The Abuse of Women

Recently, our class was shown a documentary on one organization’s charitable work in the Democratic Republic of Congo that helps women that have been raped and abused express themselves and have a safe haven. City of Joy has also been working with other charitable organizations such as V-Day and Unicef to fund the project. After the video I was taken aback by how powerful the message was. The women’s stories struck me and I was shown how big of an issue the abuse of women has become, especially in third world countries.

This video brought out some of the topics discussed in Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues to mind. So much of what we read about in The Vagina Monologues is both terrifying and true. It’s happening in both first and third world countries. Eve Ensler discusses the numbers of women being raped in her book when she says,

“When I returned to New York after my first trip, I was in a state of outrage. Outraged that 20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993, as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it. I couldn’t unerstand it. A friend asked me why I was surprised. She said that over 500,000 women were raped every year in this country, an in theory we were not at war. “ (Ensler 60).

There’s very little that I more heartbreaking then just reading those numbers. Chapters in Ensler’s book such as ‘My Vagina Was My Village’ and ‘The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could” really show the mental and emotional trauma that comes as a result of abuse or rape. There’s a specific type of pain that goes with rape and I think the whole class was exposed to that when watching the video. We’re more educated about it, but more people still need to learn about how much of an issue rape and abuse of women are.