Gender Violence, the Law, and Society

This chapter is a transcript of an open-ended discussion that occurred between the authors when they met to discuss the subject matter of the first section of the book, which focuses on areas where serious ongoing problems of gender violence are receiving insufficient attention. The discussion took place after preliminary drafts had been completed and the authors share their thoughts on the subjects they will each discuss in more detail in the following chapters – including the cultural representation of historical gender violence in India, the treatment of women in Japan's sex industry and attitudes towards LGBTQ+ groups in South Africa.

As we reckon with the #MeToo movement, the gender-based violence that occurred during the 1947 Partition continues to remain forgotten in mainstream discourses and is an emotive and polarising issue within both India and its diaspora. Just like mainstream news in the United States covered the Gabby Petito case, causing a controversy as it led to the realisation that the rape and gender-based violence of missing indigenous women were not covered, it can be suggested that mainstream news channels both within India and in the diaspora construct narratives that privilege the stories of some over others – with issues of shame, izzat (‘honour’) and policing of women's bodies compounding the silence in South Asian communities. In this chapter, I argue that we need to rethink the Partition as a genocide to recognise the gender-based violence that occurred on women's bodies as the cataclysmic event occurred. I discuss the feminist historiographical research led by Urvashi Butalia, Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon who interviewed survivors in the aftermath of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that triggered their research and reminded them of the Partition violence. It is only recently when the 1947 Partition Archives (in 2010) and the Partition Museum (in 2017) that the conversations of Partition are also taking place in academic spaces.

This chapter looks at the sex trade in Japanese society and the manner in which it has been accepted for decades, both socially and legally, as a ‘necessary evil’. This passive and disinterested tolerance of the industry's quasi-legal state, neither banning prostitution completely nor ensuring that it follows the transparent rules and regulations expected of other industries, means that it fails to satisfy either of the primary views on transactional sex: prohibition or legalisation. The result is that the women involved in the industry are subject to various forms of exploitation and abuse that the Japanese government, by failing to take active steps to reform the industry in either direction, becomes complicit to. Shaped by personal interviews with members of the industry and the NGOs that provide them with support, the chapter provides an examination of the industry's historical development, its portrayal in popular media and the prevailing social norms regarding the industry. It then assesses the political and legal responses to the industry and the glaring oversights that exist in their failure to provide adequate support. Finally, it considers, based upon the self-expressed interests of the women working in the industry, in what areas meaningful reform might occur.

Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in South Africa has shifted from overt hate crimes to covert microaggressions. Microaggression is a term used in psychology to describe casual discrimination against socially marginalised groups, and they occur in three forms: microassaults, microinsults and microinvalidations. Microassaults include verbal and non-verbal discriminatory behaviours. Microinsults include actions or statements which demean a person's identity, and microinvalidations negate the thoughts, feelings or lived experiences of a certain people. Microaggressions have detrimental impacts on lives of people experiencing them and on their interpersonal relationships. The chapter presents a focus on microaggression theory together with microaggression experiences of South African Indian LGBTQ+ people, who have been under-researched. Reference is made to interview extracts from research studies focusing on South African Indian LGBTQ+ people and from e-zine articles focusing on the experiences of South African Indian LGBTQ+ people.

This chapter is a transcript of an open-ended discussion that occurred between the authors when they met to discuss the subject matter of the second section of the book, which focuses on the effectiveness of legal responses to gendered violence. As with the previous introductory dialogue, the discussion takes place after preliminary drafts had been completed, and the authors share their thoughts on the subjects they will each discuss in more detail in the following chapters. These include the impact of cultural and gender bias within the Indian legal system, the insufficient impact of long-overdue reforms in Japan's sexual violence laws and the weaknesses that exist in constitutional protections offered to LGBTQ+ people in South Africa.

On 20 March 2020, the four adult convicts of the 2012 Delhi rape case were executed after a long debate regarding the punishment for their crime. The Delhi rape case, unlike others, was also given to the fast track court because of the worldwide outrage India received in its aftermath. Otherwise, most rape survivors rarely speak out and if they do, their lives are often endangered and threatened, depending on the severity of the case itself and the perpetrator's rank in the society. Through the analysis of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's, 2016 film Pink, and Ajay Bahl's film Section 375 (2019), this chapter explores the different ways in which mainstream Hindi cinema deals with such questions, especially in its depictions of courts. Both these films foreground India's contemporary cultural systems of fear that silence the rape survivors. They also imply that in the court cases, unless the specific court case faces intense global publicity, as was the case of the Delhi gang rape, rape survivors will never want to speak out. Moreover, the rape survivors will also hesitate to file a First Information Report (FIR) – a document that records crimes by the police against their perpetrators – limiting any possibility for justice for them. The laws surrounding rape cases are obscure and complex and finding justice for a rape victim (unless it is on a global level) is not an easy venture in India. At the time of the #metoo movement, the rape laws in India are not designed in such a way to arguably encourage victim-survivors to speak up. Instead, if rape survivors do decide to confront their perpetrators, they not only face ostracisation from society but also the danger of losing loved ones and endanger their lives as well.

The Japanese legal system has several significant, deep-rooted and widely recognised flaws, one of which has been a history of weak support for the needs of victims of sexual violence. This structure of prosecutorial apathy has meant that female victims, and wider society, have been insufficiently protected from all but the most extreme cases of abuse and assault. However, a growing political interest in gender equality and the nascent development of a Japanese #MeToo movement has brought more pressure for reforms, with 2017 seeing the first significant change of Japan's sex crime laws in 110 years. Despite this, many serious flaws remain to be addressed, including: concerns over the statute of limitations for sexual crimes, the manner in which vague legal definitions can prevent the law from being effectively applied, the lack of support for victims, and the often arbitrary standards for prosecution and the settlement system that allows the wealthy to avoid more than cursory punishment. This chapter examines the efforts to introduce reforms and the extent to which such changes are likely to have a positive impact on the well-being, safety and legal rights of Japanese women.

South Africa attained democracy over 24 years ago. The changes in South Africa's Constitution allowed for protection for all citizens. Despite these freedoms and the promise of change, the country is plagued by violence, corruption and crime. These crimes affect the LGBTQ+ people of the South African population. These citizens have been protected by the Constitution; however, they continue to live their lives in a paradox, between protection and prejudice. LGBTQ+ people experience high levels of hate crimes which extend to violence, assault, bullying and cyberbullying. This chapter focuses on the legal protection and challenges experienced by South African LGBTQ+ people.

This chapter is a transcript of an open-ended discussion that occurred between the authors when they met to discuss the subject matter of the third section of the book, which focuses on cultural and normative attitudes toward the problem of gender violence. As with the previous introductory dialogues, the discussion takes place after preliminary drafts have been completed and the authors share their thoughts on the subjects that they will each discuss in more detail in the following chapters. These include the culture of silence surrounding rape in India, the way masculine gender norms impact the treatment of women in Japan and the cultural factors that drive microaggressions targeted at LGBTQ+ people in South Africa.

In this chapter, I explore two media texts, Imtiaz Ali's Highway and Alankrita Shrivastava's Netflix original series Bombay Begums (2021). I contend that recent filmmakers have begun to arguably reframe the narratives of rape victim-survivors and disrupting the cultural of silence described above. They offer progressive and multi-faceted representations of these experiences, such that there is an opportunity for a dialogue within both private and public spheres. What I mean when I say that they are ‘progressive representations’ is that the rape victim-survivors are not merely reduced to helpless women in distress, nor painted as vengeful, aggressive characters. Instead, their characterisation shows that they have agency and autonomy, but at the same time struggle with the repercussions of speaking out against their perpetrators in a society that does not support them wholly.

Japan is home to a relatively conservative and group-oriented culture in which social expectations can exert powerful pressure to conform to traditional patterns of behaviour. This includes gender norms, which have long been based around the common stereotypes of men as breadwinners and women as housewives. Social liberalisation and economic change in the late 20th century saw these patterns change as more women entered the workforce and, despite Japan's dismal standing in global equality rankings, began to make inroads into some positions of political and corporate leadership. Yet, the way in which women are treated by men is shaped not only by female gender norms but also by the social factors that determine male patterns of behaviour. This chapter considers how Japan's male gender norms, particularly the focus on man as economic labourers rather than active members of the family unit, have damaged many men's ability to connect, on an emotional level, with the women in their lives. It looks at the issue of misogyny; what is known as the Lolita Complex; the growing trend of herbivore men; and the concept of Ikumen, men who are active within the family. While some of these patterns of behaviour can be harmful – for women on the individual level, and for Japan as a whole, on the social level – there are some trends which suggest that gender norms in Japan can be directed in a manner which will allow for much healthier emotional relationships to develop between the genders in a manner that will help build a society that is more cognisant of and attentive to the needs of women.

Following South Africa's democracy, a new constitution was adopted that allowed for freedom of all citizens. This legal protection has, however, not fully translated into a change in attitudes of members of society. Raising the topic of gender being on a spectrum in an African context is bound to result in controversy. Many African countries continue to criminalise same-sex relationships. Therefore it can be understood that the notion of a same-sex desire is seen to be un-African. A common view is that the spectrum of gender identities is a Western import. This chapter focuses on how cultural nuances hinder South African Indian gay men from fully expressing themselves within the South African Indian community. Non-acceptance of South African gay men by the South African Indian community is often based on factors such as religion, patriarchy, hetero-normativity and the idea of same-sex relationships being un-African. Theoretically, intersectionality is used to make sense of discrimination. Intersectionality also serves as a lens because it considers an individual has multiple identities based on race, culture, gender, social class, age and sexual orientation, which are derived from power, history and social relations. Within this chapter, accounts from research studies as well as e-zine articles will be used to demonstrate aspects of the intersectionality theory.