(*Name that film.)
Have you heard of One Billion Rising?
Here’s the gist: 1 in 3 females will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. Since there are about 7 billion people on the planet, and, say, half are female, that means 1 BILLION women and girls are being/will be/have been raped or beaten.
You don’t have to have a sister or little girl or mother you love to be stunned by that. And, those 1 in 3 don’t have to be every third house on your block, or every third woman in your office building. 1 in 3 women in OUR world are raped or beaten.
One Billion Rising proposes a dance revolution of sorts. Read about it HERE.
Now, me being me, on Feb 14 I’m probably not going to jump off my proverbial couch (I do have a couch, but I’m not always on it), go to the street in front of my house, and start dancing. And I’m probably not going to join one of the events that are planned around the world–I checked and there are actually two within spitting distance of my house. (Not literally.)
BUT, I will write about it and add a small voice to the chorus that is growing ever-louder, thankfully, about the atrocity that is violence against women. About the attitude that women can be dominated, because we are lesser than.
AND, I will share the following story, which is a MUST READ. I put that in caps so you know I’m serious. If you’ve read this fur, then read a little further, please.
It’s not a big story, it got no press, no coverage on Huffington Post or CNN, that I know of. Just another True Story, one of a billion, about a woman whose foster child, a girl, insisted she was a boy:
Marie, who is profoundly deaf, came to live with us at the age of 7 years old. At first she appeared to be your typical “tom boy”, but then she began to exhibit symptoms of being something more…symptoms of being an actual boy. Quite simply, she TOLD me she was a boy. She would only wear boy clothes, (including boy’s underwear.) She refused to use the Ladies Rest Room so we found the family and unisex restrooms if she had to go to the bathroom in public. She begged me to let her get her hair cut short, but her birth mother’s rights had not yet been terminated and she would not give permission for Marie to get a haircut, so Marie would pull it up in a pony tail on top of her head and wear a baseball cap everywhere….
