Custom Research on Human Rights and Conflict

Social Conflict

Human conflict has been around since prehistoric times, and different ways of understanding the connections between different conflicts has evolved as a topic around philosophical, religious, and scientific definitions in different types of societies. War has been a constant in many societies, and since the past few hundred years of history have been generally dominated by warring patriarchal societies and religions, ideas of the place of women in society is interwoven with ideas in the culture about violence, warfare, and rape. Rape and violence against women in war is supported in patriarchal military and political power structures, and in the societies in which these power structures operate, violence that exists in the home against women is often extended to the idea of the enemy civilian as domestic violence victim. From this perspective, the idea of violence against women in war can be seen as an extension of domestic violence; however, it is also important to consider other variables that lead to aggression, abuse, and domestic violence.

If war in patriarchal societies can be seen as a reflection of domestic values, the domestic values regarding violence against women in civilian populations can be extended to the rape and violence perpetrated against women both within and by the military. "Violence against women is a byproduct of war in that women are civilians (in most conflicts). Yet I believe women are casualties also because they have been forced into vulnerable, inferior positions in much of the world and throughout history" (Rape, 2014). When one considers this above quotation, it is difficult not to see how domestic violence against women in civilian populations can be conflated to violence against women in war. Patriarchal codes of meaning determine how people are indoctrinated into the military, and violence against women is often a strong subtext in this indoctrination process. It is not as if the military goes about training its recruits with the deliberate intent to order soldiers to rape enemy civilians, but it enters the patriarchal rituals as a subtext of the continuation of domestic violence at home. If the society that is reflected in its military has problems with domestic violence, it makes sense that the military indoctrination procedures in that society would also have a problem with perpetrating this type of violence.

Of course, not all armies and situations are the same, even though most of the cultures that have existed in the past few centuries of history, as mentioned above, have tended to be patriarchal, and the main four religions of these times, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, were all basically patriarchal in nature and setup, with the dominant gods being males. "The frequency of rape of civilians and other forms of sexual violence varies dramatically across conflicts, armed groups within conflict, and units within armed groups. The form of sexual violence also varies, including rape of women and girls and also of men and boys" (Wood, 2009). There are many forms of violence that differ from case to case, and there are also undercurrents of verbal and emotional abuse that accompany the violence as it extends from the patriarchal society to its military, and gets into its military indoctrination programs in a subtext of violence against women.

One of the causes of violence against women in war being an extension of domestic violence is how the state trains its soldiers, and what it teaches them about male roles, female roles, and sexualized violence. One does not have to have been in the military to know how when US soldiers are taught to march in cadence, many of the chants that they use contain violent and abusive jokes about women and genitalia, and that when one is of a low rank in the military, superiors, especially drill sergeants, are expected to belittle recruits by calling them homosexuals, or calling them women's names to shame them. Joshua Goldstein argues that "the practices of militarized masculinity account for the specifically sexual violence against enemy civilians (and combatants), but such practices are too widespread to account for the observed variation in sexual violence" (Wood, 2009). In this way, the rituals that exist in the military for indoctrination purposes can be linked to their impetus in society as rituals of domestic violence.

There are many victims of domestic violence as well as violence against women in war. It is important to remember that in the case of sexual violence perpetrated against girls in the home, as well as girls by soldiers, there is a higher likelihood that the girl will die of her injuries when a male is the perpetrator of abuse. "Data gleaned by PCADV from newspaper clippings in 1990 reveal that every three days a woman or child is killed in the state by a batterer/father (Yupcavage, 1991)" (Hart, 1992). Since women and children are most often the victims of abuse, rituals of domestic violence that then go through to the military indoctrination programs tend to focus on them. Many thinkers have found a statistical link between child welfare and domestic violence that is also something to consider in its attribution to violence against women and girls by the military. For example, in the early 1980s Lenore Walker "observed the link between domestic violence and child abuse. In interviews with 400 battered women, Walker found that 53% of the fathers and 28% of the mothers abused their children (1984, p. 59)" (Schechter and Edleson, 1994). An atmosphere of violence, according to these statistics, tends to perpetuate itself as it extends from the domestic society's rituals of oppression of women and girls, to military rituals.

Issues of domestic violence and rape against women in civilian and military capacities are mixed up with issues of women's human rights in society, and women's status as a minority in patriarchal cultures. Women are often ignored in human rights situations, because, from perspectives like that of MacKinnon, they are viewed differently by the media and in fact entire societies, in terms of what they are expected to suffer and how their suffering is viewed in the context of war and the domestic society. "When women are violated like men who are otherwise like them -- when women's arms and legs are cut and bleed like the arms and legs of men... these atrocities are not marked in the history of violations of women's human rights. The women are counted as Argentinian or Honduran or Jewish" (MacKinnon, 2014). From this type of perspective, the eyes of society look through lenses of gender role expectations which go so far as to determine what these roles are in times of atrocity and crime, such as torture, beating, or murder. This statement goes back to the argument about statistics tending to be faceless, whether they are about men or women.

There are other perspectives on why people develop violent and aggressive tendencies that are not as grounded in feminist or patriarchal critique, but seek to look at how exactly societies condition aggression. To the extent that different types of inhuman and cruel behaviors have different causes and different trajectories in different contexts, t "the use of aggregate outcomes prevents the identification of these mechanisms and specific developmental trajectories and also prevents the identification of effective treatment and prevention programs" (Romano, 2005). Despite these challenges, however, it may be that aggression and a predisposition towards violence is the result of a child or toddler not having a worldview that is pro-social in nature, and which would seek to end rather than instigate conflict. "Characteristics of children that have been associated with physical aggression and prosocial behavior range from age and sex to physical, emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions" (Romano, 2005). There are many possible reasons for violence and anti-female behavior in society, particularly if the society's power structures are male-dominated.

The role of women during conflict also changes, which adds another extraneous variable into the mix. For example, during times of revolution in society, women tend to take up the mantle of warfare in a way that shows them to be the instigators of violence rather than its victims. However, even during these times, there is a double standard that exists, and will exist when the swing of post-revolution society gets back to its (usually) patriarchal roots. "The universalism of human rights brandished during the French revolution was slowly superseded by a nationalist reaction incubated during Napoleon's conquests, just as the internationalist hopes of socialist human rights advocates were drowned in a tidal wave of nationalism at the onset of World War I" (Ishay, 2008). After the turn of the twenty-first century, there are some of these ideas that still pertain today. There are still many mainstream cultures that are patriarchal in nature, and define the man's role as a point of tension-poised, dominant breadwinner; women in these societies are often demeaned it their rituals, both civilian and military. In addition, women are still being assessed by a standard of passive domesticity to a large extent, though not as much so as in the past. We are no longer living in the Victorian era, but there are still strong vestiges of colonialism in many areas that also bring about changes in the way societies view females in the context of their respective rituals of repression.

REFERENCES

Gottschall, J. Explaining Wartime Rape. The Journal of Sex Research

Hart, Barbara J. Domestic Violence: Risks and Remedies. Child Protective Services Quarterly.

Schechter, Susan, and Jeffrey L. Edleson (1994). In the Best Interest of Women and Children: A Call for Collaboration Between Child Welfare and Domestic Violence Constituencies. MINCAVA.

Ishay, Micheline (2008) The History of Human Rights

MacKinnon, C (2014). Rape, genocide and women's human rights. in Hayden, Patrick (2001): The Philosophy of Human Rights

Romano, E. (2005). Multilevel correlates of childhood physical aggression and prosocial behavior. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

Wood, E (2009); 37; 131 Armed groups and sexual violence. Politics and Society

Rape in war (2014).