Let's Have a Meeting About Violence Against Women

FANTASY ITEM: Our MrDonut attended the recent conference on Violence Against Women,which was agreed to be a global problem. The Baha'i International Committee was there, as well as Christian Children's Fund (actually started by a Baha'i). They said that despite progress, violence against women was still a big problem. MrDonut immediately recalled a news article he read yesterday about the situation in Rwanda where groups of armed men go around and simply grab a woman and take her somewhere and gang-rape her. This is happening often enough in a part of the world that is already teeming with violence that it was reported in MrDonut's local paper. Our reporter listened carefully to all the discussion and finally raised a paw. When the chairman recognized him, MrDonut stated that an overage of guns is a big problem in the U.S., and suggested we put a dent in the violence against women by issuing each lady in Africa a U.S. surplus revolver, holster, and two crates of ammo, and ruling that if any man so much as looks at her sideways, she may shoot him.

Too long, continued MrDonut, have organizations concerned with world peace failed to identify exactly what eradicates violence. WHATEVER SIDE WINS, that is what eradicates violence. He cited an old phrase from his school days: The best defense is a better offense. In short, women must be made to be even more offensive than men. They must be armed as well or better than the men. A report on the radio said that 60% of men would beat a woman up, if they thought they could get away with it. "Let them know they can't get away with it!" MrDonut cried.

MrDonut then turned to the brilliant work, "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" which seems to have been left behind by the peace groups, probably because it proposes that when male violence against women arises in an illiterate population as literacy begins to take hold, the solution is television. Yes, TV. It is bigger than MrDonut, who is only a cat, could explain, but it has to do with functions of parts of the brain, how emerging literacy destabilizes the balance, and how television as a medium allows those areas of the brain to settle in and stop fighting each other, and men to stop turning against the feminine in themselves. It seems a lot more practical than pills, and more family-friendly than arming all the women.

After the conference MrDonut enjoyed the company of some independent-minded visionaries who applauded his speech but warned that it would have to be Public Television or nothing at all to please the liberals. "Guns in the hands of women!" the visionaries shook their heads. "Oh, MrDonut! The group you just addressed would never stand for that!"

"But remember," said MrDonut. "The Kitab-i-Aqdas allows a person to carry a gun for protection, and to use lethal force if it is a case of life or death."

MrDonut pondered. "They won't issue guns, and it is easier to get guns into a place like Rwanda than it is to get food. They won't heed "Goddess's"brilliant research (maybe because it was written by a WOMAN!) They won't issue television stations and sets (and there are a lot left over, now that we all have cable.) Why is the civilized world waiting for Utopia to come down out of the clouds before it will act?

"Someone wrote a SciFi story about a virus that came to earth. It infected only men, and it caused them to go mad and kill women. It did not matter that a man was a psychopath or a loving, loyal husband. A virus is a virus. In a few years all the women were dead.The story is at least 30 years old. It is chilling to read. It is more chilling to read about women beset by bands of roving men, freely breaking her hips, destroying her reproductive organs, causing unspeakable horror often in front of her female relatives. And her finally killing herself, because it seemed the merciful thing to do."

"Today's conference reminds me of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. All these poor souls swimming through swamp water and oil and refuse to get to a slab of hot concrete where there was no food or water, only a slab of concrete....and a few miles away is an enormous convoy of relief supplies that sits and waits, because some bureaucrat doesn't have the guts to Do The Right Thing. That is what a lot of the world's problems seem to be. Academics are waiting outside the disaster area, hoping that more research and more scholarship and more conferences will trip a wire that will allow tens of thousands of Christlike, true Baha'i, whatever, human beings to enter those countries and live there and change the people by their example. It used to be called "pioneering."

"You are pretty windy for a cat," said a visionary.

"Am I not sleek and well fed?" asked MrDonut.

Everyone agreed that he was.

"Well," he said. "Mice do not carry guns. And the tastiest," he added, "do not watch television."