Day Six - Sexual Assault
Four 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.
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.
Forty years ago we declared that Sisterhood is Powerful, and it still is. We must remember that, must continue moving forward.
It's 2010 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
The statistics on rape in the United States are staggering. Every two minutes, one in six women - according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, more than 600 women were raped or sexually assaulted every day in 2006. That's 232,960 women who were sexually attacked in just one year, in just one country.
Of course, that number is just a ball-park figure. The sad fact of the matter is that rape is one of the most under-reported crimes, with the US Department of Justice estimating that only twenty six percent of sex crimes are ever reported to local law enforcement officials. The reasons so many women remain silent are legion: shame, fear of reprisal from their attacker (a very real threat - the vast majority of sexual assaults are acquaintance rapes), self-blame, or even not knowing that what happened to them is an assault and a crime.
Even if a woman does all the "right" things and reports her assault, she still has to deal with the aftereffects of rape. Women who have been sexually assaulted are likely to suffer physical trauma ranging from chronic pelvic pain and urinary tract infections to STDs and pregnancy. Psychologically, they are at risk of developing a form of post-traumatic stress disorder known as rape trauma syndrome, and have higher rates of severe depression, eating disorders, alcoholism and illegal drug usage, and death by suicide than women who have never been sexually assaulted.
The vast majority of rape service agencies believe that public education about rape, as well as expanded counseling and advocacy services for rape victims, would be effective in increasing the willingness of victims to report rapes and sexual assaults. The Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, commonly known by its acronym RAINN, is working hard towards those goals. They work with celebrities and the media to raise awareness about sexual assault on a national level, as well as working extensively with colleges to raise awareness on campuses across the country. Perhaps more importantly, they maintain the National Sexual Assault Hotline, the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline, and a database of local counseling centers to help survivors with short- and long-term support.