The War Against Women (Critical South)

By: Rita Segato

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Synopsis: Recent decades of neoliberal rule have seen authoritarian turns in many governments, and these decades have also been marked by increasing violence against women. The systematic killing of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, has given way to a violent surge that is worldwide in its scope, concentrated in places where the state’s traditional, sovereign functions have broken down. Femicide is no longer just an intimate event: it has become anonymous and systematic, a crime of power. An intensified form of capitalism, the product of a colonial modernity that is still with us, now fuels new wars on women, which destroy society while targeting women’s bodies. Understanding this new, violent turn within patriarchy—which Rita Segato considers the primal form of human domination—means moving patriarchy from the margins to the center of our social analysis. According to Segato, it is only by revitalizing community and repoliticizing domestic space that we can redirect history towards a different destiny. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity.