[Day 4] Domestic Violence
Last year, rageprufrock wrote about women like the burst-open lips of figs, about how women have worn their history as odalisks and sacrifices and mothers and daughters and victims like jewelry -- she wrote about how despite all of this, we sometimes forget how far we have come, and more importantly how far we have yet to go.
It's 2007 and the third most powerful person in American politics, second in line to take over the presidency, is a woman: Nancy Pelosi -- but half of the coverage she earned after her first State of the Union was about the color and cut of her clothes. Hilary Clinton is a two-term senator of New York and former first lady bracing to run for the Office of the Presidency in 2008 -- and yet people are preoccupied by her gender, by how pretty she might be and how she does her hair, whether or not she got plastic surgery. Women are still being raped and killed in Darfur; the Chinese countryside still has families practicing infanticide despite the country's rapidly skewing sex ratios. Girls are still giving themselves eating disorders comparing themselves to impossible standards of beauty, still acting less intelligent than they really are -- to be non-threatening, to be liked. 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 2007 and women are still odalisks and sacrifices and mothers and daughters and victims -- and we owe ourselves and all other women more than that, we owe ourselves better. We can
do more.
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
The statistics are out there for anyone interested. They will tell you that one in three women will be physically abused in their lifetime. The statistics will say that thirty percent of Americans know a woman who has been physically abused in the last year. The statistics will tell you that it's a problem, a huge problem with no end in sight.
How many children in the United States grow up in fear, if not for their own safety, than for that of their mother? How many women are afraid in their own home because of domestic violence?
It isn't just intimate partner violence either. Domestic violence covers sibling abuse, elder abuse, and child abuse. It isn't just a bruise or a scar left behind. It's living in a constant state of fear, being afraid that you'll say the wrong thing or look at someone the wrong way. Domestic violence strips away a person's sense of self, of confidence. It's an act of violence from one who feels powerless, an attempt to gain power over someone else.
Statistics will tell you that children who were abused are more likely to abuse their own children and spouse. It'll tell you that violence is a cycle that is hard to break, that statistically speaking, domestic violence is perpetuated from one generation to the next. The words, "I will never do to them what was done to me," proving themselves false again and again.
Yet, we are not without hope. A report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics stated that occurances of domestic violence are down since 1993, and that the violence is more likely to be reported. Women have options now that they didn't have twenty years ago, and whether it's the opportunities and support given to those on the receiving end of the abuse or the reeducation of the abusers that's responsible for the significant drop one can't say. It is, however, a start.
Still, an average of three women are killed as a result of domestic violence every day in the U.S. alone.
We can't be in their homes. We can't protect them or shelter them alone, but organizations such as Family Violence Prevention Fund and The National Domestic Violence Hotline work to help, to give women options and support when it's needed most.