"The future of nations is echoed in the footfalls of its women..."
In the past few days I have read, about rape --recent , past, date rape ...all kinds of rapes , all those which almost got squished to 'non'.
I go back again and again to review life, times,events. One thing is clear to me. We have moved, but just stay shifting in the same spot. Faces and people have changed but the focus has been and still is on the victim. Be it in the US, Nigeria, syria, India, Pakistan or anywhere in the world. Some how those accusatory raised sharp pointed finger is static...pointed to the victim always .
Be it intra-marital rape, date-rape or stranger rape , incest, or any molestation, it seems that the all powerful fingers points to the victim. some of us , we just re-live the traumas yet again as another story is unlocked.I believe the worst of it is the apathetic response by the surrounding world.
That first time you slink into the fold of society, that has normalized your role as prey,especially when you are a child.It is always about power and control struggles in a society...why disrupt those functioning system indeed?
all those questions that drown out the event....
'what about that other person who did try to prey, what about his life,his societal stand'... Then you remember, and you recognize the one who questioned that norm, who stood up and would not back down, when the normalizors all said 'it was an accident, or was someone just being playful,or the child just got scared... after all nothing happened...blah blah blah'...I had forgotten one of the many such event last night ,(the details are now fuzzy, lost to memory) but it came as a shock, how my grandmother went to confront my neighbor,with me the reluctant child in tow...I wanted her to do what all those others were saying, leave it be. Their chorus still rise as a loud din- he won't do anything again, what about his mother, why cause a stink, what about his marriage prospects, blah blah blah.... in our quiet village.
Well then again that is why people always sought her wise counsel in all sorts of matters, I guess. She never backed down from what was right ,even if many considered only the discomforts of upsetting a staid system ... I got that strength which never left me, may have laid dormant at times though... Is the current statistics of some form of sexual violence say 'one in four girls or one in five women?'
What about those of us who slide in and out of your daily lives, wearing our daily masks , never acknowledging any of it...tucking away our hurts, our fights all to a corner of our memory boxes..
what about those of us who go to sleep and wish we could escape the nights terrors... what of the children who carry that weight as a mantle of shame and set themselves up for a more brutal future in their silence.
They say silence is golden, I believe it is a golden cloak for the perpetrator..such a glow from all the silences that lay heavy just for the victim. Each choice of silence I am sure is a decision in the face of the chaos that stretches into the uncertainity of future, in a condemning society that is ready with their pointed fingers, be it at Stanford or anywhere else...yet we find our voice some times , beyond the heaviness and the din...
so what is the real rate ,for being victimised,worldwide...could it be more like one in two or may be near ten out of twelve.Or is the reality more close to one out of one... Whatever the numbers, next time you look at your mother , your grandmother,your sister, your friend, a minister, even a queen, ...look into the depths of those eyes and for a moment wonder what secret pains had crossed them... you may never know... you may never be told of their courageous actions either...
so much gets quiet over time, yet so much courage is around us
