Transnational Violence and the Politics of Solidarity: Speaking Harm Across Borders

Analyses

Dr. Anukriti Dixit June 2025

In this critique, Anukriti Dixit examines how mainstream Western media narratives on sexual violence reinforce binaries between a 'progressive' West and a 'patriarchal' Global South—ignoring structural issues like caste, class, and race. She calls for truly transnational solidarity that confronts misogyny everywhere.

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“Did you read the news from India about the rape of this doctor?” ask some friends and colleagues in Switzerland after news of the RG Kar hospital rape case is published. I am from India, have lived there for the longest part of my life (34 out of 39 years) and have completed large parts of my education there (I have caste-privilege and therefore have been able to ‘acquire skills’ and ‘do networking’ – terms that are coded in casted privilege). This question is at once strange and difficult to answer. Strange because it opens up a kind of scrutiny of ‘non-Swiss’ bodies, a morbid curiosity of ‘how bad these poor oppressed South Asian women have it’ – and therefore by contrast how good Swiss women have it, maybe? Difficult because I am no defender of rapists and I do believe India, as the rest of the whole wide world, has a ‘problem’ of misogynistic violence. It is often deep-rooted misogyny that would do anything, blame anyone, avoid accountability, produce impunity and outsource its sexual violence anywhere else (to other men or to other countries) rather than invite self-scrutiny. It is systemic, perpetrated by members of all genders, but most frequently turned into sexual violence, by men.

The Kolkata hospital rape is shocking, as was the Giselle Pelicot case in France – as is having to read about violent (sexual) crimes, from anywhere across the world. When I first read about Ciudad Juarez and feminicide in Mexico, it resonated with me due to the class and indigeneity based precarity of the women who were attacked. In India too, Dalit (the self-coined term that oppressed caste people use to refer to themselves) and Adivasi (the indigenous peoples of India) are disproportionately assaulted by “upper” caste men (and such attacks abetted by “upper” caste women – such as myself). But there is a difference in the manner in which aggrieved persons from these trials are regarded, thought of and made into ‘subjects’. When it is the Indian rape case under media scrutiny, the following language is often used:

Anger and grief among the medical profession, horror in society: The violent death of a young doctor in training has sparked a new wave of protests in India. It is yet another rape to shock the world's most populous country. [...] violence against women is also widespread in this patriarchal country with a population of 1.4 billion. According to official data, a new rape case is reported in India every fifteen minutes. The actual number is likely significantly higher, as women's rights activists repeatedly emphasize. But the stigma is so strong that many victims prefer to remain silent.

ZDFheute, 17th of August, 2024, translated via google translate

In the same article by ZDFheute, there is a photograph of women under the Taliban regime, thereby bringing a sort of Western-centric coherence to the narrative of ‘oppressed, raped, pathetic’ (South) Asian / Oriental women. This picture serves to not only generalize two vastly different contexts – here India and Afghanistan. Before going further, it is important to state that Afghan women “are neither submissive nor passive figures but have tried to retain their autonomy under the rule of the Taliban” as discussed by Mohamed Ahmed (2022).

Coming back to his picture - it also serves to reinforce the boundary of the “third and first” worlds. It produces the othering that Sara Ahmed writes about (Ahmed, 2013). Ahmed argues that the stranger is not someone we do not recognize, but rather someone, whom we can claim to know in a certain image, with certain fixed assumptions. In other words, an ‘other’ is constructed on our (privileged or epistemically advantaged) terms. It can be concluded with reportage such as that of ZDFheute’s, that an account of – ‘(South) Asia as patriarchal, (South) Asian men as perverted and (South) Asian women as hapless victims’ – helps European mainstream media preserve the European sense of security and a comfort from knowing that their account about (South) Asia is coherent – it is the land of oppression, violence, rape and poverty. Words such as horror, anger and grief indicate the only emotions that can be felt. The fact that the protests also brought solidarity and organizing around the issue of workplace safety for doctors, is not highlighted.

What happens when something occurs to disturb this world – a world in which all the patriarchy is there and all the ‘civility and progress’ is here? When there is violence – of an unimaginable scale – here (here can be ‘upper’ caste India or the first world), how does the progress narrative win? The ZDFheute’s coverage of the Pelicot trial, uses the following language,

Many demonstrators we spoke with told us that they themselves or someone close to them had been abused. But even beyond the demonstrations, the trial has sparked a cautious debate. For example, whether the definition of rape in criminal law could be changed and linked to the lack of consent in the future: If there is no explicit yes, consent to sex cannot be assumed. Sweden and Spain have enshrined this, but France has not yet.

Shortly before 1 p.m., a few hours after the verdicts were announced, Gisèle Pelicot appeared before the press. She thanked her family and those who supported her throughout the trial. “What you confided in me moved me deeply; from it I drew the strength to face the long hearings every day.” She said she has not regretted her decision to make the trial public.

ZDFheute, 19th December 2024, translated via google translate

There is no mention of patriarchy not only in the above excerpt but also in the whole article and several others (see list in the appendix). The assumption with such media coverage appears to be that the rape occurring over several years with multiple perpetrators and organised acts of violation by men who say they assumed the wife was aware because the husband agreed – happened without a shred of misogyny or patriarchy in French society.

The construction of Pelicot’s subjecthood as a galvanising force for survivors (Time magazine, February 20th, 2025) is done without using words such as patriarchy or misogyny. I looked through several major mainstream media publications (list in the appendix) which cover the Pelicot case and the only time the word patriarchy is mentioned is a reference to a quote by Pelicot herself: “It’s time that the macho, patriarchal society that trivialises rape changes … It’s time we changed the way we look at rape.” (Printed in an article by Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian, on 21st January, 2025.)

There is no mention of ‘horror’, rather an inspiring account of a survivor who rose against injustice, violence and harm inflicted on her. Even in a series of ‘letters to the editor’, that directly addresses ‘men’s attitudes’, the article does not mention patriarchy or misogyny as overarching structures through which systematic oppression of women (and LGBTQIAP+ people) is produced – in Europe, India, South America, South Asia and elsewhere in the world. Most articles that involve the framing of ‘victims of rape’, do not name men. masculinities and related gendered structures of patriarchy and misogyny as the producers of such sexual violence.

As far as constructions of subjects go, when one reads European media’s coverage of the doctor in India – who was an intelligent, hardworking and caring human being – one is not reminded of a woman who worked tirelessly in a hospital in challenging circumstances and therefore of why doctors are protesting in India – there is no context to this. No one asks – why is the issue of workplace safety important for doctors – not only in India but across the world? Can this diligent doctor (who did not survive) but whose hospital made her unsafe – spark a discussion on workplace safety the world over? Can she become the subject of discussions around workplace assault and safety everywhere? Like Gisele Pelicot could become an example for rape victims to urge them to not feel shame, can the doctor from India become an example for unions, workplace HR and government policymaking of workplace safety across the world including in the ‘first world’? It appears not.

It is not my intent to compare trauma or to say one assaulted body deserves ‘more attention’ than another. Rather, I seek to emphasize that both contexts of sexual assault deserve the discussion about patriarchal structures, misogyny, the rise in violence against women (and against LGBTQIAP+ people). By constructing one aggrieved party as the ‘victim of South Asian patriarchy’ and the other (European aggrieved) as a ‘survivor of exemplary courage’, a binary of the ‘empowered first world – disempowered third world’ woman is reinforced.

This picture does not even account for situated power structures – such as the impunity that is granted to “upper” caste men in India, the vastly disproportionate number of rapes perpetrated by “upper” caste men (abetted by “upper” caste women) onto “lower” caste women/people, or the ease with which such privileged groups are able to evade justice or legal scrutiny. The Western media’s accounts of such crimes have no nuance or contextual backing. This is not just a matter of ‘contextual oversight’ but a systematic, historically constituted and ongoing racial prejudice, that deems it unnecessary to report on caste as a major co-constitutor alongside gender – of (sexual) violence in large parts of South Asia (Arya, 2020).

This denial of patriarchy and misogyny in Europe together with the exclusion of contextual factors (power relations) from South Asia indicates a lack commitment to recognise sexual violence as a structural issue in the ‘first world’ (Hyży and Mitka, 2024). The ‘problem’ of patriarchy and misogyny is placed squarely on the ‘backward third world’. This sort of denialism and othering does not offer justice, transparency and solidarity. It rests itself upon a Euro-centric spirit of ‘competition’ with respect to progress and liberalism. It is premised upon consistently reaffirming the ‘superiority’ of the ‘first world’, even when it is at the cost of important interventions to safety and social justice of people and communities.

A transnational focus on redressing sexual violence requires that such attitudes of oneup“man”ship and global competition along the lines of ‘who is more progressive than others’ are retired and replaced with redressal mechanisms that are developed through international cooperation and policy dialogue. For instance, it is important to recognise the myth of ‘false cases’ of rape, premised on the assumption that women and queer/trans people lie about being raped or harassed and use rape and sexual harassment laws with “malicious” intent. These are entirely unfounded myths and have no data backing to them (Jenkins, 2021). They have been contested with some success in courtrooms across the world (Smith and Skinner, 2017). These myths pervade justice systems and media/public discourse in nearly all global legal contexts. Further, for exploring the challenge of some perpetrators having more impunity than others due to their class, caste, race or other such advantages we must consult Dalit, Adivasi and decolonial accounts of impunity (Geetha, 2016; Segato, 2005). How is impunity constructed, on what grounds are the informal rules of misogynistic violence set, and how do we account for these ‘public secrets’ in our legal and policymaking frameworks? According to me, the question is not one of declaring ‘who wins the progress game’ in the global milieu but one of asking how to prevent misogynistic and patriarchal structures from taking over our meaning-making systems to the point that we all lose.

References

Appendix

List of news and publications in the mainstream media, consulted for the Gisele Pelicot case and trials:

Publication Date:

05 June 2025

Belongs to:

Analyses

Themes:

Gender Studies, Equality

Disciplines:

Health Sciences

Author:

Dr. Anukriti Dixit