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Rape Awareness & Gender Equity
Some statistics indicate that one in three women will suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. How many women that you care about have been assaulted? Chances are good they've never spoken about it. Next time somebody makes so much as a slightly misogynistic joke to you, I personally challenge myself and yourself to remember the reality of rape and the trauma that physical assault inflicts--a long-term syndrome by itself--protest the joke and explain this reality to your company. Next time you hear someone judge a woman's character by her ability to fulfill male-constructed images and roles of any type, consider the reality of women as sovereign human beings and protest this kind of judgment. If you love life, consider the sacredness of women as precious life-givers.
If you have any ideas about progress in this kind of consciousness, please tell me about it.
Rape Statistics
RAINN (Rape Abuse & Incest National Network) statistics
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Rape has a devastating impact on the mental health of victims. 31% of all victims develop Rape-Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (RR-PTSD) sometime in their lifetimes. Based on U.S. Census reports on the number of women in the United States, 1.3 million women currently have RR-PTSD, 3.8 million women have previously had RR-PTSD and roughly 211,000 women will develop RR-PTSD each year.
Rape Law & What We Can Do About It
(Under construction.... Please contact me with suggestions.)
Ida Craddock (8/1/1857 - 10/16/1902)Ida wrote massive studies of religious sexuality, with extensive knowledge and a tremendous range of citations. Working for the National Liberal League, she promoted freedom from oppressive moral codes, especially for America's married women. She lectured, wrote pamphlets and conducted correspondence courses toward this end. For writing openly on sexual matters she was arrested under anti-obscenity law. She was convicted in New York for the "obscenity" of a pamphlet that promoted gentle and respectful relations on a couple's honeymoon (called "The Wedding Night"), without the jury even reviewing the pamphlet. She was offered escape from a prison sentence by pleading insane, but declined. Instead, on the morning she was to be sentenced, she committed suicide.
"I am taking my life because a judge...has declared me guilty of committing a crime I did not commit.... Perhaps...the American people may be shocked into investigating...."IDA CRADDOCK
Letter to the public
"I maintain my right to die as I have lived, a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being."IDA CRADDOCK
Letter to her mother
(Source: "Ida Craddock: Sexual Mystic & Martyr for Freedom" by Vere Chappell)
Meena Keshwal Kamal (2/27/1956 - 2/4/1987)Meena devoted herself to organizing and educating women, founding R.A.W.A. (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) in 1977. She launched a bi-lingual magazine against the crimes of fundamentalists in 1981 called Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message), and established Watan Schools for refugee children, and a hospital. She also represented the Afghan resistance movement at the French Socialist Party Congress.
"I'm the woman who has awoken....
My voice has mingled with thousands of arisen women
My fists are clenched with the fists of thousands of compatriots
To break all these sufferings, all these fetters of slavery.
I'm the woman who has awoken,
I've found my path and will never return."
Meena was assassinated in 1987 by the Afghanistan branch of the KGB and fundamentalists in Quetta, Pakistan. R.A.W.A.'s social work continues (much in secret and at great risk), but needs support badly.(Sources: rawa.org and diverse newspaper and journal articles)
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