Righteous outrage against violence against women

I have followed your righteous outrage against the violence being perpetrated against women - see in Pambazuka News. I almost reacted the first time around. It was after the news on what happened to the women of Panzi.

I entirely agree with your outrage. However for this outrage to become effective, there are a few things which need to be addressed by trying to step beyond the usual frames of prevailing historical narratives. I cannot address all of them here. At one point you ask where did we go wrong? Your focus in the reply to that question is on the UN and its institutions. And then you add, again quite rightly, that for things to change, the UN and all of its institutions must take sexual violence more seriously.

My sense is that one keeps interrogating history only up to a point, especially, but not only, when it comes to African history and the histories of women and children. The violence suffered by women has NEVER been taken seriously, by this I mean in a way which could/should have led to a complete and total change of the dominant mindset. The currently dominant mindset says simply that the best way to run an economy (i.e. the world) is through competition, if necessary, to death. The dominant mindset has taken centuries to build. The violence against women and children has been going on with impunity for even a longer period in the history of Humanity, but it is in the last few centuries with the canonization/nobelization of capitalism that the violence against the weakest has been accepted as more or less ok. It is easy to speak of crimes against humanity. So easy, in fact, that the boundary such words are supposed to elicit no longer seems to be taken seriously. Why are certain crimes easily accepted as crimes against humanity and others , e.g. the violence against women (and children) not so easily accepted? Aren't women and children part of humanity?

Could it be that, historically speaking, when a particular trespassing against a segment of humanity takes place with impunity, then, through that trespassing a license is given to carry on. Punishment if, and when it happens, will then take place selectively. And so, so to speak, from trespassing to trespassing, one has arrived at this juncture. It has been a long process. There is not one particular point at which things did go wrong.

AFTER WWII, the UN was constructed to prevent self-destruction of the most advanced countries/economies, by extension, through a charitable approach, other problems were dealt with. Again, in a selective manner, depending on power relations. To this day, the UN deals with women, children and the so-called developing economies in a manner dominated by the mindset of charity. What I read in your outrage is a call for a change of mindsets: the one which led to globalization (a variant of globall apartheid) based on competition to death, occasionally relieved by charitable gestures.

The currently dominant economic system (a crucial part of the mindset) was born out of a twin genocide. Those who most suffered from it and their descendants have been kept at where they were left. Given the absence of impunity, the system has carried on, reproducing itself in the manner it has modernized/refined itself. It has done so through violence and seduction and all the means in between.

What I got from Eve Ensler's movie and the words of Dr. Denis Mukwege is that the violence is not taken seriously because no effort has been done to really tell what happens to a person who survives after having been destroyed at his/her most sensitive, his/her most vulnerable point, physically and psychically. To survive from such an onslaught is not the same as living. Especially through a continuing dominant charitable mindset. A person who has gone through such horrendous terror cannot find the words to relate what has occurred. Among them some manage to heal thanks to people who, like Dr. Denis Mukwege and others we never hear about, think and live a life based on solidarity.

Capitalism and solidarity are antagonic mindsets. Capitalism loves charity. Capitalism does accept the UN as long as it can function as a sort of charitable organization on a world scale. What would be the point of healing from capitalism if, at the same time, there is a visceral refusal (individual and collective) to heal from the violence inflicted on women/children? The responsibility to transform the mindset belongs to all human beings. One would hope that those who have leadership positions would work the hardest at changing the mindset which thinks that the violence against women/children is an acceptable collateral damage. In these long histories of Africa and Africans, we have been convinced that the dominant mindset is the best one to follow and adapt to. One day, not too long, there shall be a leadership which will determine that any form of violence against the weakest members of society, women, children, the sick, the poor, etc. shall not be tolerated, at all. For far too long what has been described as collateral damage is actually the destruction of what is substantial to humanity.

It would be good if Pbn ran a regular discussion on how this could be carried out. I do not believe the leadership will come from institutions like the UN. Thank you Stephen for pushing.