Abstract
Every day Nicaraguan newspapers report cases of young girls being assaulted by their fathers. These are men who sexually utilize their daughters. Headlines inform the public of outrageous deeds in dreadful language such as “Man that Raped his Daughter for 3650 Days Goes Before Judge” (El Nuevo Diario [END], 01/21/2008); “She is Only Ten-Years-Old and Seven Months Pregnant” (END, 01/24/2008); “[Man] Rapes Three Minor Daughters” (END, 01/27/2008). These and other stories of adult cases of rape can be read as corollaries to those of incest, pedophilia, and rape. Although incest, pedophilia, and rape are technically and theoretically separated from each other, the cleavage does little to explain their convergence in the cases reported earlier. Thus, I am treating them under the all-encompassing rubric of male sexual abuse against women.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For instance, on December 31, 2007, a story appeared in El Nuevo Diario about a 32-year-old man who raped and suffocated his 70-year-old aunt in El Rama and also raped a 9-year-old girl. On December 29, 2007, El Nuevo Diario reported the case of a 25-year-old drunken policeman who raped a 19-year-old woman in Managua. There is also the case of a 17-year-old girl who, while walking to her grandfather’s house in La Azucena, a community to northeast of San Carlos, was accosted by a 24-year-old man. As she resisted the assault, he drew his machete and struck her three times, twice in the neck and once in the head causing cranial fracture. After that he tied her legs and arms, blindfolded and gagged her, and raped her repeatedly for approximately four hours (La Prensa, 01/04/2008).
- 2.
In my previous research, I proposed that clandestine forms of labor—traffic of goods, drugs, bodies and body organs—are “industries” that flourish on the shadows of maquila labor and serve as a subtext to feminicidio. Getting acquainted with “illegal” profit-making enterprises led me to pedophilia’s large and clandestine markets, which in turn led me to pay attention to incest, pedophilia, and rape as it was reported in the newspapers in Nicaragua. See my Liberalism at its Limits. Op. Cit.
- 3.
See Lacan in America. Ed. Jean-Michel Labaté. New York: Other Press, 2000. 361–378. “Though the concept of drive pays heed to what is often called the human body’s perversion or deviance from the natural order, only bad faith would prevent us from admitting that the notion of a nonnatural body is a contradiction in terms and therefore untenable. A body is clearly a part of nature. If one wants to hold onto the notion of drive (and psychoanalysis as given us many reasons why we should), the only way to avoid contradiction is to assume that the notion implies not an overriding so much as a redefinition of nature. Which is precisely why, of all Freud’s notions, that of the drive has had the least success in attracting supporters; it obliges a kind of rethinking that only the boldest of thinkers would dare to undertake. The question one must ask is: How does drive determine human embodiment as both freedom from nature and a part of it? In sum, the conviction that bodies matter does not exonerate us from having to ask this fundamental question, “What is a body?” (279).
- 4.
Fehergurewich, Judith. “The Philanthropy of Perversion.” Lacan in America. Ed. Jean-Michel Labaté. New York: Other Press, 2000. 361–378.
- 5.
An excellent example is the film Demonlover because of its global context. The film mixes a discussion of child pornography in Japanese comics for children, and the sale of women’s bodies in Mexico by an Anglo-French corporation. Demonlover. Dir. Olivier Assayas. Screenplay Olivier Assayas. Citizen Films, 2002.
- 6.
See Linda Williams. “When the Woman Looks,” in Dread of Difference: Gender and Horror Film, 15–32.
- 7.
Clover, Carol. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992.
- 8.
Maria Teresa Crespín, “Hablemos de abuso sexual públicamente” http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/233811
- 9.
See the case of sexual abuse by a priest, father Dessy and the public reaction to it. co http://www.desdechinandega.com/defensa-de-padre-marcos-dessi-desmiente-a-supuesta-victima-de-abuso-sexual.html, http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/especiales/90678, http://cddnicaragua.blogspot.com/2010/04/abusos-sexuales-de-sacerdotes-ninos-y.html
- 10.
Hirschmann, Nancy J. and Christine Di Stefano, eds. Revisioning the Political. Feminist Reconstructions of Traditional Concepts in Western Political Theory. New York: Westview Press, 1996.
- 11.
Young, Iris Marion. “Displacing the Distributive Paradigm.” Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Hugo LaFollette (ed). Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 540–550.
- 12.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rodriguez, I. (2016). Human Rights and Sexual Desires: Incest, Pedophilia, Rape. In: Gender Violence in Failed and Democratic States. Comparative Feminist Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59833-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59833-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-60323-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59833-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)