Legal Commentary

Patriarchy

By Big Tent Democrat

As women here do most mornings, Madelena Ngalya left the village around 9 a.m. one recent day and walked alone along a path through the jungle to her farm. The 56-year-old widow had been planting there for about an hour when she saw a soldier at the edge of the field. He walked toward her. "I started trembling when I saw him," she said. "I felt unable to cry, even to scream. I said, 'My son, how are you?'" The soldier asked whether she was by herself. "I said, 'I'm alone here,' she said. "He said, 'If you cry, we have many soldiers in the jungle, and when others hear you cry, they will come to you, too.' My body was like dead. Then he did what he wanted to do."

More . . .

. . . Ngalya and other women wonder whether their own fiercely patriarchal society is encouraging soldiers to rape. Girls here are often forced to marry as young as 13. In some traditions, a kind of ritualized rape is part of a boy's coming of age. Prostitution is common. And in general, Bitondo said with a sense of exhausted humor, women are expected not so much to enjoy their husbands as service them. "According to our custom, even though he's your husband, when he needs sex, he doesn't have to ask your permission," she said. "In this territory, men take women like an instrument that doesn't have any value."

That is one form of patriarchy. Here is another:

A male student rose to ask a question about Chinese financial contracts with Congo. The student asked Clinton what President Obama would think of the deal, but pool reporters in the room said the translator made a mistake, posing the question as what would Bill Clinton think. Clinton looked surprised when she first heard the translation in the headset, and then sharply replied, "You want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. You ask my opinion. I will tell you my opinion; I'm not going to channel my husband."

At the State Department, Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley said the question she heard "struck a nerve," that her opinion on the matter was apparently of less interest than that of her husband, the former president. Crowley told CNN that Clinton's answer must be considered in the context of her African trip. "The secretary of state is going to Goma Tuesday, to draw attention to the plight of women who are victims of rape as a weapon of war" in Congo, Crowley said. "She did react to what she heard," Crowley explained, but regardless that the interpreter may have gotten it wrong, "you can't separate the question from the setting." He said "If Africa, if Congo is going to advance, women have to play a more significant role. She was in the setting of a town hall, and the questioner was interested in what two men thought, not the secretary of state."

This is a good report from CNN. But how did it play with Tweety and his gang? I did not see it but I have no doubt how it played. Probably something like this And like this.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).