By Garda Ghista
World Prout Assembly
December 2003

12/03 - "World Prout Assembly" - In 1995 at the UN Convention on Women's Rights a group of noble women made sure that the forthcoming official UN document declared marital rape to be a crime against women and a convictable offense. Marital rape was declared a fundamental violation of human rights. Marital rape remains one of the most taboo subjects[1] anywhere in any country. While people and women in particular may talk about so many things, but the intimate sexual activities of married couples are most often not discussed with others - even with best friends. It is a taboo subject even in the United States.[2] For this very reason, we need to highlight the great work of a few women who have struggled for years to highlight this shameful issue and bring it to the attention of legislators, law-makers, attorneys, judges, senators, activists, women's rights advocates and ordinary citizens, who at some point may serve on juries and may have the chance to decide whether or not a husband is guilty of raping his wife.

In studying the subject of domestic violence, we learn that it often narrows down to simply wife abuse. The term domestic violence is hence just a euphemism for wife abuse. Dr. Mary Miller points this out in her excellent book, No Visible Wounds. There is a great deal of literature (both academic and experiential) on the subject of domestic violence and wife abuse. But one can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books on marital rape.[3] Consequently, the few existing books have come to be looked upon as classics in the subject. Marital rape is the most degrading, humiliating thing that can happen to a wife. On top of this, as Kersti Yllo wrote, "When you are raped by a stranger, you live with a frightening memory, but when you are raped by your husband, you live with your rapist." [4] It is hence a matter of unmitigated shame that the issue is so substantially neglected by the legal system and by the society at large.

Definition of Marital Rape

Marital rape is a part of sexual abuse in marriage, which is again a sub-section of the entire spectrum of abuses inflicted on wives by husbands. Sexual abuse includes marital rape, beating of the body's sexual parts, forced bestiality, forced prostitution, unprotected sex, sodomy and using pornography. It also includes sexual insults to the woman and unfounded accusations of infidelity. There are many women who may not experience physical sexual violence from their husbands. But if the husband due to abnormal extreme jealousy screams and rages at his wife that she is an adulteress, when she is nothing of the kind, then according to the above definition it is considered as sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is frequently but not always a part and parcel of general physical abuse. Simply defined, marital rape in particular is "any unwanted intercourse obtained by force, threat of force or when the wife is unable to consent." According to Patricia Mahoney, rape is:

"...sexual acts committed without a person's consent and/or against a person's will by a woman's husband or ex husband. Sexual acts may be committed through physical force, threats of force against her...or implied harm based on prior assaults causing the woman to fear that physical force will be used if she resists. When a woman submits to sexual acts out of fear or coercion, it is rape. A wife does not need to be 'putting up a good fight' for it to be rape (even according to the law. [Abusive] Sexual acts include but are not limited to penile vaginal intercourse, the insertion of genitals into the mouth or anus, or the insertion of objects into the vagina or anus."[5]

Similarly, delegates at the 1995 UN Convention on Women's Rights in Beijing agreed on "strong planks that call for punishment of domestic violence, including marital rape..."[6] According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, "Every woman has the right to control her own body and to make decisions about having sex, using birth control, becoming pregnant and having children. She does not lose these rights if she marries."[7] The Center for Constitutional Rights gives a somewhat more lengthy definition of marital rape as being sexual acts done against a wife's wishes either by physical force, by threats of force or by making her fear that she will come to harm if she resists. The husband may use simply psychological or emotional abuse (glaring looks and verbal rages) to make her comply. He may use coercion, verbal threats, physical violence or weapons to force his wife to have sex with him. It is a complete abuse of power. It is the husband's attempt to assert control and to dominate his wife. The point is, if she submits to sex out of fear or terror, it is rape. Taking sex by force when the wife is asleep or sick is also termed as rape.

Prevalence of Marital Rape

The quiet truth behind cultural curtains covering this topic is that marital rape affects millions of women every year. According to a study done by Diana Russell in San Francisco, a minimum of ten to fourteen percent of women document being raped by their husbands. Twenty-five percent of all rapes (including rapes by strangers) are inside the marriage, by the husbands. It happens in fifty percent of abusive marriages. It is already a well-known statistic that 50 percent of married women suffer from abuse at some point in their marriages. This means that in 25 percent of all marriages, rape and other forms of sexual abuse are taking place. According to Diana Russell, one in every seven married women are raped by their husbands. Of women staying in women's shelters after fleeing their husbands, from one-third to three quarters of those women say they have were sexually assaulted by their husbands. Of all rape cases reported, ten percent are attributed to husbands. However, this number is likely way below the reality, since in this author's opinion thousands never report the rape inside the marriage. It is too shameful to do so.

Marital rape occurs across the board, irrespective of age, social standing in the community, education, race or ethnic origin. Men from all these groups rape their wives. Traditional wives generally blame themselves for the violence and remain with their husbands. For most wives the rape is just an extension of other kinds of abuse being perpetrated by the husband - physical, psychological and emotional abuse. A certain percentage of wives suffer from sadistic rape, which involves torture and perverse sexual acts committed by the husband on his wife. Pornography is often involved. For some wives, the rape is the only violent part of the marriage. There is no other violence. Generally, however, they are raped over and over.

Historically speaking, marital rape was never considered as rape. It was considered the norm and the right of men in the extant patriarchal structure. Even today in countries like India and Pakistan the topic of marital rape is not considered a topic of research because the women do not recognize it as a violation of their rights. Rather they consider it as part of what they must bear in the marriage. And even in the "great" United States, there are millions of men who consider it their God-given right to sexually "take" their wives whenever they please, because they still look upon their wives as mere chattel - a piece of property to manipulate as per their own sexual propensities.

Research shows that the emotional suffering and humiliation undergone by raped wives is just as severe as if it had been a stranger. Research also shows that men who both batter and rape are the most dangerous of all wife abusers and those most likely to escalate to murder. Just as in the case of other forms of domestic violence, sexual abuse, including marital rape, is often denied by wives as being a violation of their rights.[8] Many wives tolerate rape in the marriage for years, just like other wives tolerate non-physical (emotional or psychological) abuse for years. It correlates with the mindset of American culture and with the laws of society which only very recently in 1993 made marital rape a punishable offense. And even then, 33 states continue to have exemption clauses which state that certain situations preclude a husband from being charged - even though in reality it is rape. The damage done to these women is immeasurable. It is irreparable physical damage and even greater psychological damage. In the film Defending Our Lives,[9] there is the case of the beautiful blond woman named Peggy who tells us she was repeatedly tied up, raped and sodomized by her husband, and that was only a small part of his brutality towards her. She is now serving a life sentence for killing her husband in self-defense. It is an unbounded injustice, and needs to be rectified through heavy campaigning, publicity and protests to politicians. Most citizens are not even aware that the basic human rights of millions of women are being violated. It needs to come out in the open! Women raped by their husbands are being grossly violated by the one person they trust the most, by the person with whom they share their lives, their home, their children and all their myriad ups and downs in life. But, with the act of rape, they are totally betrayed.

The Myths

The myths promulgated by our society are tragic. Both men and women promote these myths. These myths are a grievous injustice to the dignity of all women. For example, people assume that a husband rapes because his wife is withholding sex. It is not true. Another myth is that women say no when they actually mean yes. This is false not only for wives but also for the large area of date rape. How many boys force themselves on young innocent girls when those girls are screaming "No!" Another myth embedded in most women's minds is that it is their duty to have sex, and that if they do not enjoy sex they are "bad wives" or "bad girlfriends." Such feelings of guilt come straight from our religious scriptures, including the Bible. But, those religious scriptures have been written by men, all of whom have only continued to promote the extant brutal patriarchal structure.[10] Perhaps the greatest myth of all regarding the issue of marital rape is that the effects on the wife are inconsequential. The complete opposite is true.

Kinds of Marital Rape

In the book License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives, the authors Finkelhor and Yllo talk about the kinds of marital rape that take place.[11] They are:

1. Force-only rapes, which means, he forced her to have sex but without all the battering and beating. He just wanted the sex and took it by force.

2. Battering rapes, where the rape is accompanied by other forms of violence like beating, punching, etc.

3. Obsessive rapes. This is where the men are perverse or sick in their behavior and want to engage in sick or perverse sexual activities with their wives. In these situations the husbands want to rape instead of make love. They often want anal intercourse instead of regular intercourse. They will often tie up the wife, and they will often put different kinds of objects into the vagina. They want to be brutal and want to hurt and humiliate the wife as much as possible. They also want to terrify the wife because terrifying her excites them sexually. Some of these husbands are obsessed with pornography.

4. Sadism. This is linked to obsessive rapes. Here we are getting into torture rituals such as biting, burning the wife with cigarettes, flagellation and injuring the sexual areas of the body. The difference between sadistic rape and anger rape is that anger rape is done just to hurt the victim. Sadistic rape is done to sexually arouse the husband/rapist.

In another book called Men Who Rape, the author describes another two categories, which are:

5. Anger rapes, which are committed primarily to express hostility to women, to retaliate against them and to hurt them. In this type of rape, the husband will degrade the victim/wife as much as possible. He may force her to commit other sexual acts which are particularly degrading, such as sodomy or fellatio, meaning bestiality.

6. Power rapes are committed to assert dominance and control over women. It is not really the intention of the husband to harm, he just wants to assert his control over her. The rape reflects a kind of sexual conquest, which in a normal healthy relationship is not necessary. But in this case the husband needs it due to his own feelings of inadequacy. That is why, when a wife with time becomes more assertive, indignant or rebellious, this kind of rape is more likely to happen.

In the book Sisters in Pain by Elisabeth Beattie and Mary Shaughnessy, there is discussion by the victims about marital rape. Sisters in Pain is the story of ten women who all killed their husbands in self defense after years of abuse, were all imprisoned for long ten to twenty-year sentences, and were all released from Kentucky prisons in 1995 due to the untiring efforts of Marsha Weinstein, then Executive Director of Kentucky Commission on Women, who along with others persuaded the then Governor Brereton Jones to grant these women clemency. It is heart-breaking to read the stories of these ten women.[12] In the book Sisters in Pain, we read the story of Sherry Pollard who was tortured by her husband. He had an affair with another woman and when Sherry confronted him he ripped off her gown, put a gun to her head and raped her. She said, "It was the most humiliating thing he'd put me through up to that point. I spent the next two hours in the shower crying. I felt dirty, ashamed, hurt and terrified. The next morning I couldn't even face the children. That night I took a bunch of pills, attempting to kill myself." ... Later her husband moved the girlfriend into the house and forced Sherry to have sex with them as a threesome. When she expressed to his sister that she couldn't go on like this any further, her husband put a gun inside her vagina and told her, "If you ever say another word to anybody else, I'll give you the fucking of your life." This put Sherry in a state of abject terror. Soon afterwards a close friend killed her husband and she was also held responsible and convicted for murder.

In the case of Karen Stout, her husband also brutalized her beyond imagination, beating her to a pulp each time she became pregnant in an effort to kill the fetus, and one time tying her to the bed and using a coat hanger to bring the five month old fetus out of her uterus, after which he proceeded to dismember the live baby piece by piece. Later her husband became interested in partner swapping, and when Karen refused to participate, he arranged for another couple to rape her, which put her in the hospital for four weeks due to rectal hemorrhage. When she tried to press charges, the police discouraged her and she gave up. Another time he took her to the woods, threw her down on rocks and stones, tied her up and began torturing her with branches and sticks, forcing the sticks into her vagina and rectum while she screamed in agony. Finally he raped her. Often he enacted rapes with her, putting on a black ski mask and then tying and gagging her after she had gone to sleep. He would take a knife and cut off her pajamas and run the knife's point all over her body giving constant verbal threats to kill her. He would put cucumbers, squash or his gun inside her vagina. Sometimes he would use dry rough corncobs causing her excruciating pain. He did this at least twice a month. One time he put a live mouse into her vagina and left it biting and scratching her insides trying to get out. Other times he tied her to the bed and rigged up battery charge cables connecting them to her vagina and then would "turn on the juice to see how much I could take before I passed out."[13] Later he tried training the dog to have sex with her. These stories of just two of the ten women in the book are not isolated instances. They represent thousands or millions of cases of rape and sexual abuse going on in marriages in the United States. Diana Russell in her book Rape in Marriage has provided scores of similar examples. In some cases the husband successfully trains the dog to have success with the wife repeatedly with the wife always tied up and helpless. Is it any wonder that even a few of these wives finally "murder" their husbands? Further examples of marital rape will be greater or lesser versions of the above cases. The medical community in America treats millions of marital rape victims annually in hospital emergency rooms. The bottom line is, marital rape is a crime against one half of humanity by the other half. It is a crime by the other half of humanity due to their active participation or due to their shameful silence in the face of the facts!

Reaction of Wives to Marital Rape

In many cases, the reaction of women to being raped by their husbands is no different than if it had been a stranger. Sometimes the reaction is worse. It is one thing to be degraded by a total stranger who doesn't know you personally but who is just a general misogynist and you are one of his many victims. It is another matter when the man you married and love and have often dedicated your life to then rapes you. It is perhaps the ultimate indignity, the ultimate humiliation to a woman. For this very reason, it often signifies the beginning of the end of the marriage, because it is an act of total degradation of the wife. It reveals conclusively to the wife that the husband does not love her at all, and once the wife understands this, there is no reason any longer (except economical) to remain in the marriage.

Contrary to the claims of some sexist chauvinists, wives who are victims of rape suffer tremendous consequences. They suffer physical trauma which includes injuries to the vaginal and anal areas, lacerations (meaning bloody wounds), bruising, torn muscles and vomiting. They may also suffer broken bones, black eyes, bloody noses and knife wounds that occur during the sexual violence. In a study by Campbell and Alford (1989) one half of the marital rape survivors were kicked, hit or burned during sex. Additional potential consequences of rape for wives are vaginal stretching, miscarriages, stillbirths, bladder infections and infertility.[14] Psychological consequences of the rape are anger, severe mental depression, tendency to commit suicide, eating disorders, difficulty in sleeping, nightmares, flashbacks for many years afterwards, and difficulty in establishing new relationships with males due to fear. Sometimes these wives remain in the marriage for the same reasons as wives remain in other kinds of abusive marriage, such as emotional or psychological abuse. They have been completely stripped of their sense of self, their abusive husbands have convinced them they have no value at all, and the thought of living on their own is a terrifying one, both economically and psychologically. They may be convinced in spite of everything that it is a wifely duty to remain with the husband - any husband, even if he is a beast. Or she will be afraid of not seeing her children again if she leaves her husband. The bottom line is, "it's the abuse that's wrong, not loving someone who is abusive. No one deserves to be beaten or raped and no one is required to live in a climate of fear and violence. Everyone has the right to live in a safe home."[15]

Society in its ignorance will often blame the wife for remaining with an abusive husband. This is completely wrong. It is the abusive husband who must be held completely responsible for his behavior, not the victim! According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, "... having a disagreement [over sex] never gives a husband the right to rape a wife."[16]

Who Are These Men?

What kinds of men rape their wives? While studying the different kinds of men who rape, one has to remember one fact that takes priority over all other facts. Nothing justifies rape of a woman. The people who have done research on marital rape are primarily women. It is women who are spearheading the movement for women's rights on this issue. Perhaps for this very reason up until this point not much research has been done on the personalities of men who rape their wives. It is generally agreed, however, that they rape to reassert their power, to control their wives and to express anger, as expressed earlier in this paper. A percentage of husbands rape for reasons of sexual perversion and sadism. The bottom line is, any man who rapes his wife is both a beast and a brute - below the level of animal, and he needs to be dealt with as such. Only the harshest of punishments, short of the death penalty, should be meted to these animals in human form.

Marital Rape in Other Countries

Marital rape is rampant in countries around the world. In the Philippines congressmen declared that there was no such thing as marital rape, but in spite of these dense derelicts an anti-rape law has been passed in the Philippines.[17] Canada and Australia now have passed laws only in the past decade against marital rape. Namibia, Mexico, Ecuador and Honduras have also passed anti-marital rape laws. Sweden had passed such a law way back in the 70s but it has been rarely implemented. Some countries have finally passed anti-rape laws but it continues to be a tremendous struggle to get marital rape included in that law. It takes great courage for a woman to file a case against her husband claiming marital rape. In the process she is going against the entire patriarchal structure comprising mostly male judges, male police, male jury, male prosecutors. As Diana Russell also realized, it was demonstrated repeatedly at the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels in 1976 that despite big differences in the cultures and economics of countries, the similarities of women's torture and sufferings at the hands of their husbands were basically the same. Realizing this fundamental commonality of all women and all women's sufferings, both Diana Russell as well as the great activist Laura X expanded their research and struggles for women's liberation from the national to the international arena.

The Law

A mere ten years ago there were no laws regarding marital rape. Husbands could do as they pleased, and did. Amongst the general rape laws is still a section in 33 states called the Marital Rape Exemption. This continues to excuse most husbands from prosecution if his victim was "just" his wife. On July 5, 1993 marital rape became a crime in all 50 states of the United States. However, as of March 1996 only 17 states and the District of Columbia have abolished the marital rape exemption,[18] which states that a husband cannot be charged with wife rape if the wife was sleeping, mentally or physically impaired or unconscious.[19] These exemptions in the majority of states reflect the continual brutal thinking on the part of men (who make the laws of the country) that marital rape is somehow less traumatic, less reprehensible, less humiliating, and less psychologically and physically damaging than stranger rape. It also reflects the continued belief among the majority of American men that wives are chattels, are their property to use as they please, and nothing more.

Nevertheless, very gradually there is improvement in the legal rights of women. It is possible now for women to sue their husbands for (physical or emotional) pain and suffering due to marital rape and other forms of sexual assault. According to the New York Times, September 10, 1995 all governments present at the UN Convention on Women's Rights in Beijing "voted to abolish the marital privilege to sex on demand."[20] Also in January, 1995 religious leaders across the United States issued a joint public statement declaring it is a woman's right to consent or not consent to sex in marriage.[21]

Looking at international law, Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." Do we see justice for wives who have been raped by their husbands today, anywhere? It is a fundamental violation of international human rights. Yet, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar has said,

"A great change is coming in the collective psychology. The value of intellectuality is increasing as compared to physical strength. And it is not that intellect is only for a handful of people, it is increasing in the whole collective body. That is how the change is coming. The pace of this change will accelerate more and more."[22]

Laura X

It is not possible to discuss the law in regard to marital rape without bringing up Laura X. Laura X's achievements in the realm of marital rape are mind-boggling. If it were women sitting on the Nobel Prize Committee, they would have awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize years ago for her humungous efforts on the behalf of all women. When Laura was 12 years old she saw her cousin being handed over in marriage just like at an auction, and the seeds were sown right then to fight against all forms of slavery. In 1968 she founded the Women's History Library in Berkeley, California, which later doubled as perhaps the first battered women's shelter in United States for abused women and rape victims. The Library printed the women's liberation movement's first newsletter, which talked about rape. In 1969 she adopted the pen name Laura X to protest the anonymity of women's history and the idea that women are owned by their husbands or fathers. She worked to uncover the history of women and their achievements and resurrected International Women?s Day (March 8). She declared March as National Women?s History Month and coined the word "herstory" instead of "history." She continued to collect information about rape and developed awareness of marital rape specifically, coming into contact later with Diana Russell.

Then began Laura's work to stop marital rape. In 1976-1977 she got involved with the murder trial of Judy Hartwell where the judge decided that women had a right to forcibly resist unwanted sexual advances by their husbands. It was a turning point in American history. In 1979 she ran the successful campaign to make marital rape a crime in California. She spoke regularly on college campuses, on television and radio, and at professional associations about marital and date rape. She worked with Jewish women to repeal the marital rape exemption and publicized the outrageous statement of Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Wilson who allegedly said, "But if you can?t rape your wife, who can you rape?" (Freeman,1981). She celebrated the official expansion of International Women's Day into a full week as National Women's History Week, which became law on March 8, 1981. She began organizing national conferences on the theme of marital rape. She did research and worked closely with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Center on Women and Family Law. Laura then began expanding her fight abroad by launching a campaign in Ireland at the International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women at Trinity College, Dublin. She spoke at an international conference in Philadelphia on the occasion of the Bicentennial of the US Constitution. The topic of the conference was the omission of women from constitutions of the world including Untied States. She met Malcolm X's widow, Betty Shabazz and bonded with her over the concept that she and Malcolm shared the same name and the same outrage at slaves (women and blacks) having to carry their slave names. She fought against the growing racist idea that marital rape applied only to African-Americans and not to whites. Laura created the famous Law Chart, which documents all cases and statistics relevant to marital rape. In 1994 she supported Lorena Bobbit by developing a battered woman's syndrome for her defense which resulted in the verdict of not guilty. She worked with Representative Holt in North Carolina who told the NC senators the day after the Bobbitt case became news that "Senators, if you don't give us the law we want, we'll just have to take the law into our own hands." (North Carolina was the last of 50 states to make marital and date rape a crime.) From 1995 onwards she has focused on international campaigns. In Beijing in 1995 she made sure that the ensuing document of the UN Convention on Women's Rights included the statement that a wife has the right to refuse sexual demands from her husband. She helped Montel Williams conduct a show on marital rape wherein he frankly told the husbands they were raping their wives.[23] It is rare to find any human being who has fought so hard against the patriarchal structure, and accomplished so much to simply acquire basic dignity and fundamental human rights for women. Laura X deserves the highest accolades.

What Next?

The question arises, how should we as individuals and as a civic society address the issue of marital rape. Pro-activism is required. It means, taking steps before it happens, not afterwards. There are two primary steps to take. First, the issue of marital rape along with domestic violence needs to become a part of the educational process beginning right from sixth grade onwards. This does not mean an annual visit to schools by a group of well-meaning women who have managed to obtain a state grant to talk about marital rape. It means, the issue must get embedded in the educational process and must be discussed and taught every single year from sixth grade right through to high school graduation. It must be part of the general studies requirements in university and be a fundamental part of the syllabi for courses offered on domestic violence. It is a question of consciousness-raising and making young women (and men) understand what are the rights of women as human beings. Young girls need to be given questionnaires annually and in that questionnaire, the question of rape must be added. Date rape, acquaintance rape, stranger rape and boyfriend rape (indicating future husband rape) must all be in that questionnaire, to make girls alert to future danger and to make them understand that all forms of rape are not to be tolerated. When this kind of widespread education occurs, some of those enlightened women are going to later on work to create laws that will mete out harsh punishment (life sentences) to rapists masquerading as husbands! It will have to reach the point where no man dares to assault a woman for fear of reprisal from the society exemplified by moral indignation and uprising, and from the courts, exemplified by harsh (twenty year to life) prison terms. These are the goals we need to work towards. Tragically, many wives who are in situations of being brutalized and raped on a regular basis by their husbands are completely unaware that wife rape is against the law. Many of them are young. But unless they make a conscious effort to study the subject on the Internet or elsewhere, they cannot know from the present educational system or from general conversation with friends and acquaintances, and certainly not from the media, that marital rape is illegal. They may be afraid to leave such husbands for other reasons also, such as fear of the husband?s reprisal against them (as in other cases of domestic violence). Too many women feel that rape in marriage is part and parcel of the marriage. But this is no longer true thanks to the humungous efforts of women like Laura X and the academic research of Diana Russell, Kristi Yllo and David Finkelhor. All women owe an irredeemable debt to these people for their pioneering research and their deep activism.

Another reason why it is very difficult for women to report the incident of rape by their husbands is that the society by and large does not support them. For example, the majority of rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters do not deal with this issue, and also do not train their staff and volunteers in how to respond to victims of marital rape. The issues are different than for victims of stranger rape. The differences have to be studied by social workers and other health care workers so that they can serve the victims. Less than half of battered women's shelters (42%) and just 789% of rape crisis centers offer training to their staff in marital rape.[24] Less than half of staff at these centers ask the victims any questions about whether they have been raped by their husbands. But, it is critical to ask such questions in order for the information to come out so that the proper legal and psychological help can be given to the victim. Social workers need to be informed in detail about the laws which cover marital rape and whether the exemption clause still exists in their state. Another idea is to include marital rape as part of the mission statement of crisis centers so that the issue is out of the closet and right there on the front page of the brochure!

Most police are completely insensitive to women victims of marital rape. They ignore them and often will not respond their cries for help! Only gradually some police officers are learning how to respond to the desperate pleas from victims of domestic violence. But, it is probable that the issue of marital rape has not been covered in their training. They do not want to deal with it, mostly because they still do not believe in it or they are part of those who want to perpetuate the right of a man to completely dominate his woman even to the point of raping her.

Religious clergy and counselors have also failed miserably to help victims of marital rape, with few exceptions. In one study (Bowker, 1983) it was found that clergy members were the least helpful of all persons the victims turned to for assistance. The thinking of many clergymen remains in the dark ages and is dominated by concepts like, women must obey their husbands (no matter what), and it is a sin if wives refuse to have sex with their husbands. But in fact, this is an ignorant myth perpetuated by men because most victims are not at all withholding sex. Rather, it is the husbands who are violent or perverse in their attitudes to sex.

One more group of individuals who badly need education in the area of marital rape is the group of judges, prosecutors and jury - and of course the jury means the average citizens, any of whom may be called to serve on a jury. All these people - that means the entire population - need to be compelled to study this issue so that it ends. In this manner, it can end through real societal pressure on men and through new harsh laws punishing husbands who dare to commit this outrage.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[25] states that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."[26] Article 4 of the Declaration of Human Rights states that "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude, slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms." Article 5 states that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Article 7 of the Declaration of Human Rights states that "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution." So according to this Article, just as non-financial support of a wife either during a marriage or after it has ended is a violation of the wife?s rights, so also, raping a wife certainly does not constitute equal rights during a marriage. Rather, it is an egregious abomination!

Generally people like to believe that they are evolving, physically, mentally and spiritually to higher planes of existence. In other words, several thousand years ago the first human beings lived in caves and wore animal hides as clothes and hunted animals and ate the fruits in the forest to survive. Then human beings learned about agriculture. After that came the industrial revolution. Now we are in the hi-tech / communications revolution. Throughout this same period also of several thousand years it would be reasonable to say that human beings have evolved spiritually, beginning from that very first human being who queried the existence of a higher Power and first asked the question, who am I, from where do I come and where am I going, to the present world where in every country of the world the majority of people believe in a Supreme Cosmic Nucleus who creates and controls our universe and who also guides and has unbounded love for all His creation. Therefore, surveying the thousands of years of the development of human beings, it can be seen how they have evolved on the physical, mental (intellectual) and spiritual planes.

But now the question arises, if men are still raping women, then really speaking, how much different are we from some of those ancient ancestors who in fact, according to esteemed historian Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, did not maltreat their women compared to so-called progressive societies today. In the hunter-gatherer societies even today the status of women is far better and they are far safer than they are on the streets of New York or in their own homes! He says:

"In every sphere of their lives men have either substantially curtailed women's rights or kept women wholly subservient to their own whims and caprices. At the dawn of creation such an attitude never existed among primitive people. Man's diplomatic proclivity to spread his paramountcy by keeping women in bondage in the guise of social purity had never found its way into the brains of ancient men. That is why even today we do not find any substantial lack of magnanimity among primitive races in respect of women's freedom."[27]

Marital rape is taking us back to something even worse than the primitive animalistic level of existence. How civilized are we really if men are still raping women in the millions in United States alone? There are three situations in which men rape women: (i) men raping strangers - individually or in gangs, (ii) marital rape, and (iii) rape during war. All three of these situations are heinous. They are a flagrant violation of human rights, and all three situations put men at the level of brutes or beasts lower than that of animals. How can we call ourselves "civilized" in relation to other third world countries, for example, when the conduct of millions of men in United States is worse than that of animals? Earlier I wrote paper about the status of women in world religions[28] and found that in Pakistan and India (reflecting Islam and Hinduism) women were perhaps treated the worst. After researching the subject of marital rape in United States, my viewpoint has to change because the problem of rape and particularly marital rape is rampant in our country with millions of women affected. How can we talk about terrorism in other countries and point our finger at some distant foreign figures when right in our own United States of America millions of men are terrifying and terrorizing their wives in the process of brutally raping them? Shrii Sarkar says,

"Freedom is restored through struggle. No one just offers it on a platter, for freedom is not gift; it is one's birthright. But the rights that women have lost ... in most...countries of the world when put to socio-psychoanalysis shows... that women have not really lost their freedom, rather they have delegated their own destiny into the hands of men as a sacred trust and on good faith. That is the plain truth. ... Whatever responsibility there be on this account, it is entirely men's own. If any agitation is called for at all, the initiative must come from the men themselves. Today, having realized the necessity of women, it is now the responsibility of men to gradually restore the rights to women, which one day women surrendered to men in a weak moment of helplessness or in response to their heartfelt sentiments."[29]

Sarkar says further, "The recognition of rights is a legal as well as a collective psychological phenomenon. To expedite progress, an expeditious educational system is the only way."[30] So whose responsibility is it to change the present system? Who is going to fight to annihilate the present outrages happening to women in the form of marital rape? Who is responsible for dragging women down to this lowest level of servitude and slavery? If one were to do a statistical study, how many men would we find who are devoting even a fraction of their lives to the cause of raising women out of the quagmire of mental and physical suffering to new platforms of pride, dignity and liberation? Perhaps we can count those men on one hand. And yet, the great women's rights advocate, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar states clearly above that it is the responsibility and duty of men, not women, to lead this struggle for women's liberation.

Society's response to the issue of marital rape up to this point has been primarily to keep it in the closet. Societal response has been neither reactive nor proactive. Discussion is embryonic. It is perhaps one of the most difficult issues for women to talk about openly, usually because they do not realize that thousands of other women around them are also silently suffering. But, due to that very suffering, this author hopes that more and more women are going to come out and speak, demand their rights, and in particular file more court cases and demand more laws, and demand that the existing laws be properly implemented so as to protect them from further harm. Hence the greatest way to aid this movement towards achieving the fundamental rights and freedoms of all women is for the victims to come out of their tragic and terrifying closet, to tell their stories to all who will listen, to publish their stories, and to go to the courts and demand justice. If victims come up against a stonewall (of societal prejudice and legal indifference), they must get an axe or stick of dynamite and crash through that wall, and keep talking and keep demanding justice until the end of their lives. By doing this, these victims will have turned their personal sufferings into a tremendous service to the society and towards the upliftment of all women.

There needs to be major consciousness-raising in the form of books, films, lectures, seminars and workshops. Even at domestic violence conferences, the subject of marital rape is often minimized or avoided all together. This has to change. It needs to be brought to the forefront. Why? Because it is the worst humiliation a wife can endure. There are many ways to humiliate and degrade a woman, but marital sexual abuse is surely the worst. Marital rape is a painful subject to research on. It is deeply painful to study the lives of innocent women trapped in marriages where brutal, angry or sadistic rape was often a common occurrence. It becomes the moral obligation of all human beings to inform themselves and to fight tooth and nail against this injustice, and to work towards creating another kind of world where women do not have to be afraid, where women can walk with heads held high, and where they can sleep easy at night knowing that the laws of the land and the cardinal human values of the collective society around them will always protect them.

I would like to think that with hard work, with struggle, with education, by writing, speaking and publicizing, that a new era will dawn for women, a new culture that will grant them equal dignity alongside men. Perhaps it will be the new Zeitgeist of our time. Shrii Sarkar has declared:

"The trend of the age is irrepressible, for in this too there is dynamism. It is the duty of the wise to channelize it to the path of benevolence by applying their own wisdom to the task. To thwart the spirit of the age is beyond the power of any individual or any collective force. That dynamic spirit of the age - that Zeitgeist - speeds ahead unabated with all force, throwing down anyone who tries to stand and thwart it, and that floored, sprawling creature with imbecilic and glum eyes keeps staring vacantly at progress."[31]

The cause of marital rape is the predominant patriarchal structure, which has turned evil, demonic and oppressive beyond measure. This oppression and exploitation of women is more or less the same in all countries. In nearly all countries of the world there is marital rape. In nearly all countries women remain slaves to the male-dominated social order. We must vehemently decry this domination by men, and we must expose their evil psycho-economic exploitation. In fact, it is the economic helplessness of women in all countries that leads to their slavery and servitude at the hands of men. According to Shrii Sarkar, there needs to be (1) free education for all women in all countries of the world, (2) no discrimination towards women in the social, educational and religious spheres, and (3) the provision of economic and social security to all women. Again, in the words of Sarkar,

"We stand to create a powerful, dynamic and upsurging social consciousness, especially among women, so that they are inspired to rise, abolish dogma and annihilate all symbols of slavery, and usher in a new era of coordinated cooperation and glorious achievement. Let women be the vanguard of a new revolution which humanity must achieve for a glorious tomorrow!"[32]

Let the intelligent women emerge from amongst all exploited women. They have detected the exploiting men's techniques to fool and hoodwink them and keep them down, be it through rape or other kinds of physical and mental torture. And let the exploiters become active to suppress those intelligent women so as to prevent the germination of the seed of women's liberation. Presently men have control of the education system, the printing presses and the mass media - they control all the public relations agencies that in turn control the mass media. Due to this control of the media by men, millions of women have never heard of marital rape even today. In fact men even dominate and keep women down even in the most "progressive" NGOs and IGOs. But, let them try to stem this tide of movement by women towards their own liberation. The day will come when women will rise up en masse in revolt and the high sand embankments reeking with sexism and chauvinism, oppression and suppression of women will get washed away by the floods of revolution. It is not enough to fight against marital rape and pass laws to make marital rape a crime punishable by life sentences. Women must fight against the entire patriarchal structure that keeps them down, keeps them slaves servile to evil demons.[33] Women must fight against the corporate media culture that actively reduces them to chattel and sex objects, thus paving the path for marital rape. And when this revolution occurs, let the women make a thorough study of the types of socio-psycho-economic subjugation that they had been subjected to by men. Let all fear leave their minds. Let them cast aside the shackles of innumerable impositions and restrictions, innumerable do's and don'ts. Without education, women remain as "immobile pieces of living baggage, exploited by their male counterparts according to their sweet will."[34] Now let both the physical and the intellectual exploitation of women end. Men using the garb of religion have eternally worked to instill fear complex in women so that women keep mum. Women should never tolerate marital rape. By accepting marital rape in their own lives and marriages, they are condemning their sisters, their daughters and their granddaughters to the same fate - the agony and the torture of marital rape. Thus by keeping silent and tolerating this injustice they will not only harm themselves but the entire humanity will be harmed. By the grace of God, let women everywhere pursue the struggle for sexual dignity, for physical and intellectual emancipation, and for spiritual liberation!

Notes

[1] When researching this subject, I made a point of telling friends and acquaintances. One of them then volunteered to tell me that she had been raped once by her husband and that it had been a horrible experience. A second person also volunteered to say that for the nine year she had been married, her husband had compelled her to watch pornographic films and then afterwards enact what they had watched together. According to the research, this is also a form of sexual abuse of wives. Both these women later left their husbands, not for this reason but due to the husbands' infidelity.

[2] While this author has about 30 books on the subject of domestic violence, it is noteworthy that the topic of marital rape is not included in any except two of those books, and in those instances in a very superficial manner.

[3] The three books considered as classics used in research on the subject of marital rape are: License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives, by David Finkelhor and Kersti Yllo; Rape in Marriage, by Diana E. Russell, and Against Our Will, by Susan Brownmiller.

[4] Kersti Yllo, "Wife Rape: A Social Problem for the 21st Century," Violence Against Women, Vol. 5, Issue 9, September 1999.

[5] Patricia Mahoney, The Wife Rape Fact Sheet, National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center, Wellesley College, USA.

[6] Barbara Crossette, "Rights Gains are Preserved at UN Forum on Women," New York Times, June 11, 2000.

[7] Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College. http://www.wellesley.edu/wcw/projects/mrape.html.

[8] http://www.Wellesley.edu/wcw/projects/mrape.html.

[9] Produced by Sarah Buel and Cambridge Documentary Films.

[10] Garda Ghista, "The Status of Women in World Religions," http://www.proutworld.org.

[11] Finkelhor and Yllo, License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1985.

[12] Mary Shaughnessy and Elizabeth Beattie, Sisters in Pain: Battered Women Fight Back, The University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Raquel Kennedy Bergen, Marital Rape: http://students.washington.edu/pyr/marital_rape.htm

[15] http://www.wellesley.edu/wcw/projects/mrape.html, and also http://www.vawprevention.org/research/wiferape.shtml.

[16] http://www.wellesley.edu/wcw/projects.mrape.html

[17] http://www.geocities.com/women_lead/wlead4cmaritalrape.htm

[18i] http://www.wellesley.edu/wcw/projects/mrape.html

[xix] http://students.washington.edu/pyr/marital_rape.htm

[19] Seth Faison, "Women's Meeting Agrees on Right to Say No to Sex - A Spouse's Prerogative, Draft Wording Asserts Right to Make Sexual Decisions Free From Coercion," New York Times, September 10, 1995.

[20] Roy Rivenburg, "When the Laws of God and Men Converge," Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1996.

[21] Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Awakening of Women, Kolkata, Ananda Marga Publications, Part 1, Section 3-5.

[22] Information on Laura X is taking from: "Accomplishing the Impossible: An Advocate's Notes from the Successful Campaign to Make Marital and Date Rape a Crime in all 50 US States and Other Countries," by Laura X. Violence Against Women, Vol. 5, Issue 9, September, 1999.

[23] Marital Rape: http://students.washington.edu/pyr/marital_rape.htm

[24] While when it was initially created in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was considered a theoretical or idealistic document, over the past 55 years it has gradually come to be regarded as a fundamental part of international law, and is referred to constantly at the United Nations.

[25] Some good persons need to lobby to change this wording to read, "brotherhood and sisterhood."

[26] Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Awakening of Women, Part One, Section 2-1.

[27] Garda Ghista, "Status of Women in World Religions," http://www.proutworld.org/features.htm

[28] Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Awakening of Women, Kolkata, Ananda Marga Publications, Part One, Section 2-1.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid, Part One, Section 3-4.

[32] The term "evil demon" is used by Shrii Prabhat Sarkar.

[33] Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Awakening of Women, Ananda Marga Publications, Kolkata, 1992. p. 50-114.
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Garda Ghista is the author of The Gujarat Genocide: A Case Study in Fundamentalist Cleansing, and President of the World Prout Assembly. She can be reached at editor@worldproutassembly.org.