ABOUT A DECADE AGO while doing research for a blog post, I was horrified to read that at that time the FBI estimated about four women a day, every day, year after year have been murdered because of their gender. It's a statistic that made a big impression on me because I had also researched the history of what is officially called lynching in this country and know that it was a far rarer thing than that - though it's absolutely certain that there were more racially motivated murders of Black People, Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other disfavored ethnic groups than would be counted as lynching. That is, unfortunately, only one form of terror murder practiced routinely around the world though one of the most horrific.
I believed then and now that the reason that we don't see the campaign of murder, terror and violence against Women for what it is is that it's so common, the consequences of it in Women's lives are so habitual and accustomed that it's unremarkable. Which is one of the reasons that it continues without any serious and effective means of fighting against it being found.
I read in yesterday's Guardian that that figure of four women a day must be far too low because the FBI now says that at least four Black Women are murdered a day in the United States:
A least four Black women and girls were murdered per day in the United States in 2020, according to statistics released by the FBI last week, a sharp increase compared with the year before.
The FBI recorded at least 405 additional murders of Black women and girls last year as homicide surged across the country, and experts caution that even that stark number probably represents an undercount.
To families of victims and local activists, the release of the data is just the latest reminder that violence against Black women and girls often goes ignored, and should be made a more urgent public priority.
“What’s sad is that a lot of cases aren’t taken too seriously. It’s just another Black girl,” said Jennifer Redmond, whose 19-year-old daughter Sarayah Jade was killed last September.
The whole article is essential reading because it lays out the depth of not only the campaign of murder against Women of Color but also how routinely it is taken by the society in general. The criticism of the 24-7 cabloid news coverage of the disappearance of single, often affluent, White Women puts the blame in the wrong place, on the Woman who may have fallen victim to violence and murder, though they are as capable of mounting the same kind of cabloid fever obsession over runaway brides. That is all down to the racism of those who run and manage those commercial infotainment-sometimes news outlets and their expectations of the racism of their viewers. If they expected that their viewers would care about the murders of Women of Color they would cover them hoping to get viewers. Or, maybe not. It really does matter when the people running a place are all White, all affluent, all part of the network of White, Straight, usually but not always male privilege, especially those who are products of the prep-elite private college system. Socially, politically and in most cases, legally the opposite of the destitute, the poor, the not-white, not connected to privilege.
But also this proves a need for People of Color, Women of Color and Women to be far more present in law enforcement, prosecutors offices, the judiciary and the higher courts as well. Justice will be elusive and with it any inhibition that a risk to a criminal that might have in it.
There is every reason to believe there is a connection between violence against Women and the culture of entertainment which has and still does encourage that view of women, teaching men that they are entitled to commit violence against Women, to kill them, especially Women of Color to treat them as objects. That is far, far best demonstrated in one of the forms of media that is most influential on the actual behavior of those who consume it, pornography. The long told lie of the ACLU and other hucksters in the "civil liberties" industry is that "there's no proof" porn incites the behavior that it depicts and presents for the masturbatory inspiration that porn is. Anyone with the rudiments of thought would see that as the fraud it is because all media that is consumed in that way has the same effect that advertisement has on people. A commercial for a luxury food or drink product has the same effect on the behavior of the people who are susceptible to its intended message, it alters their behavior. The very same lawyers and their organizations have made a big deal of getting pill pushers, tobacco, the liquor industry a "right" to advertise on TV. If they believed that their client's much shorter, less participatory media messages had no effect on behavior they were guilty of taking their client's money fraudulently. Only they never really believed that for a second as they lied about the far more engaging media that porn is.
That the "civil liberties" industry has profited from the patronage of the media, including pornographers is not unrelated to their lie that the stuff they enable is harmless, though there are signs that SOME younger people who would be peddled as the likely victims of porn and racist violence are making the link between the old ACLU bullshit and the waves of violence and terror against them and they're not having it. I absolutely encourage them to understand that their lives, their bodies, their minds are the target of this flood of such "freedom" as the highly paid lawyers and the largely white male judges and "justices" have given to the media to target them are their enemies and that the law as written by 18th century rich, white, largely straight male racists should not burden them forever.
People of Color, Women of Color, Women in general, LGBTQ, people, poor people, religious minorities all have a stake in the suppression of the media that puts a target on our backs because that has been a huge part of what stopped the progress of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Rights Movement. I have no doubt that given the Republican-fascist domination on the Courts and in rigged, gerrymandered, manipulated district governmental bodies, that what progress has been made by LGBTQ people - who have benefited from the fact that there are lots of gay men and some lesbians embedded in the structures of privilege, in the Senate, on the Court - will be turned back, as well. The violence against Trans women of color is an epidemic in itself. We have every reason to all hold together against the origin of the epidemic of violence against Women because the very same forces that ignited that can ignite it against all of us in due time.
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