baserinstincts

The Spoils of War

Photo by flickr user Captain Midnight.

It’s a very effective weapon, because the communities are totally destroyed,” he said. “You destroy communities. You punish the men, and you punish the women, doing it in front of the men.

This is what Maj Gen Patrick Cammaert, the former commander of the UN peacekeeping force in eastern Congo, told the BBC.

The article goes on to state the UN’s reaction and even says that the resolution is being hailed as historic.

Forgive me if I don’t jump up and down.

I’m more inclined to cross my arms, tap my foot and scream “It’s about damn time”.

UN Secretary General says that violence against women has reached “unspeakable proportions”. ANY violence against women, and especially when you’re talking about rape as one of the systematic tactics of war, is unspeakable.

The UN can’t really think that this a recent phenomenon.

Can they?

And why does it take thousands of women being systematically raped for the UN to take notice? What about the single woman that gets attacked in a random dark alley by some chump trying to prove his manhood.

How many women get raped here in the US every year? By their boyfriends? By their husbands?

According to RAINN there is a rape every 8 minutes in the U.S. 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime (look around you, chances are you already know a victim if you yourself aren’t one). Only 6% of rapists see any jail time.

As a society, we say that we care about basic human rights and that senseless violence against innocents is intolerable. But our actions say “yeah, except when those innocents are women.”

In grade school during a sorry excuse for a sex ed class we were told not to scream “RAPE” if we were ever attacked because chances are no one would come. We were to scream “FIRE” instead.

A dear friend of mine suffered an attack by her ex-boyfriend after she left him. She reported it and was attacked by him again. Frustrated with the inaction and seeming indifference of the police, she complained.

“Just calm down miss,” the officer told her. “It’s not like he killed anyone.”

Boy am I glad to know that if he did kill her, the police might actually do something about it.

Another friend of mine, an older woman, told me a the story of her husband beating her in public on the subway platform. A cop comes over to break it up. “This is my wife,” her husband said simply. The cop nods and walks away.

These are only two of countless horror stories I’m sure.

The legal system has done a piss poor job of protecting women against violence and putting the perpetrators behind bars.

But furthermore, this patriarchal society we live in is what makes it easy, commonplace and even accepted for this type of violence to occur in the first place.

This resolution that the UN has proposed has been a long time coming. And while I agree that we should help the women in the Congo and women all over the world to live safer, healthier lives, America needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and take care of home as well.

Time to put up or shut up.