[Day 10] Peace Movement
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.
Peace Movement
The effects of war on any country, on any people, are devastating. The effects of war on women of any country, of any people, are exponentially worse. Women are raped as an act of war, watch their children, fathers, brothers, husbands die by the thousands, and they are killed themselves. In the aftermath of war, widows are less likely to be able to feed themselves, provide themselves and their children with safety and shelter or medical care. They fight in every war, as soldiers, as medical staff, as weapons, as those left behind.
They fight a different battle as well, fighting for peace, speaking out against conflicts. In 2000, the United Nations released resolution 1325, which states, in part,"...affirming the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building, and stressing the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security, and the need to increase their role in decision- making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution." Women are stepping forward to provide ample evidence that yes, their roles are important, and demand acknowledgement and assistance.
Groups like the Women in Black and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom are shining examples of how women can help to prevent and resolve conflicts and work towards building peace. The Women in Black are an international movement of women protesting, marching, staging demonstrations for peace. They are unique in that they have no central organization - any woman, anywhere can "organize a Women in Black vigil against any manifestation of violence, militarism, or war. Our actions often take the form of women wearing black, standing in a public place in silent, non-violent vigils at regular times and intervals, carrying placards and handing out leaflets." In Israel, France, Sweden, Australia, and the United States, these women are visible reminders of opposition to armed conflicts. Their silence speaks volumes.