I mentor a young girl at a middle school nearby. We have met since the beginning of the school year. Each time, I am reminded by how much she is exposed to. I decided to ask her to help me paint about Gendered Violence. It never occurred to me that she would be exposed to something and not know what it was; when she asked, I didn’t have a good answer ready.
If I had thought of this, I would have said that gendered violence, also known as gender based violence, is:
“Gender-based violence may involve intimate partners, family members, acquaintances or strangers.. Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” (http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005/english/ch7/)
When she asked, all I could think of to answer was with an example of domestic abuse. I feel like this dramatically shaped her idea of gender violence and in tandem, shaped her portrayal of gendered violence. I feel like it was an empowering moment of bonding between two strong women and it was a learning experience for both of us.
I asked her what she thinks we should paint. She came up with the idea of having the sun be a man and the moon be a woman. “The sun gets all the attention and he has all this aggression and so he tries to get close to the moon which makes her sad”, she told the Teammates counselor. That was a very deep explanation that I believe is rooted in personal experiences.
Reflecting on the activity that we shared, I am reminded of a video I saw in class. The basic idea was that when people are being too noisy with their music, their tv shows, their games, etc, people aren’t afraid of asking them to be quiet or threatening to call the police but when people are fighting, punching, arguing, threatening to hurt the other, no one feels like they should intervene.
“In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.1 That's an average of three women every day…According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year.4 Less than 20 percent of battered women sought medical treatment following an injury…According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That's more than 600 women every day”
When you look at those numbers, it is hard to imagine listening to this kind of violence and not doing anything about it.
