The term “gender based violence against women” does not inform the reader who is responsible for committing violence against women. “Gender” is a descriptive term not a human entity. “Gender” cannot commit violence against women so who is being protected by not being named? Perhaps it is women because “gender” is commonly perceived as attributable to women since men have always claimed male as the default generic human and hence no need to name men/males as men/males. Obviously the entities being protected are men because naming men/males as the perpetrators will immediately instigate a male backlash of claims “you are demonising men” or “not all men are violent!”
Tag: women’s refuges
Socialist Women for Justice in Oz
In 2007, five women met in Taree at the cafe Raw Sugar for breakfast; a nurse, a teacher, a women’s refuge worker, a school assistant and I, an author and retiree. The original three are members of the Australian Labor (not Labour) Party. Therefore, although the meeting was not politically driven, the conversations had little to do with knitting tea cosies or cooking. It was not long before it was realised that talking was not enough; we were just going around in circles. Socialist Women for Justice was the answer.
Aboriginal First, Woman Second – Part 2
We went to a settlement roughly 5 kilometres from inner-city Perth. Five vans had been donated by a mining company – with one toilet, one washing tub, one shower and one light to service all the families living in the vans. That visit above all was upsetting. The babies were sick. The adults showed such loss it is difficult to describe. They are terrorsed by police. The young women are raped; bashings are common. Just a little way through the scrub was a park area where the practising Klansmen bashed Aborigines to the point of death. I was devastated with what I saw. I met a woman about forty years old, who thought I could do something. If only I could. It was hard for her to understand I was there for my own interest, and was not connected to a higher power, or its messenger.