Sexual Violence, Religion and Women’s Rights in Global Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.35156Keywords:
racial-sexual othering, logic of empire, masculine psychosis, sexual violence, African Christian churchesAbstract
This article cautions against spectacularizing the sexual violence that takes place in non-Western places, without proper contextualization. I suggest that the inertia in local African churches and communities against taking a stronger stand against the perpetrators of sexual violence, should be read against the global backdrop. This larger context contains, inter alia, western economic interests that contribute to destabilize African states, a globally dominant liberal legal order which in its turn also fails to address
sexual violence, and African and western patriarchies that collude against women. Thus, if the influential African Christian Churches are to stand up against sexual violence against women, they face not only the likely resistance of church leadership and local patriarchies, but on a higher level also the resistance of international economic and patriarchal powers covertly in cahoots with local male elites.
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