PledgeBank United States
I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help

Pledge “end-violence”

"I will commit to struggle to eliminate violence against women in my community; formally or informally support women in my life or in my community who are in abusive situations to escape them; and help to create a culture of non-violence and respect for women, starting with the way I interact with acquaintances, colleagues, friends, family, children, and my partner(s). but only if 100 other people from anywhere in this dangerous world will commit to do the same."

— a.c., feminist agitator (contact)

Deadline to sign up by: 1^st September 2005
14 people signed up, 86 more were needed

More details
Violence against women and gendered violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersexual people is endemic in societies all over the globe. In Canada, where I live, over half (51%) of Canadian women have been the survivors of at least one act of sexual or physical violence. In any single year, women under the age of 18 years are most likely to be sexually assaulted (54% under age 18 in 2000; of these, 20% under the age of 12). And, contrary to popular opinion, most sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the survivor: a friend, acquaintance, or family member (63% in 2000). Every week, a woman in Canada is killed by her (male) partner. Source: http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/dates/dec6/fact...

These statistics are harrowing, and they reflect a systemic problem in many societies on this planet. These aren't abstract numbers: they represent millions of murdered, brutalized, traumatized women, women who live in your community, in your apartment building, who work at your grocery store, who are studying at your university, who are struggling to stay safe, to defend the integrity of their bodies, to lead self-determined lives. And they represent millions of men who do not respect women as human beings, who try to control women, to diminish them, to make them as small and as insignificant as they perhaps feel.

Sign this pledge if you want to commit to transform this situation, one woman at a time. Sign this pledge if you want to raise your children in a climate of non-violence. Or, sign this pledge if you want to commit to making your workplace a space free of sexual harassment and gendered violence. Or, sign this pledge if you want to volunteer at a sexual assault centre, or at a battered women's shelter, or at a crisis line for youth facing incest. Or, sign this pledge if you want to join, lead, or already participate in a men's non-violence education group, or anti-oppression training. Or, sign this pledge if you want to commit to helping your friend, sister, or neighbour escape her abusive relationship and save her life. Sign this pledge if you think too many women have died. And sign if you want to commit to creating a world in which women can flourish.

Comments on this pledge

• I received the following question on my blog, where I announced this pledge. I thought I would post it, with my answer, here, in case it is a question that comes up for you, as you try to decide whether you want to sign the pledge to "commit to eliminate violence against women..."
  
  
  The question:
  
  Why not just pledge end all violence? Violence affects all of us -- no matter how "weak" or "strong".
  
   
  My answer:
  
  Particular forms of violence target particular groups of people. In Canada, where I live, 86% of people sexually assaulted are women. Over half (51%) of Canadian women have been the survivors of at least one act of sexual or physical violence. That's 25% of the national population: those are epidemic proportions. In any single year, women under the age of 18 years are the group most likely to be sexually assaulted (54% under age 18 in 2000; of these, 20% under the age of 12). Every week, a woman in Canada is killed by her (male) partner, while the reverse is not true.
  
  Feminist theorists have suggested that this epidemic of violence against women, at the hands of men, is productive of femininity (and, not incidentally, also of masculinity). That means that women learn to be women as a result of, and in this context, of the violation of the integrity of their bodies. Femininity is constructed as violability. And men learn that they can have power over women by assaulting them, assaults which are effectively sanctioned by society, given the low rates of arrest and prosecution of perpetrators of domestic violence and sexual assault.
  
  As I see it, it's not a question of "weakness" or "strength"; it's a question of who has social power, and who doesn't. Who is supported by legal institutions and who isn't. Who has the resources and the social support to determine the conditions of her or his own existence, and who doesn't. Violence against women (and gendered violence more generally) effectively polices women's behaviour and delimits their life-chances. It's a warning to "uppity" women who choose to walk outside at night by themselves; to study engineering (fourteen women were murdered in 1989 in Montreal by a misogynist man, resentful of feminism); to have their own dissenting views and articulate them. It's also a weapon of war, and a way of producing war-time conditions for half of the human population during "peace".
  
  If you're interested in reading more about violence against women as a political problem, I would suggest the book of essays and speeches "Letters from a War Zone" by Andrea Dworkin. Take a look, especially, at "Feminism: An Agenda" and "I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape."
  
  [Source of statistics is the Canadian government]
  
  P.S. I am, of course, not opposed to ending all violence, especially state-supported, imperialist forms of violence. I also think we need to transform our discourse on violence to include phenomena like poverty, famine, drudgery. And to correct imbalances in the kinds of responses that forms of violence elicit (e.g., the difference in the reaction to 50 people killed in London by "terrorists" vs. that to 23,209 people killed in Iraq by "military" forces).
  a.c., pledge writer, 3 years ago. Abusive? Report it!