violence

First of all, I am very very sick, so sorry if posting is short/lapsed/foggy. Mono ftl.

I got an email from Codepink today, urging President Obama to visit Gaza. This picture was included in the email. It is a picture of a girl, with the headline "I am Gaza", and the subtext, "40% of about 900 Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children."

Personally, I think the intended message in statements like that is, "40% of the people killed aren't even involved in this fight." (That's not 100% true, but that's another debate.) Still, it's just such an uncomfortable statement. "Women and children."

It has been disturbing me for months now, the image of an Afghani girl shivering with pain on CNN infomercials, her face covered with a translucent slime that looks like Vaseline. A man attempts to put drops in her eyes via a long tube but she gestures him away the way a screaming toddler would a nurse with an approaching syringe. The question that has been a permanent fixture in the revolving doors of my mind repeats itself one more time. What kind of person would throw acid on little girls who just want to go to school? What kind of world do we live in that allows this?

I had heard of acid attacks before but only in the context of personalized violence against women; jilted lovers in Uganda and Bangladesh and other developing countries who seek revenge by scarring and maiming their former partners for life. It filled me with disgust then too. But the recent attacks in Afghanistan, illuminate the political dimension of Gender-based violence (GBV). I guess I can understand personal violence, the red-hot anger that drives people to hurt and kill the people they claim to love. I don’t condone it but at least I can wrap my head around it. But the coldness that drives grown men to splash burning acid in the eyes and faces of young girls who are the future? The coldness with which men maim young women for political gain and in the name of religion? That I cannot understand. It disturbs me deeply, every time I think of it. Little girls who just want to learn. How is it that grown men who claim to be interpreting the word of God can declare these little girls the enemy. Little girls who just want to learn.

The latest incident in Florida, where a group of teenage girls attacked and beat a fellow class,ate and video taped it to put it on Myspace saddened me greatly. Girl's beating up other girl's. Just the thought of that really bothers me. Women physically overpowering another woman, and often, as I found out from a number of teenage girls (and boys) who work with me the fight is about a guy who both girls are interested in or something along those lines.

I never experienced girl's at my high school actually physically fighting with each other, although sadly we had a whole lot of verbal bashing and rumors going on, which really is no better.

One of my good friends has been dating this guy for five months. A few days ago (on their five month-iversary)the boyfriend was at a camping trip/party with some of his friends. He called my friend at around 10:30 that night. Everything in their conversation was going normally, and then he brought up something that had happened when they had just began dating. My friend had gotten drunk with a few close friends, and one of her friends took advantage of her. She can't remember what happened. He said something really nasty about that, and then said that all he had to do was wait until their six month-iversary, get her drunk, and rape her, getting her pregnant.

So, I've been researching various diseases. Some for school, others for my writing. (I like inflicting mental illnesses on them.) I noticed something about all the ones I was likely to use, and the ones I researched:

Most of the people who got them were female. Some of the stats were only in the fifties or sixties, but a couple went as high as 87% or so. These statistics are depressing in and of themselves-and half of them are connected to depression.

Let's follow the ropes here. So, here goes: first, we deal with depression. This disease can be deadly (suicide) if it isn't treated. It could be called 'chronic sadness', but I suspect that everyone who has ever been through it knows that it's more. It's a deep gnawing at your sould; like eternal torment. There are many reasons for depression. Most of them have to do with not being able to talk about something, with losing someone or something, or being hurt in other ways.

...that we live in a country where injustice is documented.

UCLA's Mostafa Tabatabainejad was Tasered at least 4 times by the police. For what? Did the student have a weapon, was threatening the police or an innocent person, or in a physical fight?

No, he didn't have his student ID. And while he did refuse to show that ID, thinking that he was being racially profiled, and did initially refuse to leave the library, it did not have to blow up into the huge event that followed. A college kid being annoying does not warrant multiple Taser shocks.

A library patron managed to document the event and submitted it to YouTube (It can still be seen here though it is extremely disturbing), thus making the incident national news.

I am a writer; I write poetry about my feelings. About my despair, and about my hate. About who I am, and how I've pulled off the foolishness of falling in love. About what, exactly, I have become.

I write short stories about travellers, I write short stories about time-travel and education. I write novellas about war, novellas about killers and those who stand against them; I write novellas about the after life, and the end of the world.

But I don't write about feminism. I don't write from a feminist point of view. I write about men and women, priests and priestesses. I write about women who are tall and thin, who have seen, and caused, death.

Last saturday my boyfriend M, my flatmates and I went to a bar in one of those pretentious Londonian neighbourhood. Dark smoky settings, loud trashy electronic european music, and people eager to hit on one another.

Can't say I am a fan of those places. I used to enjoy going out loads, but in the past years it gradually changed. I don't see the point in going to places where I cannot hear my friends and dislike the music at the same time.

M and I discussed this while drinking beer on an uncomfortably comfortable couch.

"I guess I don't really see the point in venturing in those places where nothing excites me, really. The music is bad, the people pretentious, the alcohol expensive. I'd rather go to a gig to hear music I love or go to a quite bar or terrasse to drink wine and have long conversations with my friends."

I've been reading through everything I missed, and let me tell you I have twenty or so tabs left to check out. But I don't know how long I have online, so let's get this up now, yes? Yes. KK. WARNING: violent. Could be triggering.

There's a post that Micki is going to war. I wish her all the best, knowing that...war is something I both love and hate. It may tear people away, and you can never be sure they will come home alive. So I hope, for the sake of Micki, her family, and all of us here, that she comes back alive and relatively unharmed.

But then Heather and Irmelin believe that war is unfeminist in many ways. But why? Is it not traditional that women will not fight? A woman should have every right to fight for what she believes in! If she believes in a conutry, if she believes in fighting to prove everyone wrong, if she believes in...she should act upon it.

"We always knew when we took on the issue of violence against women that somehow our opposition would come after us. " - Patricia Ireland

"[We need to] talk about the root causes of terrorism, about the need to diminish this daily climate of patriarchal violence surrounding us in its state-sanctioned normalcy; the need to recognize people's despair over ever being heard short of committing such dramatic, murderous acts; the need to address a desperation that becomes chronic after generations of suffering; the need to arouse that most subversive of emotions -- empathy -- for "the other"; the need to eliminate hideous economic and political injustices, to reject all tribal/ethnic hatreds and fears, to repudiate religious fundamentalisms of every kind. Especially talk about the need to understand that we must expose the mystique of violence, separate it from how we conceive of excitement, eroticism, and "manhood"; the need to comprehend that violence differs in degree but is related in kind, that it thrives along a spectrum, as do its effects -- from the battered child and raped woman who live in fear to an entire populace living in fear." Robin Morgan, from The Demon Lover

This is an important story. I am a proud Torontonian and a proud female. (Can't call myself woman. I'm a girl.) I am a proud Pagan. I stand up for my rights. I want to live in a better world.

So I'm going to tell you about something we do once a year in Toronto. I've only done this once, two years ago. Last year I was busy being in the hospital to do anything.

The closest thing I've ever had to a 'feminist hero' is my grandmother. I admit it, I've always been closer, and looked up more to Daddy. Because he was a wonderful person: he was almost everything I wanted to be in life. But he wasn't rich or anything. I spent that time with him.