I remember the first time I was made aware about the laws (or more appropriately lack thereof) pertaining to marital rape in Sri Lanka. For those of you who are not familiar with this, the concept of marital rape is one that simply does not exist in my island homeland of Sri Lanka. Marital rape is not considered a crime in Sri Lanka and therefore any element of sexual assault or violence within the confines of marriage carries no penalty before the law.
The entire rhetoric towards this lack of protection for women revolves around the concept of entitlement and a perceived ownership by husbands over their wives once legally bound. The notion of consent when it comes to women choosing when to have sex is or whether or not they even want to is a concept that doesn’t appear to exist.
I suppose this also comes down to a lack of thinking around women’s agency towards their voicing own sexual desires. Of course in a Global South developing nation (or really any nation in general) which also happens to be deeply patriarchal a woman is considered to be an entirely asexual creature. The idea that she should or would want to have some say around the sexual activity within her marriage seems to be almost unfathomable.
There is then also the element of a ‘put up and shut up’ methodology in which all wives are supposed to follow. Recent reports coming out of Sri Lanka have suggested that the prevalence Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) represents the highest form of Gender Based Violence in the nation. The majority of incidences of physical violence alone are not spoken of openly let alone reported to judicial authorities. The notion of sexual violence here is reported even less given the stigma and cultural taboo associated with speaking about sex, sexual activity and rape outside of the household confines.
Let’s not pussyfoot around this, marital rape is indeed a form of sexual abuse. The practice has been normalised through a concept in which the man is the head of the household and therefore all his wills and desires must be met at any cost. Further entrenching this notion has meant that all wives in this pyramid structure are deemed as inherently inferior and therefore afforded with no decision making capacity or influence in terms of their own sexual activity.
So I ask you today, is it really a wife’s prerogative to passively submit to her husband without the ability to exercise choice and autonomy regarding decision making capacity for her own body?
Sex through the use force and without consent in any shape, instance or form is rape. Denying a woman’s ability to be protected from this according to the law is a violation of her basic human rights. Sexual abuse and violence is exactly that whether a piece of paper says you are married or not. So ask me again how women are not equal in society or before the law one more time… Oh and FYI arguing “but she’s my wife is not a defence!”
End – Day 5.
*For further reading about GBV & Rape in Sri Lanka, please refer to: http://assets.wusc.ca/Website/Programs/WDP/backgroundPaper.pdf
I blog for Change. 