"It’s an existential dilemma to be alive and realize you are not important and that your body, the one you believe belongs to YOU, in fact may not. It may belong to your father, your mother, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, a stranger, your state. It makes some people angry. But good girls don’t get angry, do they? It’s so unattractive. But depression, that’s a different thing."
— Soraya Chemaly, Teen Girls: Depression? Really? How About Anger and Powerlessness? (via sparkamovement)
(via sorayachemaly)
cwgl:
Would you believe it if I said that when a country reduces its rates of violence against girls and women it also lowers its propensity for engaging in military conflict? There are meaningful, powerful and verifiable connections between violence in the home and a nation’s level of militarization…
Here are 16 Facts About Violence in Homes around the world:
1. Number of girls missing from planet due to son preference: 160,000,000
2. Sex ratio in parts of China: 120 boys to 100 girls
3. Worldwide, chances that a girl will be malnourished in the home compared to a boy: 3 to 1
4. Percentage of girls between 11-19 in India, where girls are frequently fed after boys,who are underweight: 47%
5. Number of girls worldwide that do not complete primary school education: 100 million
6. Gender gap in developed nations between boys completing secondary education and girls: >10%
7. Worldwide, estimated number of girls, per day, married before the age of 18: 25,000
8. Leading cause of death worldwide for girls 15-19: childbirth and pregnancy related death
9. Number of all women who will be victims of intimate partner abuse worldwide: 1 in 3
10. Percentage of female homicide victims in the US killed by an intimate partner: 33%
11. Country where women killed for giving birth to daughters instead of sons: Afghanistan
12. Number of women worldwide who have had their genitals mutilated, usually before the age of 18: 100 million and 140 million girls and women
13. Percentage of rape victims under the age of 18 (US): 44%
14. Percentage of their attackers who were family members (US): 34.2%
15. Percentage of honor killings in which girl is killed by her own family: 72%
16. Country in which a man killed his three young daughters by putting a snake in their bed because he finally had a son: Egypt
"The average prison sentence for men who kill their intimate partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced, on average, to 15 years. A pair of Maryland cases vividly illustrates this inequality in sentencing. In one case, a judge in Baltimore County, Maryland sentenced Kenneth Peacock to 18 months for killing his unfaithful wife. The very next day, another judge in the same county sentenced Patricia Ann Hawkins to three years in prison for killing her abusive husband. Significantly, the prosecutor in the Peacock case requested a sentence twice as long as the one imposed, while the prosecutor in the Hawkins case requested one-third of the sentence imposed."
—
The Michigan Women’s Justice & Clemency Project
“As many as 90% of the women in prison today [2008] for killing men had been battered by those men.”
(via mo-ohtaenahkohe)
(via stfusexists)
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When the media reports domestic violence murders as random tragedies - or when individuals say the perpetrator must have “snapped” - they enable a culture of violence against women. Because when you don’t contextualize this violence as part of structural misogyny, you give credence to the myth that there was nothing anyone could have done to stop it.
Insisting that this murder or others like it are ‘unthinkable’ or ‘shocking’ is another way of saying that no one could have predicted it. (He was such a nice guy! A family man!) It’s a dangerous lie that allows us to wash our hands of responsibility when it comes to the violence that is perpetrated against women. Because the truth is that murders like this are predictable.
"— From my latest at The Nation, “Kasandra Perkins Did Not Have to Die” (via jessicavalenti)
"It is pretty obvious that he did love her very much or he would have never have gone to such an extreme."
— A commenter at The Nation, referring to the murder of Kasandra Perkins. This is what a culture of violence against women looks like. (via jessicavalenti)
Today we commemorate the 14 women who were murdered in cold blood at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal 23 years ago today. Besides those women, the murderer injured ten others before turning the weapon on himself. In his suicide note, he blamed feminism for ruining his life, and told his victims…
"
If you’re shocked that [Kasandra] Perkins is dead, you shouldn’t be. Because she was a Black woman in her 20s with a child of less than a year old, statistics tell us that she was at a relatively high risk of being murdered by her child’s father. ELEVEN TIMES more at risk of being murdered because she was a Black woman and almost certainly to be blamed by certain segments of the Black community for her own death. You won’t read this anywhere else but HERE.
For any reporters or bloggers that would like to write something DIFFERENT about this story, please do consider doing something called “research” by typing in “maternal homicide” and “Black women” into Google. I know Google searches are incredibly difficult, but try and stretch yourself.
"— The Crucifixion of Kasandra Perkins: Victim Blaming, Black Maternal Homicide & Stupidity, What About Our Daughters (via jessicavalenti)
"Coercive sex can have many faces. It can come from a seemingly positive place, like when someone says, “I really think you should have sex with me because I love you.” It can also come from an obviously negative place through instances of blackmail. Neither is okay. We need to teach youth that it isn’t okay to pressure others into sex and that it is okay to say “no” to sex even if it hurts someone’s feelings."
— Widener student Sasha N. Canan, here. (via hellyeahscarleteen)
(via sacet)
"Just because two people are capable of deeply hurting each other over and over again does not make them passionate, star-crossed lovers. It makes them two people who keep doing terrible things to each other. Someone’s ability to make you completely and utterly soul-crushingly miserable does not mean they are a soul mate with some deep insight into your psyche. They are just someone who is really good at making you unhappy."
— Andrea Greb, You Are Not Blair (via monkeyknifefight)
(Source: a-lionsheart, via sparkamovement)
