[Day 7] Sexual Assault
Two years ago rageprufrock began the first 14 Valentines and she spoke of how women are praised in song, worshiped in poetry, and derided in culture. She spoke beautifully and elegantly of women, comparing our bodies to luminous flowers. She spoke of the state of women, and the need to remember what we go through, what women throughout the world suffer through.
We are daughters, sisters, mothers, and lovers. If we choose, we can bring life into world with our blood and nourish it with our bodies, but the world that we helped create, that women have bled for and fought for and cried for, doesn't recognize us. Our history is one of abuse. We are not safe.
Women suffer from domestic violence and rape. We are devalued. We are taught that we are lesser. There is still so much work to do, so much for us to accomplish.
It's 2008 and Hillary Rodham Clinton is, as I write this, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in the U.S. Yet, even as this is happening, women are being killed the world over, suffering from infanticide, dying from lack of medical care, killing themselves in the fight to be what society tells them they must. One in three women will still experience sexual assault in her lifetime. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same.
It's 2008 and we've come so far, but there is still more work to be done. We deserve better, and we can do more. We're strong. The next fourteen days is meant to remind us of that. It's our time to take back our bodies.
V can stand for vagina, like Eve Ensler's groundbreaking monologues. V can stand for violence, under whose auspices all women continue to make a home.
V can also stand for victory.
Sexual Assault
You would think that women would be safest in their homes, with their significant others, family, and friends. If women can't be safe with the people that they know and trust, where can we be safe? You would think that of the more than 200,000 sexual assaults reported in the United States in 2005, the majority of them would have been committed by strangers, by the man on the street, hiding in an alley, lurking in the bushes.
You would think that, but you would be wrong. Only 28% of those attacks were committed by people unknown to the victims; the vast majority of rapists and sexual attackers are friends, acquaintances, relatives, husbands, boyfriends. One in six women in America will go through this in her lifetime, one every two minutes. Most of them will be young, as over 80% of rape victims are under the age of thirty - roughly 44% of them will be under the age of 18. Of course, it's entirely possible that these statistics are wrong, that the numbers should be higher or lower, that the demographics are hopelessly skewed; after all, almost 60% of sex related crimes go unreported in the US and that number can be much larger in other countries.
Sexual assault isn't a short term crime - it's not something that happens and is left behind. Survivors are three times more likely to suffer from depression, six times more likely to suffer post traumatic stress disorder. The numbers don't get any better. They're more likely to abuse alcohol by 13%, and drugs, by 26%, and they're four times more likely to contemplate suicide than women who have never been raped or otherwise abused.
Given statistics like these, it becomes vitally important that we support organizations like the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. They serve as the nation's principle information and resource center regarding all aspects of sexual violence, and they are the base of support for the people who directly support the victims of assault. In addition to providing much needed information to those trying to stop sex crimes, they also support and promote Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April, in an attempt to to focus attention on sexual violence and its prevention. It is also an opportunity to highlight the efforts of individuals and agencies that provide rape crisis intervention and prevention services while offering support to sexual assault survivors, victims and their families.