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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Jimmy Carter's: A Call to Action Women, Religion, Violence, and Power... How a Culture Treats Women

President Jimmy Carter's new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power comes out today. He was on David Letterman last night talking about it. 

Please see the interview (video below & link here). It's one of the most heart-breaking and poignant interviews I've seen in a long time - not only because President Carter comes across as a kind, benevolent, intelligent, and smart man, but because he talked about the subject of his book, which to sum up from my interpretation is an honest look at the most abused, marginalized, enslaved, and murdered section of the world's population:

women

As I was making my morning protein shake today, I started crying as I was thinking about it. 

I believe we can gauge the humanity and sustainability of any culture or society by how they treat women. 

Maybe historians and anthropologists have said this, maybe I heard or read it somewhere, or maybe I just made it up. 

But it rang so true today as it popped into my head I made myself cry.

There are more people enslaved now than ever before in documented history and 80% of them are women. 

Sometimes girls and women just disappear and are kidnapped into sexual slavery, sometimes they're aborted or killed because they're girls and the parents (within the culture they're in) prefer or want a boy. Oddly enough, this creates societies, as we now see in China and India, with an inordinate ratio of boys to girls, so the problem is exacerbated as families and young men kidnap women to take as "wives" because they can't find a mate on their own because there aren't enough women.

The horrific human rights violations of millions of women and girls in the form of systematic raping during war (women are "given" as a "reward" by commanders to their soldiers to rape) and girls as young as 4 years old are subjected to torturous genital mutilation which removes the vast majority of the female sexual organs, akin to cutting off the entire top of a man's penis - in this example both men and women can still procreate (as long as they don't get infections, which are common) because the ovaries and testies are in tact - but the ability to enjoy sex is virtually gone. 

I know these things are very heavy and heart-wrenching. Hopefully my blog is usually funny or poignant or something of value to you dear readers, but I had to share this. It's just too much for me to hold without at least writing about it. As for me, I'll be reading Carter's book and learning what he suggests. The Carter foundation has already positively affected millions of lives, and he says the book contains solutions to all of these atrocities. Additionally, I'm going to get involved again with V-Day, one of the largest organizations worldwide dedicated to ending violence against women. Please, write in the comments what you think, what you'd like to do, or how you feel about all of this. Thank you.