The Daily, Friday, July 25, 2003. Sexual offences
I sat down this morning with my coffee and started to read the morning mail; one of them told me that Stats Can had published 2002's stats on sexual assault. This I had to see.
The stats are shocking :( 61% of "REPORTED" sexual assaults were committed on children under the age of 18. Don't believe me? Here you go: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030725/d030725a.htm
When I was in University, I wrote a paper titled Disposable Children It would seem that society has not changed much. We still see Children in our society as being disposable.
The Stats Can article talks about the degree of assault, Level 1 assault is where the person is not physically injured. How can a child be assualted and not injured?
This statement reminds me of the Judge in Quebec several years ago who gave a convicted molester a reduced sentence because he had only repeatedly anally raped his daughter, thereby preserving her virginity. How about the Judge out west who gave the molester a reduced sentence, citing the fact that he was enticed into the act because the 3 year old girl was flirting with him.
I could point out numerous cases throughout North America; however, everyone of you reading this knows of a least one case where a childs life was not valued. If we, as a society didn't see children as disposible we would stop the slaughter. When was the last time you picked up a newspaper and didn't read at least one story of a child who was either raped, beaten, murdered at the hand of their parents? What about the so called designer babies?
How many of our children grow up in poverty, violence, fear, filth, darkness or abuse?
What about the Kiddie Porn trade? Do babies make this filth for each other? How many dollars are 'innocently' made off the backs of our children?
The measure of a society is how it takes care of its most vulnerable members.
Some times I think I might be an Ostrich, with my head stuck Ummm in the sand.
I recently went to a family graduation ceremony. As I watched, I was struck by the number of girls who were receiving awards. The girls were outnumbering the boys by at least 7 - 1. The awards the boys were winning were for things such as ESL, Sports, Music. The Math, Science, and Tech awards all went to girls.
I found this very interesting and so I started to look to see if others had noted this. Well, surfice it to say....... YES they have noticed.
I was very startled, but not really surprised to find that yes, this trend had been duely noted, and further more, feminist, mothers, female teachers, working moms, single moms, etc.... were all being blamed for this trend. One report even blamed the girls in the class for distracting the poor boys.
"Dr. Paul Cappon, director-general of the Council of Ministries of
Education, got major front-page play in the National Post with his
hand-wringing about boys. And get this: Boys lagged behind even though the
test had been made more "boy-friendly" with subject material about snakes (O
Freud, thou shouldst be here), train-wrecks and coyotes."
Do you girls remember them ever modifying test to suit you? Ever write exams with "girl-friendly" material?
It does appear to be true at the moment though, that girls are zooming ahead in school. Don't be misled into believing that its because girls are being given special treatment, or that boys are being held back by feminist teachers.
All of our children deserve an equal education, and this is a budding problem that we as a society need to address. However, isn't it so like a Patriarchy to just start to place blame on the females rather then address the problem.
We will not find solutions to this growing problem until we actually look at why boys are lagging behind. If it is because their old place of privledge in the classroom is gone, then we need to find a way to motivate them to achive.
Make no mistake though, even with this trend, men still rule the banks, governments, the military, agriculture, manufacture, senior management and universities.
For all their academic accomplishment, women still hold only 14 per
cent of the full professorships. They are 21 per cent of Canada's senior
managers. And their incomes lag behind men's at every stage of their career,
even when they work full-time in identical jobs. Women, especially women of
colour and aboriginal women, are more than twice as likely to be poor as men
are.
Yes, we do need to start to help boys, but not at the expense of girls. Not by rigging tests in boys favor or by handing them unearned privledge again or by blaming females. We need to look at the generations of male mentality we are creating. The mentality where sports are more important then literacy, where success is being able to use your name to endorse a pair of running shoes, rather then owning the company.