Silent Woman Speaks

I drew this long ago, was afraid to use it because it is not a pretty picture. The Silent Woman is a pub name still in use today. It is an ugly image. The rise of gender-based violence in the world is ugly. I am angry enough now to use the drawing. I'm going to use Silent Woman Speaks for posts that are shouting about gender-offensive behavior. Whenever I spot guybonics and tomfoolery. The idea of a woman who can't speak is referential in jokes, casual conversation, pop culture, and raises its headless form this year in the 112th Congress' legislative agenda. We need to speak. We need to stop being silent. I call on my matriarchal ancestors to help stop the madness of violence against women for all time.

JUST STOP IT!

Gordon Brown and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf posted today encouragement for the United Nations to adopt a 2006 recommendation for a High Level Panel to "empower women throughout the world."

In the same post, the bloggers mention the 30th anniversary of the U.N. General Assembly Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

2010 will be the 10th year with U.N. Resolution 1325 "acknowledging" that war has effects on women and "enhancing their participation in conflict resolution."

Read the post. It uses soft words, and diplomatic language, which is appropriate for the halls of diplomacy.

But violence against women doesn't happen in the halls of diplomacy. It happens in the world. Daily. Hourly. Minute by minute.

30 years! 10 years! 2006! How many girls and women have died since 2006 as a result of war, genocide, and radical religion? How many girls and women have been trafficked from their homes, traded for goods or debt, beaten, enslaved, murdered?

The time for U.N. Resolutions and High Level Panels is long - tragically long - gone. It is past time to raise the cry for the voiceless, the missing, the exploited.

It is women who need to do this. Talk about it, write to the newspaper, your Congressperson, the U.N. U.S. Madame Ambassador Susan E. Rice is a woman. One of Michigan's Senators is a woman - and I'm going to write to Senator Debbie Stabenow.

Get involved. Zero tolerance for violence against women. JUST STOP IT!