What’s this rape culture we are living in: Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler, American playwright, author of The Vagina Monologues, feminist and founder of the global campaign called One Billion Rising (OBR) against violence inflicted on women and girls, is in India for a series of events around the campaign.

add_main_imageEnsler spoke in an interview on violence against women, on the social issues in India that make matters more complex and on the recent protests triggered by the fatal rape of a 23-year-old woman in the capital. Edited excerpts:

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What is a larger definition of violence? Is there a need to redefine violence and not limit it to physical violence alone?

I think one of the things about OBR is that it has made a lot of intersections and is talking about a lot of different violences. Today there is economic violence, there is violence in poverty, there is violence of being neglected, there is violence of being underpaid, there is violence of being overworked, there is violence of coming to a work place where you are treated badly, there is the violence we are doing to the earth and the dissipation of the earth, which is very connected to the violence towards women. There is rape, there is battering, there is incest, there is terrible cutting, there is killing of girl embryos, there are so many forms of violences.

Is there a need to go beyond these constructs and terminology related to violence against women?

I think we need to re-work our mindsets. What is this rape culture that we are living in? A culture where a few with powers dominate those who don’t have it. Where people occupy people’s field because they don’t have powers and they make them landless. When people take other women’s body because they have guns, because they have sharp objects. There is a culture that is formed in capitalism, formed in patriarchy that is really about domination and occupation, and its end product is rape.

We are raping the land, we are raping the women, we are raping economies and we are commodifying things and we are turning people into things... We can’t look at issues of violence separate from issues of poverty or separate from issues of ecological destruction. They are all part of it, an overview story.

Is there a different case in India?sixthMAds

No. It’s just that Indians are responding in a different way... Whatever was catalysed by the terrible Delhi rape has catalysed the country to move into a strategic discourse, investigation and dialogue about sexual violence. And this is the only time I have seen that happen really in the history of the world where a whole country has been sparked to make rape and violence and what is happening to women in the centre of the discourse.

Is violence against women symptomatic of the ruin within the society, considering, in India there is also the complexity of caste issues and inequality of opportunities?

Patriarchy as an overall system is based on hierarchy. Wherever you have hierarchy, you have an upper and lower (divisions).

So, patriarchy is essentially keeping the father or the patriarch on the top and making everyone else less than him. Hierarchy includes class, gender, how we see the earth. We see these as things we have to control, manage, contain and use. What I think is violence against women is at the centre of everything. If you make a decision that women, who are the largest majority on the planet, should be violated, be less than (men), raped, cut and killed, you are beginning the whole story, aren’t you, by parcelling out and dividing and undermining people. If you think about it, the greatest human rights violation on the planet is against women. If one billion on the planet are being raped and beaten, that is the hugest human rights attack that's going on in the planet right now.

Does the situation become more complex in the backdrop of other social problems?

Of course. The fact is that it was a college student’s rape that drew attention and not a Dalit rape or tribal rapes in marginalized communities.

Why is this difference in response?

This is because people respond less in general to what happens to a Dalit woman. Do people pay attention to what happens to the poor anywhere in the world? I think why would they pay attention to rapes if they are not paying attention to poverty. Why would they pay attention to rapes when they are not paying attention to oppression by government repression. It is the same mindset that does not care about what happens to the Dalit community and ignores what happens to them.

I hope that this opening of consciousness is now the beginning and that the attention will spread to the marginalized communities that have been excluded from the discussion, will include their struggle and bring their struggle in the front and centre.

The most marginalized has to be the one that is leading us. We have to get behind the most marginalized to understand what the basic structural problems are because they are the ones who reveal it.

You have been working on women’s issue for so long. You have been a rape survivor. Where do you get this hope from?

Women. It is the women and the girls who give me hope. The activities on the ground, the women who struggle.

Globally, how have you seen the issue of violence against women? Is it any different in Asian countries?

It’s the same issue. One out of three... I am hearing the same stories. The stories may change a little based on the culture where there may be specific Indian techniques that they may use to torture women or a particular American technique that they may have developed.

Everyone has their own brand of torture and violence but it’s the same story.