Gender Violence and Research on Women/Gender/Sexuality Reading Response

When reading the first two articles listed on the syllabus, written by Nina Lakhani and Paula Godoy, I was horrified but not surprised about the content. These two articles deal with the more explicit elements of the perversion and struggle both over women’s bodies and physically on them. Historically, women’s bodies have always been contested spaces. Sights of the physical debates surrounding civility — we must civilize the “savages — and socio-cultural and political differences. The attacks against women, whether sexual in nature or culturally-based, are meaningful, deliberate acts of desecration. My experience with this in the academic sphere mostly comes from my studies of the colonization of southeast Asia and the attempts to “modernize” Soviet Asia, in which the recorded attacks are more symbolic, and often include the dismantling a cultural institution or practice that women take part in. While I am sure sexual and gender-based violence occurred within the system, that was not necessarily the primary aim of the tactic.

Therefore, the first article, in my mind, follow the logical progression from attacks on a wide group, to targeted attacks on women who belong in increasingly smaller demographic groups for strategic, social gains. The second then deals with the historical, social, cultural, and political contexts in which Guatemala belongs that allows femicide to flourish. Again, while horrifying, this progression of both action and scholarship surrounding said action makes some logical sense to me.

The third article really forced me to rethink my conceptions around what gender and sexual-based violence actually can be in practice. As Theidon brings up, the state-sponsored campaign led by an entire state department is much harder to grapple with in a practical, legal sense than actions taken by “a few bad apples” in the armed forces. But the more I reflected on it, the more this state-sponsored activity seems like a truer continuation of a colonial practice.

Post 5pm edit:

I was also struck by the brilliance of the former president to claim that the campaign was to fight poverty. While poverty in practice, is incredibly loaded both in who makes up impoverished people and how to fight against it, it is generally understood to be bad, and fighting it therefore feels like a valiant effort. Physical attempts to move people from areas or gentrifying areas can be violent and messy, and so the idea of voluntary sterilization seems like a non-violent way to actively confront the problem of poverty. But as Theidon points out, the Peruvian underclass in ethnicized and therefore sterilization does become a sort of social cleansing, and especially when coupled with the demands of the ministry itself, led to the “success” of the program.