Violence against Women

“ Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”-Rebecca Solnit, The Longest War , page 523.

Indeed this is the longest war, which women over the years are trying to win over. But is it an ending war? You can see in women eyes when she is struggling and fighting for their daughters and the daughters that will come and walk on the same ground. We can see the terror in their eyes and all the problems they had because of one reason: They were all Women.

Nowadays, we call it “epidemic of assault”, and it is everyday violent for women all over the World. But can we stop “street harassment”? I don’t think so. I think that maybe we can hope on the new generations, and to pray that every man would think of his sister, his mother before hitting a women, before the rape, before he punishes her in some creepy ways that we read on in the newspapers and cannot believe our eyes.

“I have the right to control you”- is the main sentence that we should use when we speak about gender violence. I say gender, but women are always those who suffer most, of course that also violence can happen over men. The self-given right of taking control over “your” women starts a long time ago, but especially we can see it clearly in the 70s-80s years. Back then, women didn’t work, didn’t have carriers, nor they were free (able) to have every day jobs. Women’s every day jobs were to keep the house clean, keep the children quite, and cook three meals. I think, men didn’t even know where the kitchen was in their houses. So the control was higher and higher, as this women didn’t have their own money (now they don’t have retirement paycheck (speaking of EX Yugoslavian countries) and even though some of them were under violent they didn’t have any other choice than sitting at home and pretending everything is alright-everything will be all right. Okay, sure the sun came up for these women, as nowadays things are a little bit different. There are institutions that are willing to protect you, that can offer you help, even money…but this situation is not equal everywhere.

As I researched, even today in some poor villages in Albania you can buy yourself a wife for some amount of money. But who owns this so called “wife”. Her parents? How? And even today, when all the technology is moving forward, when we are thinking about flying cars, there are still women that are sold for money. And these women have to ask their husbands if they can to go to the doctor, or pharmacy and they have got not a clue how is the World going on out of their windows.

Let’s focus a little bit on sexual objectification. Sexual objectification is viewing people only as sexual object and desire. We all know that one of the general problem (I say general, because it is a problem all over the World), is raping. Raping is every kind of intimate relationship that one of the “parties” did not agreed on it. So for me, rape could be kissing women, grabbing her butt or another intimate part of her body and having intercourse without heir’s acceptance. So the sex issue and rape for me does not always mean a sex. There a lot of women that I know that had been grabbed on her intimate body parts in public (such as in the bus). The fact that these things that I have written about can be seen on TV shows, movies, videos, video game, commercial. In all those public spaces; women are shown with focus on their body parts, intimate body parts, which later those same women will be grabbed on her intimate part by some occasional man walking through the street. Women’s lips, breasts, legs have been sexualized (especially in this new century) and when people (read: men) see this commercials they receive the message and they are objectifying these women’s parts and maybe, but only maybe in their brain this cause the violent.

Objectification is changing the way people look at women, but moreover it changes how women react to their own looks and bodies. This sexual objectification leads to seeing and treating a person as something, rather than someone. Women are treated instrumentally, as tools, treated liked they are owned as they can be sold or bought, treating them as they thoughts or feelings does not exist. And those kinds of sexual objectifications indeed changed the social perspective: all the focus nowadays is on women’s body rather than their human characteristics. Also, this kind of objectifications could make wrong impressions, as women are perceived as less friendly, less intelligent, less worthy etc. And seeing women as less-than-human object is a first step for aggression and violent against them.

Sexual objectifications open ups many doors that leads to violence. In one hand we have all those people who are becoming more aggressive to women, and in other hand we have those who are more passive, they are more indirect, but they are silent acceptances of objectification and violence against women.

See a situation from woman’s point, where she is not valued for her thoughts, feeling, motivation and none of her internal characteristics and then you can empathize with her. This is for sure one of the ways to reduce women’s objectivity. Also, the focus towards women is more like a tunnel, when we are only seeing superficial, parts of body instead seeing a complete human being.

 Of course, I don’t think that we can stop these Tv shows, commercials, not in a million years, as let’s be true-sex sells. The internet media gives us one secret message: What you see is what you get. That is one of the reasons for violence, as men are adopting this secret message, and focuses on superficial characteristics and less on those deeper ones. In this case, we can clearly see how the violent it is growing through the years and how it is unending war for all of us.

Today you don’t have to make some kind of researches about violent. Violent against women is everywhere around us, from “checking out” the women and looking down on hers body instead of her eyes is enough violent that women are “surviving” in their everyday life. It could happen from her boss, her professor, from someone she knows or someone she never met. As I mentioned before, the social mediums are evolving, they are growing, they become “wiser” with the time, and so is the violence. On Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Tinder women have become only a sexual objects, and many researchers have shown that they are seen as “less human”.

Our lives have become photos that we are scrolling all day long, and women are seen through their body characteristics and not through their brains. In short term all women have experience body shame and self awareness of their bodies. Many of them don’t enjoy intimate moments with their partners, they are all the time questioning their self how they look naked with their partner. Also experiencing sexual assaults during their high school, college or even later in their lives could damage your physical health for a lifetime. And no women can easily recover from this type of violence.

Violent against women is like a book where with each day you can add another page: another chapter of rape, another chapter of street harassment, body shame, law that forbids you to do things because you are a women, chapter that will tell you what to wear what not, chapter that will tell you what should be your career, who to date, with who to hang out, what to eat, what to hear, what to speak and how to breathe.

Violent against women is the longest war ever, and in my thoughts I came to conclusion that there will never be any winners; there are never winners in wars, but only victims of the society that lost their lives struggling for better tomorrow.