Body as a Battlefield: The Unspoken War on Black Women

Women have always been one of the major groups of people that are consistently targeted when an army conquers a nation. When you watch an old war movie, what are the three things that the people going to battle always say that they will take for their own? Land, money/gold, and most importantly women. Women have always been the biggest and most unspoken victim of degrading when conquering a group of people, and Black women are definitely no exception to this notion. For centuries, Black women have been the unspoken victim of war against black people. In civil wars within African countries today, women continue to be the constant targets of this psychological and physical warfare. However; the battlefield is not on some desert plain or even in a city, but their own bodies. This concept of body battles is explored in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Ruined. This extraordinary play puts this idea of bodily warfare against women into an extreme yet realistic and unique perspective.

                Ruined, it follows the journey of women who work in a brothel, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the civil war. One of the women taken in, Salima, is a victim of kidnapping and sexual abuse at the hands of the Rebel army. Once her husband, who is in the military himself, finds out about this he disowns her and she seeks refuge in the brothel. As the play continues, we learn of her past and of the mental toll that this experience has pressed on her, and eventually, she commits suicide. However; before parting ways with her body she tells her husband and the soldiers “you will no longer fight your battles on my body anymore”. [1] This quote is the most powerful words uttered throughout the entire play, because in this very moment she declares that she is taking control of her body, that many soldiers have stripped her of. Even, if it means leaving her physical body, by killing herself, she is no longer a victim. This quote also embodies the thoughts and experiences that many women like Salima go through.  Salima has been an undeserving causality as a result of a war that was declared on all women, not just her. Women like Salima have been unwillingly and many times unknowingly been put on the battlefield.

               Black women are constantly the targets of this type of war. Countless women continue to be used in this battle. Salima embodies the emotions and experiences of countless women in these wars, and just like her many feel as though the only way to be able to gain control over their own bodies is by taking it away from the world all together. Tired of being used against their will, Black women continue to try and find their own way out, whether that’s physically or emotionally. Just like any war, these drafted soldiers have been extremely affected both physically and emotionally. They will have to carry these battle scars with them wherever they go, and they cannot escape them easily. Even though this is not a war that these women signed up for, unfortunately they are drafted in this war on their own bodies. They war on the body is a widespread problem that many don’t think about, however with Ruined, Nottage has put this issue center stage where everyone can see it. This topic will be exposed and seen for what it is, a war where the battles are fought on the bodies of Black women. 

WC:587

Pledge:Brian Burgess

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[1] Ruined . By Lynn Nottage. Directed by Shondrika Moss-Bouldin. Hattiloo Theatre TN, Memphis , September 2, 2017.