When Women Are Safe, We Will Finally Be Free
(video accessed through link below)
When Women Are Safe, We Will Finally Be Free
3/1/2023 by Alicia Garza
For 400+ years, we’ve been playing by their rules. (You know—the ones cisgender white men made.) Not any more. Women are the majority of voters in this country and together we have the power. It’s time for a new set of rules that values all of us—our bodies, our lives and our work. The Majority Rules project—an artful essay and op-ed series from Ms. and Supermajority Education Fund—marks an essential step toward achieving gender equality.
Majority Rule 1: Our lives are safe.
(video narrated by Mariska Hargitay; op-ed by Alicia Garza)
When I imagine a better world, I think of a world where women are safe, everywhere we go. I envision a society where we can work freely without fear of harassment, love freely without fear of intimidation, and move freely without fear of violence. That’s the world we deserve. Safety is our most fundamental need, but our country aggressively denies it to women—especially women of color.
Violence grows out of a desire to keep power in the hands of a few—misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia. It’s cultivated by an unhealthy society where we criminalize far too much and invest far too little in our communities. It’s encouraged by government policies, which too often allow those who threaten our safety to do so without consequence.The result is that with every passing minute, another woman is harmed by violence—and violence has many forms.
In America, a woman is shot and killed by a current or former partner every 16 hours, and 81 percent of women have been sexually harassed or assaulted. The statistics are even worse for women of color: Black women experience intimate partner violence at higher rates, Indigenous women are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted, and Asian American women are increasingly targeted by violent—and deadly—hate crimes.
But violence isn’t just direct physical harm—it is also mental and emotional harms that make women fear for their safety. The maternal health crisis, which is claiming the lives of Black women at three times the rate of white women, is violent. Repeated racism at work is violent. The prison system—which incarcerates women and girls of color at rates two to four times higher than white women—is violent. These are the fears women wake up thinking about, walk home at night consumed by, and dream of escaping. These experiences are not just a part of our history—they’re our daily reality.
Every attack on our safety stands in the way of our freedom. We need policies that protect us—we need to get serious about the problem with serious solutions.
. . . . . . .
Explore The Majority Rules series, a collaboration between Ms. and Supermajority:
Our lives are safe. (feat. Mariska Hargitay and Alicia Garza)
Our bodies are respected. (feat. Cecile Richards)
Our work is valued. (feat. Reshma Saujani and Ai-jen Poo)
Our families are supported. (feat. Stephanie Beatriz and Amanda Brown Lierman)
Our government represents us. (feat. Alicia Garza and Katherine Grainger)
https://msmagazine.com/2023/03/01/women-health-sexual-harassment-assault-violence/
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