Phyllis
Chesler, Ph.D, is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s
Studies at City University of New York. She is a best-selling
author, a legendary feminist leader.
The
word femicide is not yet recognized by spellcheck. Every time
I use it, I am met with an angry red underline. This presents
something of a disincentive for its use. We might say that
the resistance to this concept begins in Silicon Valley. However,
the word does appear in the dictionary.
I
am not certain why I began to study honour killings. They
are quintessential femicides, except among Hindus (but only
in India) where men are often also killed for having violated
caste rules.
Perhaps
my inquiry had something to do with my own long-ago captivity
in Kabul about which I’ve written in An American
Bride in Kabul (2013). I had witnessed woman-hating at
ground zero and one can never forget it.
Like
many other American feminists, I was also active in the civil
rights and antiwar movements—but unlike most feminists,
I had "once lived in a harem in Afghanistan." This
is the opening sentence of my book An American Bride in
Kabul (2013).
I lived with my mother-in-law in a polygamous household in
rather posh purdah; this meant I was not allowed
out without a male escort. My father-in-law had three wives
and twenty-one children—facts my Westernized husband
failed to mention during our long American college courtship.
I saw women in burqas stumbling around on the streets of Kabul,
and pre-Rosa Parks, forced quite literally to sit at the back
of the bus.
Therefore,
I was aware early on that worldwide, most women were illiterate,
impoverished, and forced to marry men not of their choosing
when they themselves were still children. As girls, they were
expected to meet impossibly high standards of subordinate
behaviour—and, if they failed to do so, they risked
severe punishment. Their lives were far more difficult and
endangered than American women's lives.
I
began using the word patriarchy in 1961-1962.
I
co-pioneered the study of violence against women in the late
1960s. I focused on women living in North America and Europe
who had been psychiatrically diagnosed and hospitalized; were
the victims of rape, sexual harassment, incest, intimate partner
battering, pornography and prostitution.
I
also documented the profound double standards and anti-woman
biases which led to good mothers losing custody of children
to abusive fathers and husbands; women sentenced to long or
life prison terms when they killed batterers in self-defense;
and the violence women faced as they fought for their reproductive,
educational, economic, political and religious rights around
the world.
My
generation of feminists believed in universal human rights.
We were not multicultural relativists. We called out misogyny
when we saw it and did not exempt a rapist, a wife-beater,
or a pedophile because he was poor (his victims were also
poor); or a man of colour (his victims were also people of
colour); or because he had an abused childhood (so did his
victims).
In
the early 1970s, I was alarmed by the mass Muslim-on-Muslim,
male-on-female gang-rapes in the war between Pakistan and
Bangladesh. I knew that the victims’ families would
reject or kill them for having been raped. I wanted American
feminists to understand the specific danger these rape victims
were in but I had no single word to describe the use of rape
as a weapon of war (as opposed to a spoil of war). I might
have said this was a barbaric form of misogyny. I did not
use the word femicide to describe these rapes.
Dr.
Diana E. H. Russell’s and Nicole Van de Ven’s
1975-1976 International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women (1976)
drew 2000 women from 40 countries. In dramatic first-testimonies,
they documented and condemned crimes such as female genital
mutilation (FGM), beating, forced prostitution, forced motherhood,
forced sterilization, etc. Russell did use the word femicide
to describe the assaults against women because they were women.
Femicide appears on the cover of this important collection
but not within its pages.
In
1979 Fran Hosken, in The Hosken Report, documented FGM globally.
I do not believe that she used the word femicide, but her
book is now packed away and I cannot check it.
By
the 1990s and early 21st century, I was also concerned with
the fate of kidnapped and sexually enslaved women in North
Africa at the hands of Islamist paramilitary units; and in
the increasing use of gang-rape as a weapon of war, in Bosnia,
Congo, Guatemala, El Salvador, Rwanda and Sudan.
It
was not until repeated public gang-rapes took place in the
Sudan in the 21st century that I described them as gender
cleansing. But not necessarily as an example of femicide.
In
the early 1990s, because I became involved in the Wuornos
trial I read a great deal about the lives of prostituted girls
and women and about serial killers. Then, in about 2004-2005,
I recognized an equally or possibly more pandemic domestic
example of just such femicides—sadistic ‘overkills’
in terms of honour killing among Muslims globally, Hindus
(only in India) and, Sikhs, to a lesser extent. Serial killers
that targeted only close female relatives lurked in every
family that upheld strict honour codes.
I
had been reading the memoirs of tribal women (primarily Muslims,
Hindus, Sikhs), and their searing testimonies, coupled with
my long background of feminist research led me to study a
phenomenon that few Western feminists had explored.
In
2009, I published the first of four studies about honour killing.
Titled Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?
(2009); I did not use the word femicide.
In
2010, I published a second and far more major study titled
Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings (2010). I used
the word femicide twelve times.
I
did not use it even once in my third study (2012) titled Hindu
vs. Muslim Honor Killings—but I did use it three
times in my fourth study (2015) titled When Women Commit
Honor Killings.
Many
Western feminists have never read these studies. They were
published in an academic venue and by intellectuals who were
viewed negatively as conservatives. I am referring to the
distinguished Middle East Forum under the leadership of Dr.
Daniel Pipes.
Those
feminists who did read some of this work were a bit hostile
and viewed them as racist or Islamophobic. Some felt that
men broke women’s bones and shed their blood everywhere,
including in non-honour-based societies—why single out
men of colour?
In
my view, there was another reason not to look more closely
at honour-based violence, including honour killing. Although
the victims were mainly girls and women, and usually women
of colour, their killers were also men and women of colour.
Thus, Western Caucasian feminists (and academics of colour
in the West) dared not blame formerly colonized men of colour
for the crimes they commit against ‘their’ women.
They viewed themselves as personally guilty for the historical
crimes of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Or, rather,
they wished to virtue-signal their atonement for such historical
atrocities.
I
went on to collect my writings in this area and I published
two volumes: One, in 2017 was titled Islamic Gender Apartheid:
Exposing a Veiled War Against Women in which I continually
used the word femicide. I published the second volume in 2018.
It is titled A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing.
I also used the word femicide many times in this volume.
An
honour killing is the cold-blooded murder of girls and women
simply because they are female. (This is the definition of
femicide.) Being born female in a shame-and honour culture
is, potentially, a capital crime; every girl has to keep proving
that she is not dishonouring her family; even so, an innocent
girl can be falsely accused and killed on the spot.
A
girl's fertility and reproductive capacity are owned by her
family, not by the girl herself. If a girl is ever seen as
damaged goods, her family-of-origin will be responsible for
her care for the rest of her life. This is a killing offense.
Her virginity belongs to her family and is a token of their
honour. If she is not a virgin, (or it is merely suspected
that she may not be a virgin), the shame belongs to her family
and they must cleanse themselves of it with blood; her blood.
Imagine
growing up in a family where you are closely monitored, harassed,
perhaps even beaten daily; threatened with death if you are
seen talking to a boy or if your veil has slipped. Imagine
knowing that members of your own family-of-origin might one
day kill you for the slightest offense or for no offense at
all -- and coolly get away with it; imagine knowing that you
cannot escape, that no relative, and no legal forum will protect
your right to live and to live free from normalized violence.
Becoming
too Westernized, wanting to choose one's own spouse, refusing
to marry a first cousin, daring to have infidel friends or
allegedly engaging in sex outside of marriage -- are all killing
offenses.
From
a tribal point of view, this shame-and-honour code does enforce
social stability but at the price of individual rights and
personal freedom.
