Me and My Teaspoon

Day Sixteen: International Human Rights Day

Today is the final day of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence, during which I suppose I have blogged exactly as often as always about violence against women, in America and abroad. Sometimes it feels like it's all I ever write about; sometimes it feels like I can't possibly write about it enough to do the issue justice; often, those feelings exist within me simultaneously. All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon.

There are, after all, still judges arguing with straight faces that a 10-year-old victim of gang rape "probably agreed" to have sex with the nine people who raped her, and religious vigilantes killing women in Basra and leaving notes attached to their mutilated bodies listing their crimes against Islam, and evidence being destroyed by the company whose employees gang-raped one of the their coworkers, and, well, you get the idea. Gender violence is still a problem, every day.

So really, the best thing—indeed, the only thing—I can do to honor International Human Rights Day and the conclusion of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence is this: I promise to keep working my teaspoon, even when my arms are tired.

Every day.