See Laken Riley run. See the nursing student fight for her life for seventeen minutes while jogging through the woods at the University of Georgia.
A United Nations report found that last year, over 51,000 women and girls around the world were killed by a family member or an intimate partner. This number does not include strangers like Riley’s killer.
The report titled “Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member Femicides” was conducted by United Nations Women and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and recorded, “Globally, 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2023.”
November 25th is designated as the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.” Obviously, the day needs to be extended until women no longer must fight off a man to remain in the land of the living.
While many are recovering from Thanksgiving meals or an annual fellowship with the heat turned up over politics, I wonder if we could raise our level of awareness and focus our attention on the women. Because thousands of women, who would have been in charge of kin-keeping, buying gifts, cooking, and scheduling annual family portraits are no longer in the picture.
In war zones, four in ten civilians killed during armed conflict are women. That same UN Women report found that conflict-related sexual violence also increased by 50% in 2023 when compared to the previous year.
“Women continue to pay the price of the wars of men,” Sima Bahous, UN Women’s executive director, said. “This is happening in the context of a larger war on women. The deliberate targeting of women’s rights is not unique to conflict-affected countries but is even more lethal in those settings.”
Consequently, when you see porcelain depictions of Mary’s sweatless labor and bloodless delivery during this Advent season, think of Porsha Ngumezi. She is the third woman to die in less than a month under a Texas abortion ban. She leaves behind a husband and two young children.
So, don’t tell Mary not to weep. Martha should also absolutely moan in the streets. Sorry, Take Six.
As with Mary’s birth narrative, it is a scary time to be pregnant and to be a woman, quite frankly. We remain oppressed and bell hooks defined it best. “Being oppressed means the absence of choices,” she said.
Perhaps, we should change the traditional themes of Advent—hope, joy, love and peace—to truth, freedom, bodily autonomy, and justice. We find these things in Jesus too, yes?
Except she is not free to move about the world without smiling to satisfy the ego of a strange man who demands that she give him her number. See her run quickly to her car or into her home to avert the threat of danger.
See how quickly we blame her when her story ends tragically. Because we don’t see him as evil. Still, her dead body bears witness.
Clearly, I see no cause for celebrating, though Biden has magically managed to broker a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon before Black Friday. Yay? Let’s go shopping.
But the people of Gaza still can’t go back to their homes or what’s left of them—if their families survived at all. Quds News Network reported, “Israel erased 1,410 families, totaling 5,444 individuals, from Gaza’s civil registry amidst ongoing genocide. In addition, 3,463 families were nearly obliterated, leaving only one survivor each.”
Many of the towns have become gated communities because of the Israeli military. Munther Isaac tweeted, “Another gate installed by the Israeli military at the entrance of our town (and on the way to my kids’ school). Bethlehem—like the rest of the West Bank—has become a parcel of isolated, fragmented areas. ‘Oh little town of Bethlehem’ is ‘Oh little besieged town of Bethlehem.’”
What, then, do I tell Santa about all of this while sitting on his knee? Who should he put on his naughty list when femicide is at an all-time high and genocide is being live-streamed?
I hate to be a David Downer, but do you really see no evil? If so, perhaps it is because America is a snow globe, a hard plastic bubble of a corporate-sponsored reality.
Regardless, I can’t help but think this past year has been a trial run so I’m checking my surroundings.
Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
