"Sexual Terrorism"
Carole J. Sheffield
The right of men to control the female body is a cornerstone of patriarchy. It is expressed by their efforts to control pregnancy and childbirth and to define female health care in general. Male opposition to abortion is rooted in opposition to female autonomy. Violence and the threat of violence against females represent the need of patriarchy to deny that a woman’s body is her own property ant that no one should have access to it without her consent. Violence and its corollary, fear, serve to terrorize females and to maintain the patriarchal definition of woman’s place.
The word
terrorism invokes images of furtive organizations of the far right or left, whose members blow up buildings and cars, hijack airplanes, and murder innocent people in some country other than ours. But there is different kind of terrorism, one that so pervades our culture that we have learned to live with it as though it were the naturally order of things. Its targets are females – of all ages, races, and classes. It is the common characteristic of rape, wife battery, incest, pornography, harassment, and all forms of sexual violence. I call it
sexual terrorism because it is a system by which males frighten and, by frightening, control and dominate females.
The concept of terrorism captured my attention in an “ordinary” event. One afternoon I collected my laundry and went to a nearby Laundromat. The place is located in a small shopping center on a very busy highway. After I had loaded and started the machines, I became acutely aware of my environment. It was just after 6:00pm and dark; the other stores were closed; the Laundromat was brightly lit; and my car was the only one in the lot. Anyone passing by could readily see that I was along and isolated. Knowing that rape is a crime of opportunity, I became terrified. I wanted to leave and find a Laundromat that was busier, but my clothes were well into the wash cycle, and besides, I felt I was being “silly”, “paranoid.” The feeling of terror persisted, so I sat in my car, windows up, and doors locked. When the wash was completed, I dashed in, threw the clothes into the dryer, and ran back out to my car. When the clothes were dry, I tossed them recklessly into the basket and hurriedly drove away to fold them in the security of my home.
Although I was not victimized in a direct, physical way or by objective or measurable standards, I felt victimized. It was, for me, a terrifying experience. I felt controlled by an invisible force. I was angry that something as commonplace as doing laundry after a day’s work jeopardized my well-being. Mostly I was angry at being unfree: a hostage of a culture that, for the most part, encourages violence against females, instructs men in the methodology of sexual violence, and provides them with ready justification for their violence. I was angry that I could be victimized by being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The essence of terrorism is that one never knows when is the wrong time and where is the wrong place.
Following my experience at the Laundromat, I talked with my students about terrorization. Women students began to open up and reveal terrors that they had kept secret because of embarrassment: fears of jogging alone, dining alone, going to the movies alone. One woman recalled feelings of terror in her adolescence when she did child care for extra money. Nothing had ever happened and she had no been afraid of anyone in particular, but she had felt a vague terror when being driven home late at night by the man of the house.
The men listened incredulously and then demanded equal time. The harder they tried the more they realized how very different – qualitatively, quantitatively, and contextually – their fears were. All agreed that, while they experience fear in a violent society, they did not experience terror; nor did they experience fear of rape or sexual mutilation. They felt more in control, either from a psychophysical sense of security that they could defend themselves or from a confidence in being able to determine wrong places and times. All the women admitted fear and anxiety when walking to their cars on campus, especially after an evening class or activity. None of the men experience fear on campus at any time. The men could be rather specific in describing when they were afraid: in Harlem, for example, or in certain parts of downtown Paterson, New Jersey – the places that have a reputation for violence. But these places could either be avoided or, if not, the men felt capable of self-protective action. Above all, male students said that they
never feared being attacked simply because they were male. They
never feared going to a movie or to dinner alone. Their daily activities were not characterized by a concern for their physical integrity.
As I read the literature on terrorism it became clear that both sexual violence and nonviolent sexual intimidation could be better understood as terrorism. For example, although an act of rape, an unnecessary hysterectomy, and the publishing of
Playboy magazine appear to be quite different, they are in fact more similar than dissimilar. Each is based on fear, hostility, and a need to dominate women. Rape is an act of aggression and possession, not of sexuality. Unnecessary hysterectomies are extraordinary abuses of power rooted in man’s concept of woman as primarily a reproductive being and in his need to assert power over reproduction.
Playboy, like all forms of pornography, attempts to control women through the power of definition. Male pornographers define women’s sexuality for their male customers. The basis of pornography is men’s fantasies about women’s sexuality.
Components of Sexual Terrorism
The literature on terrorism does not provide a precise definition. Mine is take from Hacker, who says that “terrorism aims to frighten, and by frightening, to dominate and control.” Writers agree more readily on the characteristics and functions of terrorism than on a definition. This analysis will focus on five components to illuminate the similarities of and distinctions between sexual terrorism and political terrorism. The first components are: ideology, propaganda, indiscriminate and amoral violence, voluntary compliance, and society’s perception of the terrorist and the terrorized.
An
ideology is an integrated set of beliefs about the world that explain the way things are and provides a vision of how they ought to be. Patriarchy, meaning the” rule of the fathers,” is the ideological foundation of sexism in our society. It asserts the superiority of males and the inferiority of females. It also provides the rationale for sexual terrorism. The taproot of patriarchy is the masculine/warrior ideal. Masculinity must include not only a proclivity for violence but also all those characteristics necessary for survival: aggression, control, emotional reserve, rationality, sexual potency, etc. Marc Feigen Fasteau, in
The Male Machine, argues that “men are brought up with the idea that there ought to be some part of them, under control until released by necessity, that thrives on violence. This capacity, even affinity, for violence, lurking beneath the surface of every real man, is supposed to represent the primal untamed base of masculinity.”
Propaganda is the methodical dissemination of information for the purpose of promoting a particular ideology. Propaganda, by definition, is biased or even false information. Its purpose is to present one point of view on a subject and discredit opposing points of view. Propaganda is essential to the conduct of terrorism. According to Francis Watson, in
Political Terrorism: The Threat and the Response, “Terrorism must not be defined only in terms of violence, but also in terms of propaganda. The two are in operation together, tempting to influence the thinking and actions of people. Propaganda is a persuasive means for doing the same thing.” The propaganda of sexual terrorism is found in all expressions of the popular culture: films, television, music, literature, advertising, pornography. The propaganda of sexual terrorism is also found in the ideas of patriarchy expressed in science, medicine, and psychology.
The third component, which is common to all forms of political terrorism, consists of “indiscriminateness, unpredictability, arbitrariness, ruthless destructiveness and amorality.” Indiscriminate violence and amorality are also at the heart of sexual terrorism. Every female is a potential target of violence – at any age, at any time, in any place. In her study of rape, Susan Brownmiller argues that rape is “no more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” Further, as we shall see, amorality pervades sexual violence. Child molesters, incestuous fathers, wife beaters, and rapists often do not understand that they have done anything wrong. Their views are routinely shared by police officers, lawyers, and judges, and crimes of sexual violence are rarely punished in American society.
The fourth component of the theory of terrorism is “voluntary compliance.” The institutionalization of a system of terror requires the development of mechanisms other than sustained violence to achieve its goals. Violence must be employed to maintain terrorism, but sustained violence can be costly and debilitating. Therefore, strategies for ensuring a significant degree of voluntary compliance must be developed. Sexual terrorism is maintained to a great extent by an elaborate system of sex-role socialization that in effect instructs men to be terrorists in the name of masculinity and women to be victims in the name of femininity.
Sexual and political terrorism differ in the final component, perception of the terrorist and the victim. In political terrorism we know who is the terrorist and who is the victim. We may condemn or condone the terrorist depending on our political views, but we sympathize with the victim. In sexual terrorism, however, we blame the victim and excuse the offender. We believe that the offender either is “sick” and therefore in need of our compassion or is acting out normal male impulses…
Conclusion
Sexual terrorism is a system that functions to maintain male supremacy through actual and implied violence. Violence against the female body (rape, battery, incest, and harassment) and the perpetuation of fear of violence form the basis of patriarchal power. Both violence and fear are functional. Without the power to intimidate and to punish, the domination of women in all spheres of society – political, social, and economic – could not exist.
