Vagina nation
Be forewarned that this column contains highly offensive material. The damage that occurs on a daily basis to women and their vaginas in a global culture that systematically disempowers and abuses them ought to make you cringe in disgust. So I present a few of the facts. If an open discourse about vaginas makes you more uncomfortable than the information below, you should do everyone a favor and duct tape yourself into a dark little room and never come out.
Think about all of the women you know, the women you care about, the women that make an impact on your life. If you know four or more, there’s a better than decent chance that at least one of them has been affected by sexual violence. Our society has tolerated and condoned violence against women, both implicitly and overtly, since it’s inception centuries ago. It’s frightening to imagine how slowly and minutely things have changed.
It’s true that important steps forward have been made toward ending violence against women. Rape crisis hotlines, domestic violence shelters and community awareness programs have emerged everywhere and make an impact constantly. Yet the violence continues. The need for these programs hasn’t waned.
From a practical standpoint, violence against women costs our country billions of dollars every year in court costs, lost wages and other expenses. Discrimination keeps millions of women worldwide from composing an active and contributing segment of society, lowering GDPs and productivity of all kinds. The social and economic costs of violence are simply staggering.
Until women and their bodies are universally respected, it’s hard to imagine a world where the epidemics of forced prostitution, slave trafficking, beatings, muggings, rapes and assaults aren’t a constant threat to millions of women worldwide.
Violence is happening right now, everywhere, covertly and in plain view. Women are its disproportionate targets, and their vaginas are often the sites of the violent acts. As long as we are afraid to talk about vaginas, are offended by their existence and want nothing more but to keep them hidden and silent, there’s little hope that the situation will change.
It’s a shame that we couldn’t accelerate our civilization from zero to equal in eight decades or less. There’s still work to be done. A large part of the work involves turning women’s bodies from potentially abused objects into safe sacred spaces in the cultural centers of each of our brains. We can’t do that while a part of that space is reviled, detached and obscured in our minds.
Violence is in your community, in your city, in your world, on your campus, inside your head. You have a responsibility to make it so that women aren’t afraid to leave their homes at night, for your own sake and for the sake of the women you love.
