Entitlement and Marital Rape

Sarah Palin's pick for Attorney General of Alaska is running into some problems. A letter by Leah Burton, reproduced here and here, says that Wayne Anthony Ross spoke at a 1991 meeting of the group Dads Against Discrimination. Burton's letter alleges that Ross said, "If a guy can't rape his wife, who's he gonna rape?" I have several things to say about this statement in isolation, not as an indicator of Ross' potential job performance as AG. It hasn't been proven that he said this yet.

1. This statement might mean, "If a man can't rape his wife, he will inevitably go rape someone else, and that's not good." I would take issue with the idea that a man is inevitably a rapist. Even if this statement doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it might mean that those men who are rapists should confine their activities to one victim. I disagree that it's helpful to the world to assign one woman to absorb the pain of all potential victims. If a wife is made into the mechanism by which society controls rapists, then society completely ignores any punishment or accountability for rapists themselves. How about wives don't have to be victims of sexual assault at all, because men realize that women's bodies should be under individual women's control?
2. The more conventional way to read this statement is "If a man can't rape his wife, then what is a wife for?" This view is akin to the idea that marital rape doesn't exist, because "rape" means "have sex with someone without their permission" and wives, through their marriage vows, give their husbands blanket sexual consent until the marriage ends or one spouse dies. This view depends on the idea that women are not people with full agency within marriage, and that their bodily integrity is secondary to their husbands' sexual desires.
   

The statement attributed to Ross led me to revisit Afghan leader Mohammad Asif Mohseni's statements about the law that grants a husband sexual access to his wife every fourth night. The Globe and Mail reported this story and Mr. Mohseni's statements:

“If she is not sick, and if she does not have another problem, it is the right of a man to ask for sex and she should make herself ready for it. This is the right of a man,” Mr. Mohseni explained.

Mr. Mohseni argued that women and men are very far from equal in today's Afghanistan and should not be treated as such. He pointed out that many rural women are illiterate and would not be able to find work if they were asked to provide some of the family's financial support. Men are typically the breadwinners in Afghan households, expected to provide for their wives and children.

“It is not possible for all women to pay the same amount of money as men are paying. For all these expenses, can't we at least give the right to a husband to demand sex from his wife after four nights?” he said.

Look at the similarity in the worldview of a person who would say what Ross is alleged to have said and someone who advocates legal marital rape. Both view sex as a commodity: something that women give and men take. Neither view women as owners of their sexuality. Rather, both seem to believe that a woman's husband owns her body for the purpose of satisfying his sexual pleasure. Neither discuss the ramifications of forced sexual intercourse on family dynamics or women's physical and emotional well-being. Neither address any non-illness-related reason a woman might legitimately withold consent from her husband, and indeed the decision over whether the reason is worthy isn't mentioned in Ross' statement and is entirely within the law's power (and not the woman's) in Mohseni.

American culture is called "rape culture" by feminists because of statements like the one Ross is alleged to have made. However, somehow we hold ourselves apart from Muslim governments, believing the US to be much more progressive and enlightened. However, our cultures are more similar than many in the West would like to admit, the difference is a matter of degree within the same basic model. Any society that works within the concept of "giving" women rights ignores the fact that women, as humans, are born with rights that nobody has the power to give or take away. If a society keeps women from acting on their own behalf and representing themselves in government and exercising bodily control and sexual agency, that society denies women's humanity.