The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993): Article 2

—

Article 2

Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, the following:

( a ) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;

( b ) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;

( c ) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.

The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).

The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993) or the Declaration represents a number of ways in which women deserve equal protections and, in many cases, special protection from violence.

In particular, as many of you are familiar, there is a phrase in the international world to determine the levels and areas of women’s subjection to cruel and unjust treatment. That phrase is “Violence Against Women.”

Sometimes, it is abridged as VAW. The VAW perpetrated around the globe is a serious problem. The Declaration amounts to one solid protection, through rights in writing, for the protection of women against violent and unjust physical treatment, or sexual for that matter.

It extends into the psychological, and so emotional, too. The general scope is given within the three paragraphs, or as I have been stating them: “subsection,” of the second article. Furthermore, the permission in its ‘preface’ is the non-exhaustive nature of the listing.

In the first subsection, it describes the three domains of abuse potentially applicable in most or all cases. That is, the physical violence against a woman, e.g., battering. The psychological violence against a woman, e.g., exploitation. The sexual violence against a woman, e.g., marital rape.

These extend in a number of sub-domains but the general picture given are the aspects of abuse done to women in some of their more severe forms. Of course, there are even cases of a woman being not only raped but murdered based on sex and gender, not being a man is a pre-requisite.

Because there are legitimate and widespread cases of women, individually or serially, being raped even gang-raped and then murdered in some of the harshest and vile circumstances with premeditation by the male perpetrator – rapist and murderer. But the violation of an individual person – whether physically, psychologically, or sexually – can instill a constant vigilance about the future potential re-occurrence; a certain form of long-term torment and terror of the mind. Mostly male veterans from war live in the similar hell of the psyche. It’s called trauma.

The “female children” – so girls – are included within the statements of the stipulations. That is to say, women and girls retain the same rights for their safety from their peculiar predicament of VAW. A worldwide, historic and ongoing phenomenon.

Whether in the hallowed halls of the Roman Catholic Church (#ChurchToo) or the purportedly holiest sites including the eventual destination of one of the Five Pillars of Islam with the hajj journey to Mecca at the Qabba (#MosqueToo and #MeccaToo), or in the liberal-progressive central establishments including Hollywood (#MeToo), the narratives contain the similar troubles of women often hidden but only willingly and openly and assertively motivated to tell their stories as they recalled and experienced them because of the encouragement of other women and the inspiration of seeing others speak their truths in heartbreaking stories. Some turn out as lies, as in the Rolling Stone rape campus story.

However, this should not detract from the core points of underreporting, fear of reporting, mistreatment of claimed rape victims by authorities, mismanagement by universities in a matter better left to the police and law enforcement, and the important educational point directed to by Professor Noam Chomsky with the distinction between demonstration and allegation:

I think it grows out of a real and serious and deep problem of social pathology. It has exposed it and brought it to attention, brought to public attention many explicit and particular cases and so on. But I think there is a danger. The danger is confusing allegation with demonstrated action. We have to be careful to ensure that allegations have to be verified before they are used to undermine individuals and their actions and their status. So as in any such effort at uncovering improper, inappropriate and sometimes criminal activities, there always has to be a background of recognition that there’s a difference between allegation and demonstration.

The allegation/demonstration distinction provides the basis for the consideration of women or girls who come forward, and who should be encouraged to do so, to be treated with proper treatment, compassion, and respect while following the rule of law to respect due process to show the accused the same proper treatment, compassion, and respect.

In the current climate, the socio-political left – some sectors – forget the due process aspect of law for the people asserted as rapists, where, as in the Rolling Stone case – being one high-profile and dramatic instance of lies by a young woman and the media slavishly following a salacious headline rather than truth and justice, the purported rapists can be innocent with their lives and reputations destroyed – not hypothetical as this happens in the past and right into the present, e.g. students with scholarships and endorsements revoked, and professionals near retirement age even canned from high-paying and long-term careers; the socio-political right tend to downplay the real suffering of women in numerous domains of life, especially as regards the sexual violence committed, likely, against a girl or woman who could be in their own family and, in essence, downplaying the reality of rape of women by men as VAW and a violation of women’s rights in particular and human rights in general.

Article 2(b) continues with stipulations within those three domains of the first sub-section but with the emphasis on the more general. The most general forms of violence against women with “rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution.”

The categories here focus on sexual violence and psychological violence. The psychological at work, even sexual, but then the sexual in the most general sense in a society from the street corner to the executive suite of the highest high-rise Goldman Sachs building.

Article 2(c) states the violence used by the state is a no-no, a no-go. We often see the totalitarian regimes, as remarked on in multiple venues by Margaret Atwood, highly interested in the reproductive capacities of women.

In particular, the restriction on the freedoms of women to be able to determine their own livelihoods. The various totalitarian regimes in history or extant retain a peculiar, noticeable, and rights-violating interest in the interior lives of women’s bodies.

The nature of the control, as this amounts to its central focus, comes in lack of provisions of reproductive health technologies, neonatal care, childcare, daycare, school programs, school lunches, and other social services and then the expectation of all women to have as many children as possible.

Even in the cases of a cap on the number of children, the selectivity of the sex of the children becomes filtered through the status of the women and the girls in the society with the obvious preference for a boy over a girl, so the number of men in China, for example, outnumbers the number of women; to further exacerbate the effects of bigotry and misogyny, the derivative consequences comes in the mismatch for the heterosexual women and the heterosexual men in the society of marrying and childbearing age.

As happens with too many single men in history, this may create a destabilizing effect on the economy and so the country as a whole over the long-term. Disgruntled men in large groups tend to be a destabilizing force in not only the economic well-being of the country but also in the social life of the nation as well.

In the Computer Age, we find the emergence of sophisticated, powerful, and assertive ignorance posturing across the political landscape and taking up too much news coverage. If these topics were typically covered as they have been in the media, women’s rights and livelihood would be sidelined or ignored while at the same time having dog whistles to the listening, watching, or reading base of the individual touting falsehoods.

The questions around VAW and the nature of the current debates – some covered in the earlier parts of this article – relate to the basic truth. Women have rights. They have rights as men have rights. If not, then the equality of the sexes would be a pipe dream. Rights are not to be ignored or taken away. If not implemented, then they should be made part of the society as soon as possible.

If an individual denies the rights of women to reproductive health technologies based on a religious rights and belief rights objection, then the individual should, via the Golden Rule – ironically in their own religious holy texts, revoke their own right to religious practice and faith because the same documents giving women the right to control their own bodies and have bodily autonomy give these self-same individuals the right to practice their religious faith.

Women deserve reproductive health technologies as a right. The religious deserve the practice of their faith in their lives as a right. The access to the reproductive health technologies for everyone does not infringe on the right of the religious person to practice their faith. If they have an objection to it, then they do not have to use it; if someone wants to use it, then they can use it.

In this way, both rights are respected – no problems, but, of course, there are religious leaders, often men, seen in movements including the Reconstructionist Christian and Dominionist Christian – not necessarily the same but definitely overlap – movements.

They do not care about reproductive health rights because of the assertion in Genesis about God giving Man dominion over the Earth, as in everything including women. That is, they care about God’s Law and not human rights and, therefore, by internal logical and rationale of the belief system dismiss women’s rights and so women’s equal status: meaning women do not equate to equals to them.

Any debate or conversation becomes illegitimate within an international context, because these rights are global, when the fundamental premise of the inherent humanity, dignity, respectability, and worth of women and human rights given to women as women is not agreed upon by the parties present in the dialogue. Because this asserts a lesser-than status of women based on sex.

The ability of women to garner these rights has taken an exceptionally long time. The entire generation who began the movements for the right to vote, to be considered a legal person in a democracy, started about a century ago. Meaning, most women from the same period are deceased.

Think of the geniuses not seen then who could have emerged, the Hypatias from centuries ago, the Marie Curies from the 20th century, the Marilyn vos Savants still extant, and others unable to flourish because of unequal status. It would be seen as unbecoming of a girl or woman to enter into the “man’s world.” If not unbecoming, then the barriers certainly existed for generations from theological justifications and church-mosque-synagogue enforcement to sexual coercion in the workplace, to unequal pay, and so on. Dead and forgotten people set the dial forward for the current generation. Only some small part of women’s history has them surpassing men in education, now and only in the developed nations for the most part.

The fundamental basis for the equality of the sexes seems obvious in the cases of VAW, as women remain subject to the physically more dominant sex of the species. Men with power, or men in power giving lesser men control, over women. As Richard Pryor rightfully described with sexual violence taking away a person’s humanity, and I will extend the sentiment to VAW in general, the taking away of someone’s humanity remains one of the most catastrophically disgusting aspects of these acts and rights violations.

To ignore the power dynamics not only in history, whether crystallized in the holy texts or seen in the historical record, seems naive and foolish, and obvious (not appalling as some may claim in modern movements), it is a fact of history, of which we will be coming to grips with as time moves forward – and in this same move to recognize the VAW; we will, indeed, potentially recognize the powerless feelings of men who only emote in the language of violence, too.

—

One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights: