Sanitsuda Ekachai, Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post
Should husbands be allowed to rape their wives? Yes, says the Justice Ministry. And for the sake of gender equality, the Justice Ministry will allow the wives to rape their husbands, too. Don't laugh.
That is exactly what the Justice Ministry says in its draft amendment of the law regarding rape.
According to the draft, rape and sexual offences will be punishable with a jail term from four to 20 years and a fine of 8,000 to 40,000 baht _ unless it involves marital partners.
This draft is the ministry's response to years of pressure from human rights groups to redress gender violence and inequality in Thai law. It ends up being farcical because of the ministry's mechanical approach to justice and its refusal to tackle the heart of the matter, which is the oppression of women.
The Justice Ministry's draft amendments to the rape and divorce laws was criticised in the National Legislative Assembly last week and a sub-committee has been set up to revise the proposed amendments. For although the amendments would bring several improvements to the current laws on sexual violence and divorce, continuing to endorse marital rape is totally unacceptable.
At present, the law does not protect wives from rape by their husbands. By defining women as the only victims of rape and sexual offence, the law does not protect homosexuals, either.
Meanwhile, the laws on divorce and marital compensation support men's sexual promiscuity; it allows the husbands to use adultery as grounds for divorce, but not for the wives.
To sue for divorce, the wife must prove that her husband financially supports and publicly honours another woman as wife. Proving the husband's unfaithfulness alone will not suffice.
The attempts by women's rights advocacy groups to change these oppressive laws goes back years. In 2002, their effort was shot down by the Council of State, the government's legal arm, which argued that the change would undermine the basis of marital relationship.
The same thing happened with the effort to amend the divorce law so wives and husbands could both use adultery equally as grounds for divorce.
In a mind-boggling rationale which challenges the constitutional principle of gender equality, the council argued that the crime of having a choo or lover, applies only to married women. So, the husband can divorce his wife for having a choo, but the wife cannot.
Apparently, the Justice Ministry is trying to undo the damage done by the Council of State. Citing the gender equality mandate, it proposed the legal amendments which will allow wives and husbands to equally sue for divorce on grounds of adultery. Both can also sue the lovers of their spouses for compensation.
In a commendable move, the draft amendment of the rape law will also protect homosexuals from rape and sexual harassment.
But instead of getting rid of the wording in the rape law which endorses marital rape, the Justice Ministry simply made it equal for the husbands and wives to rape their spouses.
So much for its mechanical definition of gender equality.
The cultural violence of patriarchy has caused many symptoms of gender discrimination which aim to keep women subservient and inferior to men. But they all stem from the same root: the belief that women are mere objects belonging to men, first to their fathers, then to their husbands and, in their old age, to their sons. That their main duty is to serve them. As wives, they then must submit to their husband's sexual will. This violent sexism is sanctified in the marital rape law.
The attempts to fix sexist laws on divorce, family name, quota system and whatnot are all laudable. But they are only dealing with the symptoms of patriarchy. That is why we must do away with the marital rape law. For we must tackle the heart of women's oppression if we really want to bring the patriarchal system down.
[Email the author: sanitsudae (at) bangkokpost.co.th
