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:
“While one family is well-fed and clothed, a thousand others grumble.”
—Chinese proverb.
“I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)