I will never forget one of my first trips to the hospital to counsel a woman who had been raped. Before I could go into see her, the police pulled me to the side for a word of warning, “You need to know she was kind of asking for this.” The woman had been raped with a screwdriver.
The incident lit a fire of rage in me that never went out, so I understand the rage that is sweeping across India on behalf of the woman gang raped, exposed to public scorn and indifference, and who eventually committed suicide.
“That girl could have been any one of us,” Sangeetha Saini, 44, who took her two teenage daughters to a candle-filled demonstration on Sunday in Delhi, told The New York Times. Women in India “face harassment in public spaces, streets, on buses … We can only tackle this by becoming Durga,” she added, referring to the female Hindu god who slays a demon.
The real question for us back here in the States is, when we will finish the task of making it safe to be female? We have made strides on the punishment side of the problem, but rape is the natural child of patriarchy and no one is serious about sexual assault who does not work for women having equal power in business and politics.
Thanks to Beth Brogan of Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/31-6
This violence and the extreme sexualization of women breaks my heart. I can hardly watch TV, movies, the news, advertisements, etc without wanting to run away from “modern” life. It’s depressing, infuriating, and overwhelming all at once. I struggle with how to protect myself from the damage while also staying engaged to fight the good fight. I feel like I am alone in feeling this way and that something is wrong with me for being so bothered by these things. Reading your blog uplifts my soul.
Thank you Lu, for sharing those feelings. You are definitely not alone. You have a multitude of sisters and a growing number of brothers who will not put up with that dehumanizing of women any longer.