Scars Across Humanity- post No. 3
Chapter Contents
Thanks for all your interest. As promised – some more information of what’s in the book.
The Introduction focuses on the justice-seeking Mirabal sisters, telling the story of their brutal assassination and the consequent significance of November 25.
The following nine chapters expose the problems of violence against women, through the life cycle of women globally and the stories of those caught up in them. I travel through selective abortion, female genital mutilation, child brides, honour killings, intimate-partner violence, trafficking and prostitution, rape, ending with sexual violence in war. These are not fun chapters. Many of the stories I have found heart-breaking. And anger easily goes with grief. But it cannot be right to be cushioned from knowing about these atrocities; that way, nothing changes, and change in these areas is absolutely vital.
The last four chapters look at attempted explanations and ways forward: critically investigating evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, functionalism, and patriarchy among other ideas. I’ll leave you to guess ahead of time which explanations lead to dead ends! The final two chapters probe religion. Writing as an outsider here to most religions was not easy. But reflecting as an insider to Christianity was probably even more soul-searching.
If you want to see the chapter headings in the book format, please click here on the contents page-
The book is 276 pages long so it is a fairly big read. My next few posts will give the quotations which open each chapter. I hope they might just help to ease the prospective reader in gently!
