Why is marriage sacred? As post-agrarian societies started growing, property needed inheritors. Marriage was then the easiest way to do so. With woman as property, the sacrament state of the institution crept in.
Marital rape has not been brought under the purview of rape law precisely for this reason — the woman is still property, and not considered an individual with her own rights. In all this, the government has done a disservice, not only to one half of the population, but to evolution. What then can change the government’s mind about marital rape?
For a very long time, studies have concerned themselves with divisive social issues, and how people’s opinions change (or do not), with persuasion. New research suggests “on difficult political issues, the only time people get convinced of an opposite viewpoint is when the person doing the convincing is someone who’s personally affected, thereby appealing to their sense of fairness.”
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The study stated that the only time people, who otherwise opposed gay marriage, got convinced that it could be legalised, was when a gay person did the convincing. Straight people making such representations had some effect which wore off after a while. Though the study by LaCour and Green concentrated on gay marriage, the results could be extrapolated to many other issues.
That the above can happen is extremely rare. The only times it does happen are exceptions. As a result, if only rape survivors can convince the government to change its position, then more marital rape survivors will have to start speaking up against the government’s stand and convince it to recognise the issue.
Stigma aside, the trouble with this is, activism is rarely by the affected. When the Prime Minister called activists ‘five-star activists’, his statement could be dismissed as coming from his ideology and his disallowance of dissent, but in what he said, there is a point. Activists are more often than not, not stemming from the section they are representing, but instead, a part of the oppressive portion. Granted, such activism has historically had more benefits, such as women’s suffrage or abolition, but would activism be more effective if it had representatives who have been directly affected?
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As human beings, we all think we are fair and just, even with plenty of evidence to the contrary. If our sense of fairness extended to social issues such as rape or gay marriage, then we wouldn’t be discussing this in 2015.
While that hasn’t happened, it does make one wonder if such issues would have disappeared if the affected parties themselves took action. Not to take away from ongoing movements by said parties, only that they are in the minority.
The other argument against representational activism is that it could be considered manipulative, but as always, in the absence of a perfect solution, we can do what we have always done, and take the only solution available, however flawed it may seem.