[Day 8] Domestic Violence
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.
Domestic Violence
Three out of four. More than ten percent. One every nine seconds. Twenty percent.
Taken on their own, these numbers could be part of any mathematical equation, random statistics. In fact, they're not nearly as innocent as they appear to be. Out of approximately 1800 murders committed against intimate partners in 1998, three fourths of the victims were women. More than ten percent of the population of the US will be exposed to domestic violence, and one woman every nine seconds is beaten by her husband or partner. Twenty percent of all violent crime committed against women in the US is at the hands of their partners, compared to just 3% in the case of men.
The situation doesn't improve outside of the United States. In India, 45% of women report being slapped, kicked, or beaten by their husbands. In Great Britain, the largest increase in reported violent crimes has been incidents in domestic violence, and studies show that as many as two thirds of crimes resulting in injuries go unreported. In Ethiopia, 59% of women will be assaulted by their spouse. These numbers just concern physical violence and don't begin to touch the other areas of domestic violence, as defined by the World Health Organization. When you add in sexual violence, emotional abuse, and controlling behavior by intimate partners, the list gets even longer, and each statistic is more depressing and enraging than the one before it. It's overwhelming and frightening; if a woman's home becomes hell, where can she go to be safe?
That's where shelters like My Sister's Place come into play. Since 1979, they have been providing support and safety for victims of domestic violence in Washington D.C. They started with space for fifteen women and children, but have grown to the point where they have provided shelter and safety for nearly 4,000 women and children, and have handled more than 50,000 calls to their hotline. Every year, they conduct community outreach programs, educate hundreds of people about family violence and prevention, and provide counseling for women and children in all stages of recovery from abuse. Without My Sister's Place, or the other shelters that can be found through the Hot Peach Pages, women would be far worse off than they are. These safe havens are a key part in turning the tide of domestic violence; they allow women to take back control of their lives.