In the wake of the mass attacks on German women last week, Musa Okwonga (“a poet, author, sportswriter, broadcaster, musician, public relations consultant and commentator on current affairs”) wrote a powerful piece on his blog titled, “How to deal with the sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg.”
The whole piece is worth a read, and I especially appreciate his final paragraph:
“Why don’t we just start with the premise that it is a woman’s fundamental right, wherever she is in the world, to walk the streets and not be groped. And why don’t we see this as a perfect moment for men, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds, to get genuinely angry about the treatment of women in public spaces: to reject with fury the suggestion that we are somehow conditioned by society forever to treat women as objects, condemned by our uncontrollable sexual desires to lunge at them as they walk past. Let’s do our best to challenge the rampant misogyny which has gone on worldwide for far too long, and reject whatever lessons of sexist repression we may have been taught. Because women are tired of telling us about this, and exhausted of fighting a battle that for too long has gone overlooked.”
YES!. Thank you, Musa.
It is sad that a statement like his is so rare. We MUST have more men step up and speak out against gender-based violence.
