Flannel Covid Diaries: Lent Day 29
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"We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced." - Malala Yousafzai
"I spoke out publicly on behalf of girls and our right to learn. And this made me a target.
In October 2012, on my way home from school, a masked gunman boarded my school bus and asked, “Who is Malala?” He shot me on the left side of my head.
I woke up 10 days later in a hospital in Birmingham, England. The doctors and nurses told me about the attack — and that people around the world were praying for my recovery." (Source: https://malala.org/malalas-story)
"Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Yousafzai became an advocate for girls' education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Yousafzai when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala." (Source: https://www.biography.com/activist/malala-yousafzai)
I don't think one understands how important their voice is until it's taken away. March is Women's History Month, and as generations come and go there may be a time -- in the future -- when women and girls won't understand what mansplaining is or that there was a time they didn't have the right to vote, their own credit card, or autonomy over their bodies.
In light of current events in the Atlanta, GA area where there was a mass shooting at 3 different Spas, 8 people dead, and 6 were women of Asian descent, it's important to address the silencing of female Asian voices. During the press conference the officer said the shooter told them he was "…pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. And yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," Capt. Jay Baker said. The shooter had blamed the Massage businesses as temptations to his "sex addiction" and wanted to eliminate it for himself and others. As some news articles have pointed out, Baker had humanized the shooter and blamed the victims for their own murders. This narrative needs to end. It needs to end with us. White supremacy is killing us and misogamy is inherently intertwined with white supremacy.
Women are not responsible for men's violence; and BIPOC women are not responsible for white men's violent misygony.
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