what is it about this fact that is just hard? hard for me to even talk about without the feeling that i am not doing it justice. i feel like calling that fact "wrong" or any other description is acting as if it is just another fact, just another of those things women have to deal with, because, well, they're women.
what is it about those words? i see these stats, these facts so much. they upset me, they torment me, but this? this is just hard. hard to even think about. hard to even begin to understand.
phrases I dislike:
domestic violence - wording suggests "domestic" violence is somehow less significant than any other violence.
people of colour - suggests that white people deserve their own category, while black, latin, asian, middle eastern people, etc, only deserve one lump category.
some facts to get you thinking:
2000 rapes are committed every day at the rate of one every 5 minutes. 30% of rape victims are under 11.
women still make 77 cents to every man's dollar.
eating disorders kill 150 000+ women in north america alone. 80% of fourth grade girls report to being on a diet.
in response to some "no means no" signs posted up around the university, a bunch of Queen's guys wrote "No means Dyke", "No means more beer", "No means tie me up", "No means Harder", etc.
when asked about date rape, most junior high students (canadian source) believed it was okay to force a woman to have sex under certain circumstances: if the male had paid for the date, if they had been together for a "long time" (6 months), if she had had sex before, or if she "invites" it, by wearing suggestive clothing.
(info taken from Women's Voices, Feminist Visions (Shaw + Lee) and Lauren Anderson, 2001)
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