random samplings of a restless mind scanning life's canopy
Yesterday I wrote about beauty, and how we humans have evolved to seek it, appreciate it, understand it, create it. Today I am confronted by the dark dark side of that human coin, a slap-in-the-face reminder of how we humans are also capable of utterly destroying beauty, and innocence. In an age when violence, against "other" humans, against nature, and most particularly against women, is eroticized and fetishized, here stands Sunitha Krishnan: simple, beautiful, strong survivor of horrendous sexual violence, trying to shake us out of our jaded apathy, asking us not for empty sympathy or charity, but respect and human dignity. Powerful:
I am speechless. And as a man, I struggle not to seek some place to hide my face from such ghastly evidence of what my gender has wrought.
My deepest utmost respect to Sunitha Krishnan and to those on whose behalf she speaks. How can we complain about our lots in life, or exalt the progress made by humanity, when such brutalities as she speaks of are still allowed to flourish, and the victims of this global trade we hush up, have salt rubbed into their raw wounds by a criminally indifferent society? Here's a real life victim of sexual violence fighting for the human dignity and rights of other victims of sexual violence and slavery. Move over Lisbeth Salander. If only you could emerge from the pages of the books and mete justice on these perpetrators, and the silent majority who turns a blind eye.
[Hat-tip to my sister Vaijayanta who works with other victims of the HIV epidemic and other social injustices in India]
I'm a reconciliation ecologist studying the responses of wildlife to human influences through an evolutionary lens. I seek ways to apply evolutionary ecology towards reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. Also a father of two girls; photographer; birdwatcher; bookworm; cinephile; and explorer of the internets.
I'm a reconciliation ecologist studying the responses of wildlife to human influences through an evolutionary lens. I seek ways to apply evolutionary ecology towards reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. Also a father of two girls; photographer; birdwatcher; bookworm; cinephile; and explorer of the internets.
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