Wanna know what discourse is harming women’s rights?
Trigger warning for mention of being raped and domestic violence
I see this rhetoric a lot within the blogging community. It is commonly used when discussing statistics and atrocitys that happen to the majorty of women, such as being raped or experiencing domestic violence. These are situations that, unfortunately, many women will find themselves experiencing in their lifetime. Although these heinous acts do not happen solely to women, they are experiences that are wholly associated with feminism and women’s rights. When they are being discussed, I often see:
“how would you feel if this happened to your mother, sister, daughter?”
“treat her like you would treat your mother, sister, daughter”
“1 in 3 women [insert statistic here]. That could be your mother, sister, daughter.”
This rhetoric encourages the idea that women are not their own human beings with their own thoughts and feelings on what they experience, but merely as relatives to men, and that when bad things are happening to women they only matter if the woman is related to a man.
I understand the point of this rhetoric, I really do. If you personify the victim of a bad action as someone who will be cared about (such as a mother, most mothers are cared about by their children), then you can evoke a much stronger physical and emotional response to a situation from a wider community. By turning the victim into someone that is already loved and cared for, you are more likely to get a larger response - a response that will be positive to the cause you are trying to promote (such as rape statistic awareness).
This would be all well and good (I mean, who doesn’t want to raise a good response to their cause?) if women weren’t already treat and viewed as belonging to men. It’s common for a woman to take a man’s surname in marriage - a practice that originates from the passing on a woman from father to husband. A common trope in Television is two men fighting over the rights to a woman, who she rightly “belongs” to. Women only mattering when they belong to or are owned by men is an all to real problem today and the rhetoric above only works to ingrain that thought even further.
Another problem with that discourse is the complete erasure of anyone who isn’t a woman, or who doesn’t identify as a woman. Men, gender neutral individuals and genderqueer individuals also suffer and experience the same atrocity’s that are usually attributed to “women’s rights”. The rhetoric up there actively erases and ignore the experiences of people and will ultimatly discourage all those who do not identify under the labels “daughter”, “sister” or “mother” to seek help, support and counselling for what they have unfortunately experienced.
Ultimatly I think there is something inherently dangerous in teaching boys and men that women only deserve equal treatment and respect when they are related to them - either as a mother, a daughter or a wife. Woman are their own human beings, who are entitled to respect and their own experiences without that experience only being given meaning when a man can place his own relatives within it.
I mean, seriously, what does it say about men if the only way they can care about a woman is when she is related to him?
