Tag Archives: violence against women

One Billion Rising: February 14, 2013

Laurie and Debbie say:

ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION

One billion women are rising tomorrow, all over the world.

On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

What does ONE BILLION look like? On 14 February 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION.

ONE BILLION RISING IS:

A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being

V-Day (linked above) is a 15-year-old global movement to end violence against women. The movement was started by Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues.

This year, the V-Day folks are pulling out all the stops, organizing globally. Will we see one billion women rising in the streets? Or one billion people? Probably not, but we’re going to see a lot of people! There’s already livestream video from Manila on the site.

Looking at the map on the One Billion Rising site, and clicking around the world map, we find events in:

El Paso (La Palma Islas Canarias), Quebec, Sinaloa, Poitiers (Vienne), Boduthakurufuaanu Magu, Male’ (Henveiru), New South Wales, and literally hundreds more. (If you’re curious–we were–Henveiru is in the Maldive Islands.)

In our own Bay Area, there are 79 events, including flash mobs, performances, rituals, fundraisers, and more.

What will it take–really–to end violence against women? It will take belief in the possibility, willingness to organize, passion, commitment, and millions of people. And One Billion Rising is harnessing all of these things.

Here are some excerpts from Ensler’s poem/essay “Over It.” Read the whole thing.

Over It

I am over rape.

I am over rape culture, rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook.

I am over the thousands of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame

I am over people calling it freedom of speech and justifying it as a joke.

I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don’t have a sense of humor, and women don’t have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don’t think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.

I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape.

I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable.

I am over the thousands of women in Bosnia, Burma, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice.

I am over a woman being gang raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi or gang raped and videoed in Steubenville Ohio. …

No women, no future, duh.

Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2012

Debbie says:

Today is the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a painful day. Violence against transgender people is extremely pervasive and, as always, transgender people of color and trans women are the primary victims, which even when it is showcased today is often blurred throughout the rest of the year. erica, ascendant has an excellent angry post on this topic:

it’s disappointing to see that there is little to no mention of race on the official TDOR site other than in raw statistics. trans women of color have met with everything from passive-aggressiveness to outright ignorance when attempting to deal with the folks who run TDOR. … there is an unchecked/unquestioned monoculture at work. i’m sure the intent of the volunteers who run TDoR is not to create such a monoculture, but this is how it ends up, and the expectation seems to be that TDoR is by its very nature exempt from accountability for being such a monoculture, especially when most of the stories they’re telling, and too often mistelling, are about dead trans women of color.

More excellent writing in this vein by Monica Maldonado at transactivisty.

And so, in the spirit of preserving the lives of trans women, and trans women of color, every day, we repeat Marlene Hoeber’s post from this blog last year.

***

It’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. Today we remember those lost in the last year to transphobic violence.

I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

I have hands and mind and the will. If need be, I have guns and knives and boots and bricks and I know where to get torches and pitchforks. All of these things I have are for you, because I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

You are quiet and I have not heard enough from you lately. I hope you are ok. Are they mistreating you? Are you mistreating yourself? I have a comfortable couch and quiet conversation and a glass of brandy and a bowl of soup and a loud laugh. These things too are all for you, because. I insist.

I spend the time I can surrounded by boxes full of other people’s memories. I am nearly a professional rememberer. Whether you slip quietly away, surrounded by those who love you, or you fall in the fight against those who would see you suffer, I will collect the box of things that others can remember you by. I am not afraid to remember you, but I will not remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

Thanks to tim for the links to erica and Monica.