Wednesday, October 18, 2006

 

VIOLENCE

We've gotten complacent. Think that violence against women is a bad thing? You're right. I would venture to say that most of us agree that violence against women isn't good for our society--our women, our men, our everyone. But do we really pay attention to it? Do we really cry out when there is violence against women?
How many of us heard about the school shootings in Pennsylvania, where the attacker specifically allowed the boys to go free, keeping girls in the classroom with the intent to sexually assault and kill them—but didn't think about it in a gendered context? That is, how many of us read that news story, but didn't think "violence against women"?

On the other hand, maybe the problem is that we did think, "violence against women...again."

Why does the storyline seem normal to us? Crazy man goes into Amish school with a gun, lets the boys leave but keeps the girls there so that he can rape them. Seems obvious. If he's crazy and he has a gun, he's going to kill someone...and if he is crazy and has plans for sexual assault, he's going to keep the girls around.

Seems like a logical sequence. There's the problem.

Read Bob Herbert's thoughts on this.

B

2 Comments:

Blogger Tufts Feminist Alliance said...

Herbert brings in the article to the forefront of our thoughts something that we, as feminists, claim to know all the time-- but reading his editorial makes you think about how much even we excuse.

This article clearly struck a chord with many of you-- I've actually recieved a few emails since this editorial was written saying that you feel the rest of TFA should read this.

If nothing else, it's heartening that we're all on the same page.

Love,
Liz

6:27 AM  
Blogger Anna De Alaska said...

I completely agree. I also read that article and I sent it to my sister. We should all send it to our sisters. We could use a whole lot more thinking about things in a gendered context. Is this because we are so used to stories of mutilating women? Partly. But I see another problem going on.

Think about how absent women’s voices are in the media all together. There has been recent outrage about what Jack Straw and Tony Blair said about Muslim head scarves. Yet the New York Times Article about the issue neglects to quote any women on the issue.

Israel just figured out that it shouldn’t lets its military leaders rape women. If only we could figure that one out in the US.

Its 2006. When and how are we going to start listening to the women?

8:25 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home