Family,Relationship and Society

Marital Rape--An Alarmingly common reality

Marriage is our society's most cherished and sacred relationship.Sex in marriage is not just a form of physical unioun,it is also held as spiritual union that has the potential to bring deep fulfillment and joys to the sexual partners.To talk of "marital rape" is therefore is shocking and contentious and create confusion--especially since rape is widely regarded as a sexual transgression and abuse by sheer force,while marriage is seen as involving socially sanctioned sex wherein both partners have agreed to cohabit.There are hundred of stories that expose women's real life experiences of sex in marriage.They show how sex can be nonconsensual,forced and painful for married women.What exactly is Marital Rape?Consent to sex is automatically assumed in marriage,yet we all know from personal experience how our sexuality is an aspect of our conciousness and is more than just an instinctive drive.Yet women are expected to be sexually available to their men irrespective of their personal desires,and people at large donot think of sex by coercion in marriage as rape.In reality,women's experiences in marriage of nonconsensual and coercive cover a spectrum of forms wherein the use of verbal threats,physical violence and injury and even the use of weapons is made by their own husbands in the privacy and legitimacy afforded by marriage,to thrust unwanted forms of sex .Much of sexual violence in marriage is rotine and made invisible through factors like the culture of silence,ideas of masculinity and feminity,and the sacred nature of the marital union.Loyalty to the family,fear,inability to leave the relationship due to dependencies,acceptance of sex even against one,s wish as a husband's right and a wife's duty,and other such restraints keep many women from talking of the violence in their bedrooms even to their close friends and relatives.There is an urget need to create institutional responses to this much hidden crime.Women need first of all,to break the silence surrounding this violence and see the possibility of defining a changed socio-cultural context.The criminal justice system,the healthcare system and especially the mental care system,shelters homes and counselling cells need to recognize ad respond to the sexual dimensions of violence against womens in homes.This endeveour can be positively impacted if we as women,refuses to be creatures of male lust and aggression.Admitting our own discomfort with being sexually abused and coerced by our own men is the first step to challenging social expectations that emphasise women,s sexual subordination as essential for social and familal stability.