What is Honor?

The concept of honor is a gendered notion; with men, especially from dominant groups, possessing intrinsic honor, but women possessing only shame.  This gendered ideology produces inequality and hierarchy with men and women embodying honor differently. That is, women are the repositories of honor while men regulate their conduct, since they pose the greatest danger to men’s honor.  In the book, Violence against women in Asian Societies, honor is discussed in multiple ways.

In South Asia, primarily in Bangladesh, acid attacks have been escalating in recent years (Anderson & Bennett, p.61).  Acid attacks are often referred to as a "crime of passion", fueled by jealousy and revenge.  Actual cases though, show that they are usually the result of rage at a woman who rebuffs the advances of a male. For the country of Bangladesh, such passion is often rooted in marriage and relationships (Anderson & Bennett, p.70).  Many if not all acid attacks are conducted by men towards women. In a study conducted Ain-o-Shalish Kendra Documentation Unit, the researches compiled a finite number of the total number of acid attacks from 1995 through 1998(Anderson & Bennett, p.70).  There were 156 acid attacks with 44 being a result of a refusal of love, 33 were a result of a refused marriage proposal, and 16 were the result of a refused sexual relationship.  I believe that this a direct result of men feeling that they need to restore their honor. They are also a result of the structural violence that does not protect the women of these crimes.

The practice of parda controls a large portion of women’s lives and is related to the tenets of purity and honor/shame.  For instance, a man’s honor and his family’s honor is dependent on the honor of the women of the household.  If woman loses her purity, she is regarded as a “fallen woman” or a woman who has dishonored her family (Anderson & Bennett, p.73).  When a woman dishonors her family, she may be more inclined to be a victim of domestic violence, she may even be killed.

Honor killings are acts of vengeance, usually death, committed by male family members against female family members, who are held to have brought dishonor upon the family (Anderson & Bennett, p.49).  In many cultures, victims of rape face severe violence, including honor killings, from their families and relatives. In many parts of the world, women who have been raped are considered to have brought 'dishonor' or 'disgrace' to their families. This is especially the case if the victim becomes pregnant.  Central to the code of honor, in many societies, is a woman's virginity, which must be preserved until marriage.

For my final example, I will be pulling from In the Name of Honor: A Memoir by Mukhtar Mai. Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman from the impoverished village of Meerwala, was gang raped by a local clan known as the Mastoi. This was a punishment for the actions committed by her older brother. Though this was clearly not the first time that the body of a young woman was being negotiated for honor in a family, this time the survivor had bravely chosen to fight back. In doing so, Mai transformed the feminist movement in Pakistan. Mukhtar Mai then went on to open a school for girls to ensure that young women will have the opportunity to receive the education that they surely deserve.

“Here in Pakistan, it is difficult for a woman to prove she has been raped, since she is legally required to provide four male eyewitnesses to the crime.  This is to ensure that the law and chiefly the punishment for rape are not misused.  Unfortunately, the only eyewitnesses to both my brother’s rape and mine are the criminals themselves.” (Mai p.56) This quote alone expresses the structural violence at work, as well as the normalcy of gender based violence.  It is saddening to think, that this young woman went through this much pain unwillingly, because her family wanted to restore their honor.