Tuesday, July 28, 2015

"I Suggest You Shut Your Mouth"


Required reading:

The July 27 to August 9 issue of New York magazine features 35 of the 46 women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault since the late 1960's on the cover, along with an empty chair representing the 11 women who did not want to be photographed or interviewed. It is a powerful article about the culture of shame and silence that victims of sexual violence endure and the cost of speaking out against their attackers.

As noted in the article, speaking up is the only thing to do.  And more men need to speak out against sexual assault.  Stay silent no more.

More on this to follow......

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Murder By Numbers



“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
                                                                                                William Bruce Cameron
                                   “Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking”


Numbers.
We are a culture and a society built on numbers, statistics, and data.  That’s how we roll…..we cite numbers to support arguments.  Frame conversations around relevant ratios and make salient points supported by numbers.  Reference numbers when necessary or convenient, as long as they back up the facts we want them to support.  Kids grow up with an encyclopedic knowledge of batting averages, free throw percentages, and touchdown passes thrown by quarterbacks in high school, college, and the NFL (at least kids from my generation did).  Our government is based on numbers regarding population, Social Security numbers, GNP, CPI, etc.
It’s impossible to disregard numbers or their importance in every facet of our lives.
Here are a few more relevant numbers:

·         -Number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 – 2012: 6,488
·         -Number of American women murdered by current or former partners from 2001 - 2012: 11,766
·         -Average number of women killed every day by domestic violence in the US: 3
·         -Number of American women who experience (or will experience) physical intimate partner    violence in their lifetime: 38,028,000
·         -Number of women in physically abusive relationships who are raped or assaulted during the relationship: 40 – 45%
·        - Number of American women who were victims of domestic violence in 2013: 4,774,000
·        - Number of “legacy rapes” reported by law enforcement in 2013: 79,770

So here’s today’s question:
How many women need to experience physical intimate partner violence before we start to take domestic violence seriously?

I’m not sure what that number is, but we know for certain it’s not 38,028,000………. because if it was, somebody would have done something about it by now.