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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Brazil re-evaluates special treatment of chastity under law |
| 2004-12-26 |
| Legislation working its way through the Brazilian Congress aims to remove references to "honest women" from this country's penal code, a change that women's rights activists such as Calazans wholeheartedly support. The description is one that has enabled rapists and abusers to go free. It has kept Brazilian criminal law mired in male chauvinism for decades, critics charge, and more often than not has been used to harm women, not defend them. At issue is the provision of the code that deals with sexual assault. Written more than half a century ago, the passage mandates punishment for anyone who coerces an "honest woman" into having sex, a label that meant an unmarried virgin or another man's wife. The implication, however, was that only those women deserved protection, whereas the others deserved what they got. Judges ruled accordingly, dismissing the complaints of "unchaste" women -- those who dared have sex outside marriage -- and exonerating their attackers. The men, the thinking went, must have been provoked or somehow ensnared by the brazen women... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #1 They need to just put these laws in reserve. That way, then Sharia is implemented, you can just dust 'em off, and you're ready to go. |
| Posted by: jackal 2004-12-26 6:40:29 PM |