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Women’s rights are
human rights?
Stephen Henry Lewis,
United Nations’ envoy for HIV AIDS in Africa, 2006, said:
“[Women's rights have] never been made real, and so long as men control the levers and bastions of power… it never will be real. The demeaning diminution of women is everywhere evident… where freedom from sexual violence, the right to sexual autonomy, to sexual and reproductive health, social and economic independence, and even the whiff of gender equality are barely approximated. It’s a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet.”
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Females Dream of Freedom
Pandering to Pandemics
Throughout my new e-book, Cinderella’s Coffin: How men control the fate of women and girls, and what women can do about it, I rant about HIV/AIDS and its decimation upon world populations, economics, and genomes. Not enough is being done to find a cure, but at least I’m not alone in my concern for the future of the female gender:
“The global HIV/AIDS pandemic is taking a catastrophic toll on women and girls.” Refer A Dose of Reality (Human Rights Watch, 21-3-2005)
Such statements are maddening in so many ways—primarily because one can’t blame and hold accountable a virus that seems to be more intelligent than all those who are trying to eradicate it. But women can—and should—hold accountable the people helping the pandemic’s spread! Although retroviral drugs have curtailed the deaths due to AIDS in the U.S. and elsewhere, this global horror story is far from over.
People, especially women and girls, in poverty-stricken nations are being infected faster than reports can make their way to health organizations whose job is to present the facts to the world community so that those interested enough to do something about it can do something about it.
It’s too late to point the finger (middle one on either hand) at George W. Bush and earlier global religious politicos who repeatedly denied access to HIV/AIDS information, education, prevention, and treatment. The damning damage has been done. Withholding help and workable solutions is just another way that men who think they’re ‘good’ can ‘get even’ with men they think are ‘bad.’ In this case, it seems the good old boys have ‘gotten even’ with the gay community for having what they might call deviant sex. But the true victims, as always when it comes to rules, regulations, religions, governments, wars, and poverty, are women and girls.
Retrovictims of Virility
What few statistics are available are already outdated, but here’s just a hint of how bad the situation really is:
Consider these statistics: The latest reports from the UNAIDS (Dec. 2007):
· 33.2 million victims are living with HIV throughout the world.
· 22.6 million victims (two-thirds of the total number of HIV infections) are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
· 14.0 million victims (62% of those infected) are women and adolescent girls.
· Seventy-five per cent of all HIV-positive women in the world are African.
According to Poodwaddle’s Clock, as of 061708, the numbers for sexually transmitted diseases are:
· HIV 33.9 million (Actual increase of 758,902 since Dec. 2007, i.e., more than 100,000 per month.)
· Syphilis 4.2 million
· Gonorrhea 17.2 million
· Chlamydia 19.7 million (Chlamydia: a genus of bacteria which can cause urogenital tract infections.)
Contrary to popular belief of the uninformed, the majority victims of these diseases are not prostitutes or promiscuous women and girls, but rather married, monogamous females subjected to the stupidity and so-called superiority of males in their lives. One of the reasons there are so many Sub-Saharan females infected is that their male sex partners work in the mining camps in South Africa, indulge in unprotected recreational sex while living apart, and then transmit the disease to their female partners upon their return home.
“Many forms of violence against African women contribute to, and worsen, the devastation of women and girls from the HIV/AIDS virus. Women and girls are often ill informed about sexual and reproductive matters and are more likely than men and boys to be uneducated and illiterate. Physiologically, women are two to four times more likely than men to become infected with HIV, but they lack social power to insist on safer sex or to reject sexual advances.” Refer What is a Woman Worth? The Feminization of AIDS, by Marcy Bloom, On The Issues Magazine, Posted on June 9, 2008, Printed on June 11, 2008.
Etiolated Girl Power
The world’s women are often treated with less concern than the crops and animals they tend in order to feed their families. Just as some plants are etiolated (deprived of light to retard certain tendencies or characteristics) women and girls are too often kept in the dark, thereby inflicting extreme and sometimes irreversible disadvantages to the long-term well-being of the entire human species.
What is “social” power and why is it lacking in women?
Social power is any number of rights that may be granted or denied by one’s society. The right to be informed, the right to equal protection under the laws, access to resources such as food, education, healthcare, and property, the right to say no—these are just a few. Social power is most often lacking in poverty-stricken societies, and is usually caused by the subjugation of women and girls. If there’s not enough of everything to go around, women and girl children suffer the most at the hands and whims of dominant males.
“Gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices are some of the major risks for contracting the HIV virus. These include sexual violence, marital rape, domestic violence, early child marriage of young girls to older men, forced marriage, wife inheritance, widow cleansing, polygamy, and female genital mutilation.” Refer Bloom’s report. (This author would like to add militia rape to the list—an ever more frequent, acceptable, and virtually unpunished crime committed under the guise of patriotism!)
Without concentrated and successful efforts to reverse the conditions of poverty-stricken societies, the fate of women and girls spirals further into the abyss of degradation. When a family member becomes ill, it is women and girls whose time and talents are demanded for the care of the afflicted, thus diminishing even further their rightful access to employment, education, and other freedoms offered and afforded the male gender.
Outside factors over which women and girls have no control may include: insensitivity to their needs; lack of proper treatment; misguided policies and programs; lack of funding; deliberate ostracism; and society’s entrenched favoritism of the male gender.
Dastardly Side Effects
One of the side effects of the African AIDS pandemic is almost too terrible to mention, but to remain silent is just as deadly as the dreaded disease. In countries where education is a luxury and privilege, other forms of ‘knowledge’ replace it. Myths and superstitions crowd reason out, albeit one would think common sense would prevail. Not so, however, especially among men and boys who think that having sex with a virgin will cure their illness.
Infant rape has become the newest horror in communities already sloshing in the slime of post-colonialism and apartheid. More than 20,000 babies have reportedly been raped. (Refer Link TV’s documentary No Past to Speak Of.) Of this number of cases, only 10% of the male perpetrators have been apprehended, convicted, and punished.
In one particularly brutal case, the mother of a violated baby was charged with child neglect while two male suspects were released due to lack of evidence. The baby has since been adopted and lovingly cared for by an Afro-American woman who had moved to Africa to work as an international development consultant. Claudia J. Ford, a woman with three grown sons, was unable to walk away from the baby when told the child would be placed in a children’s home because the biological mother disappeared. (To learn more about this story, log onto linktv.net.)
I’ve said before, and it becomes more apparent each day, year, decade, and epoch: the greatest threat to women and girls is men and boys. The male gender, coddled by all its favored patriarchal, systemic shields, is able to annihilate the rights and lives of the opposite sex without social or cultural repercussions. Absent from their families, their responsibilities, and their role as protectors and providers, a large portion of the male gender takes a gruesome toll on humanity.
Cinderella’s Coffin dares to suggest changes that could be made in humanity’s way of thinking. But since men greatly resist change which requires their time, energy, and resources, it will be up to women and girls to correct the gender indifference the world currently boasts, demonstrates, and tolerates. Until then, females can only dream of true freedom.
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