Some thoughts. A week later.

It’s a week since International Women’s Day so no doubt everyone has forgotten about women and the odd few problems we have so we can all get back to normal.

You know, the odd bit of DV, aka either assaulting or killing your female partner.

But first, I thought I would share some different blog points of view about IWD. And the one good thing about a QWERTY keyboard is that the W is a long way from the U. Or that would confuse us all.

However, moving on. Bloggers who posted about IWD seemed to be split into two camps. Obviously a load of bloggers didn’t mention it. Why would they?

For the ones who did, there were the ‘let’s celebrate wonderful women’ blogs. And the others, were on the lines of, ‘why celebrate anything – we’re getting nowhere, in fact we are going backwards’ blogs.

Interestingly, out of the first group, most of the ones I read, were about celebrating their female ancestors. Fair enough. Just about every woman of a couple of generations ago managed to cope with poverty, work (in some cases), do house work, raise a brood of children, had no mod-cons etc etc. By which I mean no central heating, air conditioning, microwaves, prepared meals from the supermarket. Let alone a holiday in the Bahamas. Lucky to get a day out in Bridlington (Yorkshire, UK).

Seriously though. That they coped with a crap life when they were down-trodden is hardly cause for celebration.

A few other blogs posted about famous women. Why do we have to keep reminding people that women achieve something??? Mostly, because the truth is, women’s achievements are pushed aside. Simple as that.

And when we do achieve something, there is always a little derision added in there – was Julie Tullis a bad mother for climbing K2? And dying? I don’t think she planned that one. She was the first British woman to climb K2 and there was still criticism of her for doing it. How many male climbers get criticised for being bad fathers because they go climbing? And die?

Then, some of us posted about, ‘we have nothing to celebrate’. Women, quite frankly are getting nowhere fast. American bloggers (you know, that large piece of land that seems to rule the world) are struggling with contraception and abortion rights. FFS America. I’m thinking you need to be recolonised. Your thinking is, well, just plain ignorant. (I am referring to the system and the government before any Americans take a personal hissy fit).

I looked at a couple of other blogs. I was inspired by one. He said ‘Fuck International Women’s Day – we don’t need it, let’s give the world to women anyway, they would run it better’. I read the comments, and he said it was tongue in cheek. I despaired.

Next, I found a rather bland but thoughtful one. It attracted a comment on the lines of ‘well, I don’t agree with discrimination of any sort so lets lump all you lot together’.

Heartsink. Or sank. For example, I have no clue how to promote or help with epilepsy – I choose that one out of the blue. People who are interested in their own minority grouping where they are discriminated against, have more knowledge.

Saying, that to remove all discrimination – by what seemed to be a white, northern European man – is the best way to do it, is so missing the point.

Gosh! You need to read this interesting stuff about how many women have been killed. Almost forgot that one in my blog analysis.

Ya know, this is Europe now. We’re really civilised aren’t we?

ITALY

The most unsafe place for Italian women is the home, figures show
The number of women killed by men is growing in Italy: 127 in 2010, 137 in 2011 and already 37 femicides, or femmicidi, in the first two months of the year
A study by Bologna’s Casa delle donne* highlights how ‘the number of homicides has been falling rapidly in Italy from the mid-1990s but the’ killings of women has doubled’.     
The figures have been taken solely from press reports because in Italy, in contrast to France and Spain, there is no dedicated body monitoring femicide and there are no disaggregated data published by the country’s ministry for internal affairs.
The figures show that in 1992, 16% of all homicides were women. By 2006 this had risen to 26%. And in the years between 2006 and 2009 there were 439 cases.  
Contrary to conventional wisdom, only a small proportion of femicides (15%) occurred at the hand of strangers. More than half of victims (54%) were in a relationship: 36% were killed by a husband and 18% by a lover, partner or cohabitant, 20% of cases by a relative and only 4% by a casual acquaintance or stranger.

SPAIN

Get this:

Domestic gender violence 
•  A woman is killed every six days by partners or ex-partners (61 women in 2011 and 606 between 2003-2011) 
• There were 134,105 acts of domestic gender violence reported in 2010 or 367 a day and as of 31 December 2011 19,515 women had active police protection for this reason. 538,063 acts of domestic gender violence were reported between in 2007-2010 or 389 a day.
•  45% of men believe women are responsible for domestic gender violence because they continue living with aggressor.

Really? Men assault women and those same women are responsible for DV??

I wrote about men who kill women in Spain four years ago here. Has anything changed?

Celebrating International Women’s Day is so inappropriate when there is so much killing and mutilation of women going on. That’s before we even consider discrimination for those of us lucky enough to be in a non-abusive relationship. Equality anyone?

My brilliant source for the info is Revolting Europe. Of which more later.