Body Matters; Marital Rape, Human Insecurity and the Supposed Relativity

 

(Source: UN Women) 

For a while now, discussions and debates have unfolded over the Delhi High Court’s hearing of petitions over criminalization of maritalrape  (including the dominantly poorly informed and largely misogynistic #MaritalStrike oppositions). The fact that men who force their wives into sexual intercourse wives are protected under the present legal framework is quite telling of our socio-political context. I personally found it very frustrating how difficult it apparently is, for society to get used to the idea of consent. The criminalization of marital rape however, will only be the first step; we do after all have to agree that our legal and socio-political frameworks are dismissive of anything beyond the conventional heteronormative prescriptions.

‘What’s any of this got to do with security?’, is a question one might ask. ‘Security is all great powers, and militarized men and international peace conferences, events and actors on the spectrum of high politics. Surely, this is far too trivial to be discussed as a matter of security.’ Despite developments in the field involving post-positivism and critical theoretical lenses, the impression that Cold War era realist notions of security (Bilgin, Booth and Jones, 1998) have left on us, clearly still remains. We have to remember that the personal is political.

 

Security thus ideally concerns, a range of threats to ‘real people in real places’(Hirschauer, 2019). We’ve got to shift our referent from being the nation-state in the anarchic international order to individuals and communities. Human security, or perhaps the better suited term of human insecurity, is very much a reality. With the increasing severity of nation-states’ tapping into what Foucault calls biopower (he defines it as, “techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of population (Foucault, 1976)), only emphasizes on the need to move away from the typical referent. It’s along this theme that I hope to plan out my series of posts. In today’s post, I’ll be breaking down the relativity of security in light of the marital rape debate.

 

The institutions of marriages and families have historically been a central part of South Asian culture, India particularly. As some sort of a social rite of passage located in our dominantly patriarchal society, the risk of sexual violence is greater. The increase in domestic abuse cases particularly in pandemic India, is an indicator of severity. The National Commission forWomen recorded a 2.5 rise in domestic violence between February and March 2020 alone. With a legal structure that does not recognize marital rape for what it is, it’s quite clear that individual or human security is facing a systemic threat. To further locate this in a more structured discipline, we can invoke feminist security studies’ identification of everyday life violences. Ken Booth’s famous definition of security is equally relevant in identifying Indian women who have been subjected to or are at the risk of marital rape as the referent here.

 

 “Emancipation is the freeing of people...from the physical and human constraints which stops them from carrying out what they would freely choose to do...Emancipation, theoretically, is security (Booth, 1991).”

 

The process of identifying the referent however, does not stop here. This is exactly where we have to keep relativity in mind, in a conception as wide and diverse as human security. The nature of arguments and oppositions that have been put against the criminalization are indicative of another referent; who clearly conceives security in very different terms. What do we make of it? The Center’s statement to the court in 2017, argued against the criminalization stating that it would “destabilize the institution of marriage and become a tool for the harassment of husbands” (a more recent statement is yet to be provided). Further a significant portion of the  #MaritalStrike response (apart from those meant to turn it around) are mere speculations entrenched in misogyny; worries about losing their patriarchal privileges. In the midst of this babble however, one can find few concerns with valid basis about the failure of Indian constitutionality to recognize that the threat of gender based sexual violence extends to men too.

To see the state itself, as an institution meant to serve its citizens interests, dismiss a positive structural change on the grounds of speculation that it may be misused against the male population (let me remind you, that the prospect of legal misuse exists with nearly every law in operation today and thus cannot be the sole reason to institute an otherwise very positive legal amendment) reflects a very clear stance of what security is to it. What would ensure security for one section of the population, is very detrimental to the right wing masculine state as well as the individual actors who benefit from the patriarchal society. There you have it, the relativity of security.

 

 The means of achieving security for either referent lies in the legal process; for one, doing away the exception in the Section 375, and for the other to stall and deliberate and preferably pursue status quo. Security is relative and through the process of securitization, we’ve seen that it is possible to identify multiple referents. But the situation becomes even more complex when we ask ourselves who’s ‘security’ is more important? Adapting a more critical lens, means your understanding of things is a little more normative and aware of historical inequalities, unlike a realist perception of taking the situation for what it is. Dismantling the patriarchal structure practically speaking, would not be robbing any one of their security but would merely be taking away any unequal privileges and impunity enjoyed by them. To implement it across a diverse society is no doubt a challenge, but is a necessary one.  

My point here is that regardless of the relativity of security, in matters of socio-political human security it may be possible to single out conceptions that are actually rooted in constitutional morality and ethical values. This however is further proof that post-Cold War issues of security shouldn’t be entirely packed into uniform theoretical frameworks. There needs to be a curious balance of value judegements and subjectivity. It however remains to be seen what ultimately the system makes of the alleged relativity in this case; most recently  the Center had stated that consultation was still ongoing on this ‘contentious’ issue.

References

Bilgin, Pinar, Ken Booth and Richard Wyn Jones. "Security Studies: The next Stage?” Naçao e Defesa, 1998. https://www.academia.edu/393278/_1998_Security_studies_the_next_stage

Booth, Ken. "Security and Emancipation" Review of International Studies (1991). https://www.jstor.org/stable/20097269

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976) 

Hirschauer, Sabine. "For real people in real places: the Copenhagen school and the other “little security nothings”" European Security, 28:4, 413-430, December 2019. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09662839.2019.1656199?journalCode=feus20.

Krause, Keith, and Michael Williams. “Security and ‘Security Studies.’” The Oxford Handbook of International Security, 2018, 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198777854.013.2 

Mathur, Aneesha. "Marital rape: Legal issues and debate | All you need to know" IndiaToday, January 22, 2022. https://www.indiatoday.in/law/story/explainer-the-debate-over-marital-rape-1903050-2022-01-22.

Rampal, Nikhil. "Men on ‘marriage strike’ against marital rape laws. Some people laugh, say good riddance" The Print, January 20, 2022. https://theprint.in/opinion/pov/men-on-marriage-strike-against-marital-rape-laws-some-people-laugh-say-good-riddance/808285/

Singh, Soibam. "Need time to consult stakeholders on marital rape, Centre tells HC" The Hindu, February 4, 2022. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/need-time-to-consult-stakeholders-on-marital-rape-centre-tells-hc/article38373365.ece

"Your questions answered: Women and COVID-19 in India" UN Women, July 27, 2021. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2021/7/faq-women-and-covid-19-in-india#:~:text=In%20India%2C%20reports%20of%20domestic,between%20February%20and%20May%202020.