When we hear the phrase “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” we tend to think of Adolf Hitler. Though some of us attribute the quote to historian and moralist Lord Acton, whose full name was John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834–1902), the idea of someone’s utter corruption through unchecked authority was also remarked on by French poet Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790-1869) and prior to that, by William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778). These men may have believed they were talking about abuse of power in government, referring specifically to those individuals with the authority and influence to subject others to their wills, including slaveowners. Certainly they had no reason to consider women.
It may be helpful to understand that, in every state except for New Jersey, American women lost the right to vote nearly 150 years before they won it back. In 1776, John Adams responds to his wife’s letter of two weeks prior, writing:
We have been told that our struggle has loosened the bonds of government everywhere; that children and apprentices were disobedient; that schools and colleges were grown turbulent; that Indians slighted their guardians, and negroes grew insolent to their masters. But your letter was the first intimation that another tribe, more numerous and powerful than all the rest, were grown discontented.
Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems…. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight.
This was because she asked him, several months prior to the birth of a new nation in 1776, to “remember the ladies.”
Male privilege has a way of fading into shades of gray. In history books depicting men of different nations shooting and stabbing each other in the rise to power, the struggles of women may seem insignificant. Rape of women of all ages seems justifiable, even a cultural tradition. An Australian study shows that in Papua, New Guinea, gender based violence (GBV) is a problem with widespread social and economic impact. The study finds that:
There is a discrepancy in the level of reporting of violence between the women and men surveyed in Bougainville, with men reporting a higher prevalence of intimate partner violence than women. This difference is a reminder of the inherent challenges in gathering this type of data. The report suggests a number of reasons for this: that in contexts in which partner violence is relatively normalized, there is less shame and stigma for men to admit perpetrating violence than for women to admit experiencing it; where impunity is common, women’s fear of further violence is likely greater than men’s fear of legal repercussions; and that men (and women) may fail to recognize the coercive nature of their (or their partner’s) behavior when it comes to sex within marriage.
Gender violence against women has proven to have negative economic impact on societies worldwide. A researcher named Olufunmilayo I. Fawole asserts that economic violence leads to a deepening of poverty, and asserts that governments should assist in its prevention.
So, why do men rape? An informal study on AskReddit in July 2012 generated interesting admissions from the rapists themselves. A more recent survey suggests “the answers…lie in correcting the mindset that leads to such incidents.” Myths about rape and even pregnancy during rape, interestingly enough, are perpetuated by the government, or men in power. One of the myths is that rape is about sex or love when it is really about one person gaining power over another. This is one reason why men rape children.
If a legal system isn’t in place to educate men and tell them rape is wrong, that it’s socially unacceptable; if it instead reinforces cultural messages depicting women as the property of men to be used sexually, then the United States will wind up in a third-world economic predicament because the women have no rights to property or even to their own bodies.
As Abigail Adams wrote to her husband in 1776, “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. … That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute….” These words are true today, along with the saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
(Special thanks to the bloggers and news sources to whom I’ve linked their contributions to this post.)
OlivierCrafting 