Judith Lewis Herman Quotes
... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.
Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books, 1992.
This proverb which actually has the force of de facto law in much of the Arab world, while detested by many sophisticated Westerners and Americans in particular, was actually a custom in America for many years. Under the principle, a rapist is not a rapist if he marries the girl. A seducer is not a seducer. In the Bedouin culture there is no difference between the rapist and the seducer. The reason that the practice is so hateful is that it assumes that when a woman is raped or seduced the damage is to the woman’s male relatives—to their honor. Therefore, the “crime” can be remedied by marrying the girl and satisfying the male relative’s sense of honor. Then no harm has been done, except of course to the woman who often becomes the double victim, first of the rape or seduction and then of a forced marriage. In modern America the honor of the male relatives has no standing in law, yet even today some judges and prosecutors will go easy on a statutory rapist or worse if he marries the girl and the girls family goes along with the arrangement. The term “shotgun wedding” stems from a time when family members would force the alternative on seducers.
Note that in pre-Muslim Arabia, a woman was not punished if she was raped as is currently done in some Muslim countries.
See {623723} & {623724} for the origin of the demonstrations. Women demonstrated for the right to be safe from sexual assault regardless of how particular men perceived they were dressing.
There are over 600.000 reported rape cases in South Africa each year. Since most rape goes unreported the real total is much larger, making South Africa the worst country in the world on a sexual violence scale. There are many reasons suggested for the South African extreme. However, since apartheid was overthrown, all ANC Governments had had a reluctance to have heavy police action for anything and there is a general reluctance to imprison people as this was what the apartheid regimes did. So all criminal activity is relatively high in South Africa.
Judith Lewis Herman (born 1942) is an American psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest and traumatic stress.
