Unbreakable Woman Blog

It happened again. But this time, it was actually captured on surveillance cameras. A young girl, around 8 years old, was shopping with her family in a Target store. When she became separated from them, it opened the door for an opportunist who had been following her. He picked her up and tried to run away with her. The cameras caught the miraculous escape.

She fought with everything she had. Kicking, yelling, making a scene. Eventually, this much larger person put her down and took off.

Criminals want an easy mark. They don’t want a fight. Even unskilled resistance, if sustained for usually no more than a minute or two, will result in the criminal giving up.

Think puffer fish. A little fish. A cute fish actually. So cute it earned the nickname “hamster of the sea”. But don’t scare the hamster. It will blow up to more than three times it’s size, like a balloon, covered in unappetizing spikes. Even when the most terrifying, toothy shark tries to devour a puffer fish, it gets an unexpected surprise that results in being spit out.

Naturally, we don’t want to ever have to deploy our spikes. But never forget that you have them and they work.

This phrase should be familiar to all American women. It is the crucial element in the definition of rape that has plagued women since 1929. The FBI insisted that if a woman did not resist, she was not raped. But everything changed on January 7th, 2012. Thanks to Joe Biden, the author of the Violence Against Women Act and the tireless efforts many women’s advocate organizations, the FBI was delivered from the Stone Age into the Modern Age.

Will this change how rape is prosecuted?

No.

So why is this so important?

Because it allows more rape survivors to be COUNTED. Increased Statistics = Increased Money Allocation.

Now that organizations like National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can more accurately count these crimes against women, the reporting will more accurately reflect the prevalence of these crimes. The higher the numbers, the bigger the problem, the more money gets allocated for prevention, education, survivor assistance and support.

This is all good news. To read the complete article about this positive step forward toward equality for women go to:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts-law/us-scraps-8-decades-old-fbi-definition-of-rape-to-count-more-people-as-victims-including-men/2012/01/07/gIQAEhoZgP_story.html

Slowly but surely, when survivors are ready to stand in the light of their truth and bring their abusers out of the shadows, the cycle of violence slows.

The ultimate revenge fantasy: Cut off the “tool of betrayal” and put it down the disposal. As appealing as that might be to women who are in the throes of full-tilt scorn, we must take this back alley, punitive surgery off the table. It’s the equivalent of blaming the gun, not the murderer who pulled the trigger.

I’m not intimating that we should do nothing. There are many ways to bring our betrayers to justice without having to go to jail nor turning our anger into a media carnival. We all have the capacity to perpetrate heinous acts of violent brutality upon those who wronged us. It’s natural. But that behavior is reserved for those with no moral center, who veer and crash into sociopathic psychosis. It’s for people who belong in small, cement rooms wearing ill fitting jumpsuits.

Before we go pointing our dainty fingers away from ourselves when conflict arrises, we also need to consider if and how we contributed to the problem before it blossomed into a major league crisis. When we do that, it is much less volatile because we can see our part and know that it takes two to have a proper argument.

In the rare event that you were with one of these sociopaths who conned you out of your money, house and love, engage the justice system but have faith in Karma. Trust me when I tell you the forces of nature have a way of restoring balance where there is imbalance. And if your so inclined, you’ll probably get to watch.