminatory practices when we are governed by concepts of human rights that are universal!

5. I am a constitutional and national subject. Under what basis does my country refuse to recognize my full humanity and citizenship in awarding/providing/promoting and protecting constitutional and legal guarantees at par with male citizens? I demand the full recognition of my citizenship status and entitlements as a citizen of a free nation.

6. I am a human being endowed with an inherit dignity. I reject the continuing use of my body as a tool, a sex toy, a possession, a chattel or a commodity to be abused, played with, disposed of, exchanged or sold.

7. My unique physique confers me triple roles; production; reproduction and caring all in service of humanity. Yet my work continues to be unaccounted for, unrecognised, uncompensated and under valued in a context where equal pay for equal work universally governs private and public labour relations.

8. Human beings are male, female and fusions of the biological states. But in the minds and practice of media and market forces the female body exists to be commercialised. These institutions can only conceive the female body in its sexual function a practice that should be condemned for its pervasion.

9. I am rarely on the tables that dictate war or policy. But all too often my body is the ultimate weapon of war, an object of political or class reprisals, robed of its dignity… I demand for a reconfiguration of these skewed, sexist rules of war and the full force of international resolutions to come to bear against those who dare use of women as weapons of war.

10. My function as mother, consort, and bearer of the human race is sacred. But I continue to die or to suffer harm for fulfilling the most basic human function- human reproduction in the most despicable conditions. And my death at the service of humanity hardly attracts mention or notice in government quarters as does men who die in war or on soccer pitches. I demand what value is attached to my reproductive role?

11. Sexuality is experiencing sexual and reproductive health. Yet, science and its associated industries like lucrative pharmaceuticals continue to ignore my need to access safe, affordable, accessible reproductive health technologies and services. I demand to know where the morality in this is.

12. Single, married, divorced or widowed; young or old; rich or poor women face violence at all stages of their lives, in most cases resulting in death. But local and national responses to protect women from violence are absent, inadequate or unsuitable 30 years after CEDAW and almost 15 years after the Beijing Platform for Action. I demand to know if states across the world assume women are collateral damage in the power equation that defines gender relations.

13. Marriage is and should be a voluntary act between two people. It baffles me that my changed marital status should condemn only me, not my better half, to poverty and unspeakable indignities in violation of my rights to own, acquire, inherit and control property. I demand to know if marriage constitutes contemporary bondage.

14. I was born free, an autonomous being. But in life, my identity and status continues to be pegged on others – my father, my husband, my brother or my son/child – condemning me to a life of perpetual dependence. I want the state to declare am I not a free, sovereign being?

15. I am over half of humanity. However I remain invisible to the world, its rulers and institutions. The continued absence, invisibility, under representation and non participation of women, in both private and public life constitutes a violation of my/our right to exist, to be represented and to be heard.

16. My humanity bestows on me the capacity to dream, desire and do. Consistently, my hopes, dreams, needs and desires continue to be denied, delayed, derailed and denounced in favour of the priorities of others who are seen to be more important, more deserving, and perhaps more human. I reclaim my unimpeded right to dream, dare and demand for all that is natural, God given, constitutionally conferred and human.

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© Salma Maoulidi 2009
* Salma Maoulidi is a member of the Gender and Education Office of the International Council of Adult Education, member of Femnet a Pan African Women’s Advocacy Network and member of Sahiba Sisters Foundation, a community of women’s learners operating in 13 regions of Tanzania.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.