BRATTLEBORO — Advocates at the Women's Freedom Center have been talking about the intersection of violence against women and Valentine's Day.
We are not out at local stores, misty-eyed, poring over the Hallmark selection. Nor are we fingering the lacy heart shaped boxes of Whitman's Chocolates.
Instead, we recognize the unavoidable pit in mid-stomach, when a woman is at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital or Grace Cottage Hospital waiting for the SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) to swab for forensic evidence that a rape has occurred.
Or when she stands before a Windham Family Court judge, struggling to explain the toll that 14 years of threats, intimidation, and verbal abuse have taken on her life and the lives of her children.
Eve Ensler, the world-famous author of The Vagina Monologues, envisions another opportunity to keep the spotlight on issues of sexual and domestic violence, in One Billion Rising. People all over the globe will be dancing on Feb. 14 “until the violence stops.”
We appreciate Ensler's passionate, long-term commitment to ending violence against women and to keeping the focus on specific horrors endured by women the world over.
We honor her instinct to solicit diverse and compelling stories of survival.
However, we know that when dawn breaks on Feb. 15, while there will be scenes of wild, ecstatic dancing, our 24-hour hotline will still ring.
Our doorbell will ring.
And that powerful mantra, “until the violence stops,” will meet the bleak reality that it takes more than an elongated dance marathon, more than a Take Back the Night march, more than a village to uproot the patriarchal structure that gives rise to this level of chronic, lethal violence.
This begs the question: “What will it take?”
* * *
We have gathered many perspectives on what it will take to end violence against women, and we offer them up for your consideration:
• Educate children and young adults about safety, self expression, healthy relationships, and warning signs of abusive behavior. Help them to cultivate trusting relationships early on.
• Relinquish male privilege by articulating what men stand to gain by sharing power equally with women. What does it take to do so, and what are the benefits?
• Strive for gender balance in all key positions of power (policy makers, Congress, courtrooms, boardrooms, educators, media personnel, law enforcement, etc.)
• Increase the consequences for violence against women.
• Refuse to ignore the gendered nature of sexual and domestic violence.
• Resist the temptation to misplace attention on “girl on girl violence.” Violence perpetrated by woman and girls pales in comparison to the volume and nature of attacks, and homicides, committed by men on their intimate partners each year. Might the focus on women's behavior serve as a somewhat predictable distraction from men's violence?
* * *
What would Valentine's Day be like if every woman were safe - emotionally and physically - in her relationship, body, and home?
If no one needed or sought a Relief from Abuse order?
If Windham County completely eradicated sexual and domestic violence, once and for all?
Now that would get us dancing.