Today marks V-Day, one billion rising, referring to the number of women on the planet who have either been raped or beaten during their lives.
Eve Ensler, of The Vagina Monologues fame, has penned a passionate piece calling for women to rise up in protest and men to support them on Valentines Day 2013, in support of the these one billion women.
I bring this to Migrant Tales today also as a response to those men on the Far Right in Finland who attempt to hijack rape as an issue to further their own agenda of hate against immigrants – shame on you! Rape is not an issue to do with immigrants – it is an issue that all men must take responsibility for! If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!
OVER IT
By Eve Ensler
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 demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it
freedom of speech or 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 Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages.
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, Pakistan, South
Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a
place, still waiting for justice.
I am over rape happening in broad daylight.
I am over the 207 clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that
are capturing, raping, and torturing lesbians to make them straight.
I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!)
getting raped by their so-called “comrades.”
I am over the forces that deny women who have been raped the right to
have an abortion.
I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations
that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he
is still running for the President of the United States.
And I’m over CNBC debate host Maria Bartiromo getting booed when she
asked him about it. She was booed, not Herman Cain.
Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who
protested the justice system instead of the rapist pedophile of at
least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect
those children after knowing what was happening to them.
I am over rape victims becoming re-raped when they go public.
I am over starving Somali women being raped at the Dadaab in Kenya,
and I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being
quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is
fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth,
as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.
I am over women still being silent about rape, because they are made
to believe it’s their fault or they did something to make it happen.
I am over violence against women not being a #1 international priority
when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime –
the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction
of life itself.
No women, no future, duh.
I am over this rape culture where the privileged with political and
physical and economic might, take what and who they want, when they
want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.
I am over the endless resurrection of the careers of rapists and
sexual exploiters – film directors, world leaders, corporate
executives, movie stars, athletes – while the lives of the women they
violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live in
social and emotional exile.
I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?
You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother
us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why
aren’t you standing with us? Why aren’t you driven to the point of
madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?
I am over years and years of being over rape.
And thinking about rape every day of my life since I was 5 years old.
And getting sick from rape, and depressed from rape, and enraged by rape.
And reading my insanely crowded inbox of rape horror stories every
hour of every single day.
I am over being polite about rape. It’s been too long now, we have
been too understanding.
We need to OCCUPYRAPE in every school, park, radio, TV station,
household, office, factory, refugee camp, military base, back room,
night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We need people to truly
try and imagine – once and for all – what it feels like to have your
body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need you
to let our rage and our compassion connect us together so we can
change the paradigm of global rape.
There are approximately one billion women on the planet who have been
violated.
ONE BILLION WOMEN.
The time is now. Prepare for the escalation.
Today it begins, moving toward 14 February 2013, when one billion
women will rise to end rape.
Because we are over it.