Family Honour and Sexual Purity
Another factor involving social relationships is a family response to sexual violence that blames women without punishing men, concentrating instead on restoring lost family honor. Such a response creates an environment in which rape can occur with impunity.
While families will often try to protect their women from rape and may also put their daughters on contraception to prevent visible signs should it occur, there is rarely much social pressure to control young men or persuade them that coercing sex is wrong. Instead, in some countries, there is frequently support for family members to do whatever is necessary including murder to alleviate the shame associated with a rape or other sexual transgression. In cases where the victim was a single pregnant female, the offender was either acquitted of murder or received a reduced sentence.
Read more about this topic: Victim Blaming
Famous quotes containing the words family, honour and/or purity:
“The agent’s steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why, you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“One kind of justice is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution ... and another kind is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)