To the Silenced

Today is International Women's Day; a day designed to acknowledge and celebrate the many accomplishments and progress that women have made too and on this planet. It is also a day to reflect on the thousands of women around the World who still struggle to have their voices heard and their worth acknowledged.

Many countries in the World today still adhere to laws and lifestyles that oppress their feminine population. Through my work I have had the pleasure of meeting one elderly woman who spent the majority of her years oppressed under the cruel dictatorship of her male relatives predominately her husband. This individual's story begins as many of its kind do in a country divided by economic status, ethnicity, religion and dominated by poverty. Born into a family of peasant farmers with very little materialistic wealth and thus little means to provide any children with a formal education it was decreed by her father that she would recieve no formal schooling. Her early years; which today according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child should be spent in a carefree way devoted to learning and playing were spent cooking, cleaning and tending to her family's modest farm. When she became of an age her father arranged for her a marriage; as was the custom to a local boy whom he thought would be a good husband for his daughter. At this time she was given to "the local boy" in marriage and took on the responsabilities of a wife. She was too cook, clean, bare and raise for him healthy children and follow his law to the letter. During their younger married years her husband made the decision that she would work in rice patties to bring in an additional income for their household. Every day for as long as he decided she got up each morning prepared her husband breakfast and cooked lunch to ensure he was feed at noon while she was at work and than walked miles barefoot in the sweltering heat to the rice patties where she labored for long hours only to walk miles back home. Once she reached home she was expected to clean and prepare supper. Her husband eventually opened his own business and at the time it was decided that she would aide him with this (or as other members of her family have told me do most of the work while her husband reeped the economic rewards). Along with aiding her husband in his business ventures she was still expected to tend to the house, prepare food whenever her husband wanted, take care of the children and fill any other "need" her husband had whenever he wanted. She endured years of physical abuse at the hands of her husband; a bad day at work earned her a beating, one of the children misbehaved she was beaten, he consummed too much alchool she suffered for that as well. Emotional and physical abuse often go hand in hand as was the case for her; along with the random beatings he subjected her too she was also forced to endure the many other women he would bring home to their marital bed. When he was having a bad day she was called every wicked name under the sun; the only one which really affected her was "stupid". Not able to read and write due to a lack of formal schooling she has struggled with a complex her whole life; her opinon does not matter after all she can't even read. She never mentioned to him that she knew even though it was painfully obvious because keeping quite meant one less beating. Nothing moves as steadily as time and soon their children were done formal schooling, married and raising children of their own. Age was not allowed to slow her when it came to the fulfillment of her wifely duties and she was obligated to care for him until he became too ill for her to do it alone and had to turn to her children for assistance. It has only been in the later years of life that she has been free of the monster who ruled her every waking hour for years. She is only free of having him by her side but his presence and the oppression that her society deemed it appropriate for her to be subjected too at his hands she will breath her last feeling.

One of the more memorable days at work for me was when I went to visit her in her room and she was sitting looking out her window. She was obviously lost in her thoughts in a time and place where she was less than human. I sat down on her window ledge and placed my hand over hers very gentle. Her eyes opened and brimmed with tears and she squeezed my hand and said "I may not be able to read but I am not dumb"...and she is right but a lifetime of oppression will never let her really believe that or set her free.

Thank You Sigmund Freud

Those of you devoted fans that follow both my blog and my facebook account (should also know I am on twitter and might want to start following me on that as well) will have figured out from my recent whiny facebook updates that I am ONCE again battling a cold. Actually, I am battling the mother of all colds; the kind of knock you off your feet, make you ache all over, almost stop breathing in your sleep, look and feel like death warmed over, whine like a man cold. Anyways, because I work in health care with the more elderly members of society when I get ill I venture to a walk in clinic for one of two things either a doctors note to excuse me from work or one to say I am "safe" to return too work (which now thanks to the newer "for profit modeled after our American counterparts health care system" costs me around twenty dollars...just stellar). Conveniently enough there is one such walk in clinic literally within walking distance from where I currently reside (oh the irony). However, since I "invest" in a monthly TTC pass I make that sucker work for me and take the bus...well that and the fact who wants to walk when they feel like crap especially when Canada's winter weather has been so bi-polar lately (or as I often refer to it as God PMSing...actually to be honest that is what I call thunderstorms and terrental downpours).

Anyways, this Friday I went to this walk in clinic and waited huddled up in a corner of the waiitng room with my scarf covering my face as to avoid picking up anyother germs from the abundance of hacking troopers also waiting on the doctor. I was called in quite quickly and therefore cannot complain about the wait as I have been to some walk in clinics where you wait out the duration of your illness on a doctor. The kindly doctor examines me informs me I have an upper respitory infection but since my right gland is swollen and very sensitive to touch she is going to do a swab for strep throat (after a few unsuccesful attempts due to my horrid gag reflexes the swab is obtained). Due to the progresses of modern medicine they can now test for strep throat without sending your swab to a lab; playing mad scientist the doctor went about mixing some illexur up placed in the swab in it and informed we the wait would be about eight to ten minutes. Fine by me; I was just planning on going home and too bed but I can spend an additional eight to ten sitting looking like a zombie in an examining room. So what exactly does one discuss with a doctor as you wait on your test results? as she was giving me my exam we already discussed the basics (weather...). Looking up from a makeshift chart they had for me she asks completely out of the blue..."are you sexually active?"...now I could understand this question if I had come to the clinic with other complaints but since the diagnosis had already been given and antibotics were going to be given this question threw me for a loop. Than I got to thinking the last time I had been a guest at this fine establishment the doctor had also asked me an eerily samiliar question AND after diagnosing me. Although the last doctor had been more commicial in his line of questioning and I highly doubt with the intention of being. The conversation with him had gone something like this: "Is there a possability you could be pregnant?" No "well how do you know?" (seriously; did you sleep in on the day they covered female reproductive health in medicial school?).
I feel as though sex should be discussed in the confines of a doctors examining room after all it is your body and you should feel empowered enough especially in the 21st century to have an open dialogue with your physician regarding sexual health. However, at a walk in clinic post diagnosis with no mediciation to be prescribed bluntly asked questions regarding sexual health to me just are not appropriate.

Maybe I have watched one to many Dateline specials or read one too many books on the subject or perhaps it was the influx of coverage on the issue that the media presented a few years back. Or perhaps maybe I am just a bad Catholic; I do not trust priests or men of the cloth; maybe it is just my hightened awareness of the many children who suffered at the hands of the bad apples. It is said it takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch; than what do a thousand bad apples spoil? I suppose if it had been one or two cases it would have been a sad situation but an ioslated one perhaps even a curable one. The fact that it was thousands of stories and when they came to light they uncovered years of systematic abuse of the worst kind made it an unforgiveable one. Abuse at the most intimate level and done to the most vulnerable population resulting in years of suffering, countless suicides and hundreds of lost souls. Abuse that did not just occur in one parish, in one town, in one city but rather in hundreds of parishes, in thousands of towns and in more than one country. No, I cannot trust priests anymore and I definately have lost any faith I once had in the Catholic church. Any institution that not only hides evil but protects evil and nurtures it deserves it's own undoing in the worst way. Any individual or insititution who uses God or the bible as a facade too perform acts of evil deserve to burn in the same pits of hell they so readily condemn others too.
Many victims of the Catholic Church have come forward but many still remain faceless; people whose childhoods were full of fear and self loathing. Children who reached out to those supposed to protect them and instead of recieving the help they so desperately needed were told that there was no way a man who gave his life to God could do the horriable things they were allegeding. After all it was probabily their fault they asked for it; they continued to spend time with the individuals, they allowed themselves to be victimized maybe they even secretly wanted it. After all that kind of evil would never be inside of a man who took his vows. So they were silenced and carried the burden for years many unable to trust another human being, many unable to marry, many who drank and did drugs until they were numb to the World, many who thought their lives were worthless enough to end, many who left bruises on the faces of their wives and children so many who just wanted somebody to tell them they did nothing wrong and did not deserve what happened to them.
Where or where was the Vatican in all of this; after all weren't they supposed to be sheperding their flock? Instead they acted like a drunk sheperd who became so intoxicated that they fell asleep and let their flock desacrate the neighbourhood where they lived. Than when the mob of angry torch wielding villagers came for retribution they pulled out their cheque books and tried to silence them with money; that very thing which the holy book teaches us is the root of all evil. They tried to smooth over the situation after all what is a child's innocence in comparison to a priests good name? Think of the shame the priest would have to go through if their good name was dragged through the mud. Think of what would happen to all they worked for. Won't somebody think of the priests in all of this! The vatican had a solution after all they would remove the abuser priests from their current assignment, send them for "help" where they would be magically cured and move them to another parish where a whole new group of trusting families with children awaited them. This is the kind of situation a whole registry of sex offenders dream of. Absolute power, nobody to answer too, protetion from criminal law and ready access to children.
People who sit in the pews of the Catholic churches today who turn a blind eye to the fact that pedophila is very much alive in the church today need to wake up. Chances dictate there are probabily good priests out there but when I see a man dressed in his holy robes WARNING lights flash in my head.
I don't know what the cure is but I know it is not silencing the victims or blaming them; no victim of sexual assault ever asked for what they got or deserved what they got. I also know that it is not the protection of priests by the Vatican from prosecution it's time to put these spineless beings in cages where they belong; and don't preach any of your "they can be cured" nonsense too me. The only man I ever heard of who could cure anybody was Jesus Christ and I doubt even a man of such forgiveness would offer a cure to someone who caused an innocent child to hate their own skin. I also know that pouring more money into the Catholic Church is not the cure either. No sheperd needs to live in a house with a ceiling made of gold while members of their flock make innocent children feel like sheep excrimint.

(I wrote this article because statistics show one in four individuals will suffer from sexual abuse in their lifetime; many of them will never have justice and will live and die feeling as though they deserved what happened to them. If your childhood, teenage years or adulthood was scarred by sexual abuse you do not have to suffer in silence. It's time to find your voice and to use it; it will not be easy but you do not have to do it alone anymore. Nobody is going to judge you, nobody is going to think any less of you what happened to you is not your fault and it is not who you are...you can overcome it the first step is acknowledging it...)