3 million women die each year due to gender-based violence, 4 million are sold into prostitution, almost 300 million are illiterate, 500 million will suffer from rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes.
Time to call it what it is.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
War against Women
It's official now, as far as I am concerned. There is and has been for thousands of years a War against Women. Even in liberal democratic societies this was still goes on, relatively uninhibited granted the promises of equality, democracy and all that cal.
3 million women die each year due to gender-based violence, 4 million are sold into prostitution, almost 300 million are illiterate, 500 million will suffer from rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes.(thestar)
Time to call it what it is.
3 million women die each year due to gender-based violence, 4 million are sold into prostitution, almost 300 million are illiterate, 500 million will suffer from rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes.
Time to call it what it is.
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4 comments:
Uh-oh, I think my hyperbole detector just went off. Really, if this were such a huge problem even in Western democracies, why aren't women marching in the streets, forming political parties, signing petitions by the thousands, etc? Probably because there is no "War on Women" and most Canadian women are perfectly happy to be living their lives in peace.
As for the rest of the world, what we have is not a war against women, but a war against the weak. Predators prey on those inferior to them, regardless of whether that distinction results in persecution of another sex, religion, race or ethnicity. Victim status is situational, not the result of a concerted effort.
Your terminology suggests a far more systematic and coordinated effort than can possibly be the case. Large numbers of women being brutalized only mean that women are in a position to be easily brutalized more than other groups, not that men are pursuing some kind of vendetta against "the weaker sex."
Cheers
G-dawg,
You sorta presuppose that if there is a problem of such in our society, that rallying and so forth would implicitly emerge in response and fix it.
First of all, why would rallying be necessary to hold liberal theory accountable? Why would we have to ask for rights sold to us through our taxes? Because in theory the liberal fiction pretends that we're all equal, but in liberal practice this is not so. From this vantage point it may be more significant to consider how degrading it is to demand rights we're already supposed to be exercising.
Secondly, I don't think you have the authority to say that most Canadian women are happy and living in peace. As far as liberal economic theory goes we are all equal, but as far as the practice proves, we're making 80 cents to your dollar. As far as liberal political theory goes, we are all equal, but as far as practicing this tenent goes, we are hovering at 20% of parliamentary representation.
What do these two failures of liberal theory prove? That there is no peace; there is oppression, exclusion, negation.
I would argue that my terminology did not imply these efforts were systematic or coordinated. Rather, I was emphasizing how even within a liberal framework; which promises safety and security of women (and everyone), these atrocities committed against women still happen. What I'm really getting at is the question of how, despite all political theory thus far, has the matter of violence and oppression of women still pervaded every political structure we can devise? How can it be that in a place that holds freedom and equality so dear can the statistics on violence be so relatively similar to places that don't even feign such safety?
And I do imply above that the relatively similar outcomes of either political theory are relative not to each other, but to the magnitude of the guarantees of the theory; that it should be more alarming that violence still goes on in a place that promises none.
PZ
I just think men are trying to get back at women for all that trauma that we were put through when our mothers were screaming when we were born. I think we all know where Tom Cruise stands on this. Also if you claim that women too were subjected to such horrors at birth, I will let you know that women have been given a special horomone to overcome this horror, it is that same horomone that allows them later in life to enjoy a penis inside them, and later after that enjoy the horrors of giving birth. Now we must note that if women do not get enough of this horomone then they become the soldiers of this "war" you're refering to these soldiers are what the commmon man refers to as "lesbians". The Lesbians are leading an offensive of hatred against men and clearly are a terrorist cell. All this hatred inspired at birth. I'm not even going to get into the mixed gendered children, they are the victems of everyone.
-Ryan
p.s I'll be blogging once I get to india, eta 2 weeks.
can I not edit that? there are like a billion spelling mistakes.
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