Shut Up, Sit Down

I don’t know yet if I’m doing the 16 Days Campaign where you blog about violence against women every day for sixteen days. I don’t know because I never know in advance if I’m going to have the spoons for blogging. But I can say I’ll try.

I’m angry today, wired, full of rage from an earlier argument and stoned off my nut on my max-dose codeine which works moderately well at managing my pain and very well at reducing the amount I give a fuck about my pain. But I’m feeling angry, and the fact that it’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is making me angrier.

Not because it exists, you understand. But because it exists. I think it’s important to have days like this, though I wish the world would care every fucking day, I wish this was an important issue, I wish the newspapers covered violence against women every day it happens, which is every damn day of the year.

No, I’m angry it needs to exist. I’m angry that we’ve reached two thousand and fucking eleven and more women are dying every year from male violence than from war. That’s fucking disgusting. Even more disgusting are the intersections; that women of colour, trans women, disabled women, mentally ill women, lesbian women, poor women, are even more likely to suffer violence.

I’m angry that today will just be seen as a fringe event. I haven’t seen any major media coverage of the fact that today is such an important day. I am ashamed to admit I forgot today was today until I was reminded this afternoon on Twitter. More than half the world’s population live in constant danger of rape, violence and murder, and it’s just not important to anyone until they experience it. By which time it’s too late.

I wish the whole fucking world would wake up and listen to what we’ve been telling them for decades. Violence against women is a terrifying pandemic being ignored because it suits patriarchy to keep it alive. And that’s a horrifying reality.