rape in war

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Religions and the Abuse of Women and Girls: God Is the Problem

This was originally posted on November 12, 2018

At the 2009 meeting of the Parliament of World Religions, former US President Jimmy Carter called the worldwide abuse of girls and women the greatest unaddressed human rights crisis of our time. In the book that followed the speech, he compared sexism to the racism he witnessed in the US South, stating:

There is a similar system of discrimination, extending far beyond a small geographical region to the entire globe; it touches every nation, perpetuating and expanding the trafficking in human slaves, body mutilation, and even legitimized murder on a massive scale. This system is based on the presumption that men and boys are superior to women and girls.
Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Religions and the Abuse of Women and Girls: God Is the Problem”

The Silence of the Girls: A Reflection on War by Carol P. Christ

Suppose, suppose just once, once in all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory for his early death under the walls of Troy. . .? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know that we were living in a rape camp. (324)

In The Silence of the Girls Pat Barker retells the story of the siege of Troy from the perspective of Breseis, a captured Trojan princess who became the slave and concubine of Achilles and Agamemnon. She was among the “spoils of war” allotted to the “great heroes” to “honor” their success as killers in war. Breseis does not tell her story of terror in The Iliad, but despite her not speaking, her story and that of the other captured and raped women—many of whom fared much worse that she did–is there is plain sight.

The problem is not that we who have read The Iliad don’t know these women were living in a rape camp. The problem is not that we have read The Iliad do not know that the heroes of the Trojan war were awarded women and loot as a reward for good fighting. Nor is the problem that we do not know that in the times of the Trojan war a man’s “honor” was everything to him and that it was defined by the prizes (women and loot) that he commanded, as well as by the respect of other men his deeds and property inspired.

When I first taught The Iliad in 1972, I was appalled by the women’s story. While my colleagues spoke of the “spear captive” who was the focus of the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, I urged them to call her a “rape victim.” Needless to say, I was summarily silenced. “That is not the point of the story,” I was told. “This is a story about men, their glorious deeds, and the honor due to warriors. This story speaks of the origin of culture.” A few guffaws signaling agreement followed. And that was the end of the discussion.

Although I enjoyed reading The Silence of the Girls, it did not provide me with any new insights into the horrors of war or the pervasiveness of rape in war. These were stories I already imagined. Indeed, rape, looting, slavery, and the spoils of war are at the heart of my “A New Definition of Patriarchy.”

The question I ask after reading The Silence of the Girls is how western culture managed to “silence” the women whose stories were there in plain sight for anyone who read The Iliad to see. Breseis was forced to have sex with and wait upon the man who killed her four brothers and her husband and who treated her as a possession not as a person. (283) She learned that when Achilles tired of her, she would probably be offered to his favorite men, and when they had their fill of her, she would be sent to live with the women who were at the mercy of the foot soldiers. “But that’s war,” (284) the Trojan king Priam replied when she asked him to help her escape.

There is more than one “conspiracy of silence” at play here. The conspiracy was compounded when the first person who questioned euphemisms such as “spear captive” was ridiculed and when every man or woman who recognized that rape is an ordinary part of war was told to keep silent about that. It was justified by the phrase “that’s war.”

If The Iliad is the origin of western culture, then western culture originated in a rape camp. Let’s not keep silent about that any longer! We must name the atrocities at the origins of so-called “culture” if we wish to create a more just world. These atrocities did not end with the Trojan war. They continue up to the present day. Ask any woman who has been in the path of invading armies. Ask the soldiers what they did and were permitted to do.

Refuse to accept the aeons-old cover-up: “that’s war.” If that is war, it is time to end war.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist and ecofeminist writer, activist, and educator who lives in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s recent book is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Honneger.

Listen to Carol’s a-mazing interview with Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry recorded in conjunction with her keynote address to the Parliament of World’s Religions.

Religions and the Abuse of Women and Girls: God Is the Problem by Carol P. Christ

There is a similar system of discrimination, extending far beyond a small geographical region to the entire globe; it touches every nation, perpetuating and expanding the trafficking in human slaves, body mutilation, and even legitimized murder on a massive scale. This system is based on the presumption that men and boys are superior to women and girls.

He stated further that this problem is:

largely caused by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare, unfortunately following the example set during my lifetime by the United States.

Carter also said:

There’s one more basic cause that I need not mention, and that is that in general, men don’t give a damn.

As a feminist theologian I was thrilled to learn that Carter joined us in recognizing religion as one of the primary causes of the abuse of women and girls. I am grateful to him for using his position as former President and Elder statesman to call attention to the roles played by religions in justifying the oppression of one half of the human race. And I am very happy that he gives a damn. At the same time, I have questions about Carter’s understanding of the problem of sexism in religions.

I agree with Carter that warfare is one of the main causes of the abuse of women and girls. War plays an important part in the oppression of women and girls because rape and slavery have been and continue to be “an ordinary part of war.” As wars continue and increase, the rape of women and girls, in many cases the brutal gang rape of women until they die, continues. Moreover, the sexual slavery known as trafficking of women and girls, flourishes in the wake of war, as women fleeing war torn homelands are targeted, tricked, and sold into forced prostitution.

If the idea that rape and slavery have always been part of war sounds strange to you, I call your attention to the founding work of western culture, the Iliad: set during the Trojan War, its plot turns on the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles about which of them has the right to hold a woman from Lesbos named Briseis as his “spear captive,” a scholarly euphemism for rape victim and sexual slave. In their conquests of Canaan, the Hebrew people reportedly killed the men and took the women and children as slaves, raping the women as the right of the victors to “the spoils of war.”

Some were astonished to learn a few decades ago that Serbian soldiers routinely raped Bosnian women, but they should not have been, because rape in war had already been widely reported in Africa. One of the little known crimes of the Second World War is the widespread rape of German women fleeing Russian armies occupying territories that became part of the Soviet Union. As horrible as it is, rape in war is not the only reason to call warfare one of the major causes of the abuse of women. Soldiers bring the violence of war with them when they return home and thus a climate is created in which men understand that is their right to dominate women, using violence if necessary.

Jimmy Carter’s view that religions justify the abuse of women by “false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts” requires further scrutiny. Carter appears to view the Bible as a primarily liberating text with a few unfortunate exceptions that are cited by religious leaders to support patriarchy. Regarding his decision to leave the Southern Baptist Convention, Carter wrote:

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

I suspect Carter knew Phyllis Trible’s essay “Eve and Adam: Genesis 2-3 Reread,” in which she argues that Genesis 2 teaches the equality of Adam and Eve. Surely he also understands that original sin is a Christian doctrine that could not have been anticipated by the authors of Genesis 2, though it is often justified by interpretations of it. Carter and Trible believe that their interpretations of Genesis 2 are correct and that interpretations supporting patriarchy are incorrect.

I, on the other hand, would say that Merlin Stone’s interpretation of the text as a “tale with a point of view” intended to disparage the woman, the snake, and the tree, all of which were symbols of the sacred in earlier and competing religions, is the correct one. St. Augustine, if he could, would probably still argue for his view. So how do we resolve this dispute?

Judith Plaskow and I say that we cannot. Rather we must accept that all interpretations of scripture are based in the standpoints of individuals and communities. While some interpretations seem less plausible when we take account of the original language and context of Biblical texts, we can never be certain that our interpretation is the correct one. On these grounds, Carter’s assertion that only “false interpretations” of Genesis support male domination must be rejected.

In addition, Carter states that only “carefully selected” texts can be used to support male dominance. If he has read feminist theology at all, Carter must be aware that some feminists assert that the Bible as a whole supports male dominance through the pervasive and almost exclusive use of language that portrays God as a male, most often as a dominant male, as Lord, King, Warrior, and Father.

Counting texts that portray God as male as justifying the idea that the male is God and the female is something less than God and males, Mary Daly opined that the texts in the Bible that do not support male dominance might be collected in a small pamphlet. In Goddess and God in the World Judith Plaskow admitted that when she read the Jewish Bible from cover to cover, she was appalled at the number of times the texts justified violence. She asks Jews and Christians to wrestle with the images of God as a dominating other in the Bible, rather than trying to explain them away.

Once again we are faced with a question of interpretation. Is the use of male dominator language for God irrelevant or at the root of the problem? I say that it is one of the main justifications for the abuse of women and girls.

*This is an excerpt from the speech I delivered at the Parliament of World’s Religions on November 5, 2018. My interview with Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry recorded during the conference will be airing soon.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist writer, activist, and educator living in Greece. Carol’s recent book written with Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, is on Amazon. A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess is on sale for $9.99 on Amazon. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Honneger.

Are We Living in a Rape Culture? by Carol P. Christ

rape in the military rape in war rape in sports rape in the university rape in fraternities rape at parties rape on the way home rape in the car rape on the street rape in the park rape in the home rape on the couch rape on the bed rape on the floor rape in a closed room rape in the dark rape in the light rape in marriage rape on the job rape in the bible rape on tv rape in great works of art rape by a friend rape by a neighbor rape by a friend of the family rape by a member of the family rape by men with power rape by men without power rape by someone you know rape by someone you do not know rape as power rape as domination rape as humiliation rape as violation

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RAPE CULTURE IN THE MILITARY AND “TURNING BOYS INTO MEN” by Carol P. Christ

Rape is not something that “just happens” in the military. It is an inevitable product of military training. Unless and until we understand this and change the way soldiers are trained, we will never be able to stop rape in the US military or any other military system.

The right to rape women of the enemy has been considered one of the “prerogatives” of warriors since the beginning of warfare. Could “military training” which “turns boys into men” by calling them “girls” or “women” or “gay” in order to break down their self-esteem and remold their “character” as soldiers be one of the reasons rape is such a pervasive problem in the military? Are “boys” being taught that the only way to “prove” their “manhood” is to replace “identification” with women—their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives—with a new “identity” as a “dominant male” who “dominates” women and weaker men? I fear that if we fail to address the “core issue” of “military training,” we will never get to the root of the rape culture that pervades the military.

Unfortunately the model of training boys to be men by humiliating them with taunts that they are “girls” or “gay” is not limited to the military but is also a regular part of sports training. In both the military and sports, terms like “sissy,” “wuss,” “pussy,” “faggot”–and worse–are regularly used by male authority figures in order to “spur” boys “on” to feats of “physical achievement” that require “punishing” their own bodies and the bodies of others. The use of these epithets in the context of humiliation makes it clear that “a man” is not “a woman” or “a gay”: “a man” is someone who has eradicated all of his “feminine” qualities while learning to dominate and humiliate women and effeminate men.

Is it any surprise that rape of women and effeminate or gay men is pervasive in the military and in sports culture? Continue reading “RAPE CULTURE IN THE MILITARY AND “TURNING BOYS INTO MEN” by Carol P. Christ”