“Me too”
The #metoo trending on Twitter a few Sundays ago initiated a path to the overthrow of a system of subversive predatory acts of sexual violence and sexual harassment enacted on women’s bodies and psyches. If the hashtag was any indication, then millions of women on Twitter alone (and this may be only the tip of the iceberg) have been victims of sexual abuse or harassment. Contrary to what may have been previously believed sexual violence cannot be shrugged off as incidental acts, evil as they may be, but rather as part of an entrenched societal institution buttressed by money and power. The worrisome question is: What gives men the right to think they have ownership of and or unfettered access to women’s bodies?
Predator Beware
We own our bodies” is the message women are transmitting to perpetrators of sexual violence. It may have been said before but now women adding a new frequency to their demand to be treated with dignity and respect as individuals and as not sex objects. Alisa Milano helped individual women to begin to say as she indicated – I have had enough. Milano uncorked the genie and women are not going back. They are fed up and are taking the battle to the predators. Like heroes, women stood up and somehow manufactured great courage and guts to reach beyond their pain to speak of their buried shame on that fateful Sunday evening. They offered their possible humiliation as a sacrifice to light the path for others. As a result, sexual predators who prey on vulnerable while hiding behind money and power began to be exposed for their villainy. Now like Prometheus women will not stop until this Zeus of abuse is overthrown and they rise unbound.
In this current course the onus is on the fine people of influence to rise in empathy with their fellow human beings and use their star power to speak out against sexual violence and harassment until this existing established system is undermined and completely eradicated from among us. We cannot allow voices now raised against this resident evil to be muffled neither can we return to positions of feigned ignorance. We must continue to speak out against these vexing issues that confront our mothers our daughters and our sisters.
#sexual violence,#Me Too, # abuse, #domestic violence
Written by the author of Splendor from Ashes
IngridRizzolo-MyWrite 