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One Billion Rising

Posted: 09/24/2012 1:01 pm

ONE BILLION RISING is a short film by Eve Ensler and South African filmmaker Tony Stroebel.

One in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. This powerful three minute film reminds us how violence against women appears worldwide in the every day lives of women, from Afghanistan to Australia, the United States to Peru, South Africa to Great Britain. One billion women violated is an atrocity. On 14 February 2013, V-Day's 15th anniversary, one billion women dancing will be a revolution. After viewing this film, we hope millions will be inspired to join the ONE BILLION RISING campaign.

"When we started V-Day 14 years ago, we had the outrageous idea that we could end violence against women," said Ensler. "One Billion Rising is an appreciation, amplification and an escalation. When One Billion bodies rise and dance on 14 February 2013, we will join in solidarity, purpose and energy and shake the world into a new consciousness. Dancing insists we take up space. It has no set direction but we go there together. It's dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive. It breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere at anytime with anyone and everyone. It's free. No corporation can control it. It joins us and pushes us to go further. It's contagious and it spreads quickly. It's of the body. It's transcendent."

On 14 February 2013, V-Day's 15th anniversary, activists, writers, thinkers, celebrities and women and men across the world will STRIKE, DANCE, and RISE, coming together to express their outrage, and demand an end to violence against women and girls.

You can watch it here:

Help us get to ONE BILLION. Share this clip across your social channels.

Visit http://www.onebillionrising.org

 

Follow V-Day on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twitter.com/vda

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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Steelsil
Warren/Grayson 2016! Yes We Can!
08:10 PM on 09/28/2012
As with every other measure of well-being, it's good to be in a blue state, and bad to be in a red state.  It sucks to be a Dumbhickistai, because their policies increase the sum total of human misery.  No surprise here.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
uptellDawn
...righting from the write side of left.
11:31 AM on 09/29/2012
I dunno...seems like there's cool stuff in every state.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
uptellDawn
...righting from the write side of left.
01:51 PM on 09/28/2012
Powerful video...couldn't get it on my Facebook wall fast enough.

misogygy (mi·sog·y·ny) - the hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.

The sexual, physical, and emotional exploitation of women is worldwide and pandemic. In most cultures misogyny is the standard of female existence…even illustrious. In modern cultures it’s symptomatically subtle. Misogyny is a heritage that belongs solely to women. It’s a birthright with a significance that can never be experienced by men regardless of intention or education. Misogyny will never fully cease to exist. The most women can hope for is the choice to receive it, resist it, or reckon with it. By law, a minority of women have that choice. It was granted to them, by men.

Misogyny is not to be confused with male social dominance.
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Iris Silver
Coincidence or synchronicity? You decide.
05:32 PM on 10/02/2012
An excellent summation. Indeed, it is ubiquitous. There is no hiding from it, no matter how one chooses/is allowed to deal with it.
07:09 AM on 09/28/2012
Woman good, man bad.
12:19 AM on 09/27/2012
So many women are battered and raped, and sometimes even killed every day. I was a battered woman at one time in my life and I knew this was going to happen when this person came home drunk and for no reason at all used me as his punching bag. Everything you hear about a battered wife/girlfriend syndrome is true and oftentimes you cannot leave the situation, especially when you have children. You live in fear each and every day, and my life was put on the line several times, and there was no one around to help me. Date rape and often rape by someone you think is a friend happens every day. This is not a woman's fault. We have to stop acts of violence to women and have stricter laws and more protection. Education about where to go and what to do to prepare yourself for leaving any bad situation is important. There are quite a few people that do not know what I went through or how terrified I was. I had 4 children depending on me to protect them, provide for them and make sure they always knew they would have a home.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
uptellDawn
...righting from the write side of left.
09:36 AM on 09/28/2012
Thanks for sharing your story.
07:29 PM on 09/28/2012
Thank you, so much, for your comment. It is too bad we didn't know each other at that time...I would have supported you and helped you. I wish you all the best. Monique
04:35 PM on 09/26/2012
If there is any lesson to be taken from the comments to this piece, it is that the men will not help women obtain justice or end the scourge of rape. The men are against us --- just read the comments. There is Hague blaming women for the existence of rape and rapists. There are the other who think the miniscule number of false rape reports outweigh the rapes suffered by tens of millions of women. Men simply have no empathy for the suffering of women and do not care about women. It appears that men are the natural enemy of women.

Perpetual warfare, the epidemic raping of women and children, the destruction of the planet's biosphere ---- To paraphrase Pablo Neruda, "Is this the world men have created? Oh my god, oh my god . . . ."
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
mrportman
07:16 PM on 09/26/2012
Nearly all of your posts, from my observations, stereotype men as a whole for the errors of a few. By doing so, you do more harm for your cause then good.

Further, you blame men solely for all the misfortune in the world when we, men and women, have had a hand. Parents, usually with a mother as a primary caretaker, are taught to be physical, aggressive, mask their feelings, etc. Society reinforces gender roles by looking toward men as women's protectors and so forth. Thus, women play a role in the current atrocities committed against them, too.

Stereotyping all men as evil and not assuming any of the blame will never get you anywhere as you scream from your soapbox.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
HagueAbductions
Card carrying member of The Patriarchy
05:53 AM on 09/27/2012
Only about half of my comments ever make it past moderation, but if you spew politically correct hate speech like Whalepeace you can get your comments published every time.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
mrportman
07:16 PM on 09/26/2012
Substitute sons for parents in that previous reply.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
mrportman
03:25 PM on 09/26/2012
Why are men more violent than women?

Since it has been observed in several studies that aggression has increased in chemically castrated men and testosterone without the presence of estrogen leads to a decrease in aggression, testosterone itself is ruled out.

Testosterone causing male aggression simply because of increased muscle mass, i.e. men are bigger than women, doesn't hold water because it is only advantageous in one on one situations, not in groups and thus, communities.

That last thought is what lead me to this:

http://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/male_roles.pdf

It's a synopsis of the way in which both sexes teach and enforce the male gender role. Please at least read the background.

Further, the growing research on damages inflicted by corporal punishment, i.e. spanking, of children and it's prevalence (over 70% in America), which begins before most children can talk and it's obvious we as a society need to change. CP has consistently been shown to lead to increased aggression.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/5/e1057.long

Research has consistently shown that CP is utilized more often on boys than girls. In the west, CP is used in >70% of households and it tends to be mom who disciplines children (most likely because mom tends to be primary care taker).

We all need to do our part to end this cycle by changing the way we raise our children and teach and enforce gender roles within our society.
06:34 AM on 09/28/2012
The UNICEF link was excellent, although it only peripherally touches on the one issue you chose to highlight - corporal punishment. It's an excellent summary of the ways male dominance damages both women and men and gives many practical ways to change male stereotypes and socialization in order to make them more peaceful and humane. More men should read that.

I raised my sons to be peaceful and cooperative, and that is how they behave now as grown men. However I can't tell you how many posts by men I've read where I'm told that what I did was "feminize" them or destroy their masculine essence. Of course they're both strong, healthy guys who compete in triathlons and half marathons on a regular basis, but the very fact that they're gentlemen (literally) is disparaged by many male posters here as evidence their mom hates men.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
mrportman
09:42 AM on 09/28/2012
I wish you wouldn't have said, "More men should read that." More people should read it. People don't understand the way in which we teach and enforce gender roles. Both genders play a part and both genders are making errors.

Your entire posts still leans heavily on pointing the finger at others. Why do you think blaming others is the best way to accomplish your goals? It's divisive, doing more harm than good.

The portion I wrote about CP was intended to be my own thoughts, not highlight anything within the UNICEF article. I was trying to make the argument that one of the ways in which parents teach their children, especially boys, to be aggressive is by spanking them and the long term emotional damage that has been shown to arise from such forms of discipline.
02:51 PM on 09/26/2012
When a man raises his hands to a woman,he stop's being a man,he become's an annimal.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
mrportman
07:10 PM on 09/26/2012
Why isn't the same said for women? Why not state, "When one person raises their hand to another, they stop being a person and become an animal?"
02:58 AM on 09/27/2012
Please don't belittle this cause. The percentage of women that abuse men would be a tiny tiny percentage.
05:33 AM on 09/27/2012
If you carry on letting a woman hit you,your not a man away!
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Iris Silver
Coincidence or synchronicity? You decide.
01:42 PM on 09/28/2012
Are you saying humans are not animals? We are you know.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
HagueAbductions
Card carrying member of The Patriarchy
02:21 AM on 09/26/2012
"Are the Vaginas in the House?!"

--Eve Ensler's Opening remark as the Keynote Speaker, 2012 National NOW Conference

I, for one, enjoy Ensler's vaginal work, though even the word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina. They don't like hearing it and find it difficult to say whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
mrportman
09:38 AM on 09/26/2012
Comparing an anatomically correct word to a slang isn't really an even comparison.

And just as many women are uncomfortable hearing the anatomically correct word as men.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
HagueAbductions
Card carrying member of The Patriarchy
02:26 PM on 09/26/2012
Obviously, you are not a golfer.
12:28 AM on 09/26/2012
A third of the women on the planet are raped and HuffPo takes this piece off its Front Page in favor of a story about a football referee call. Women will have to move mountains before they can get any justice, before the world of men cares at all.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Chockolate
Four swirling square pegs in a round hole.
05:52 AM on 09/26/2012
Here's a nice piece you might want to read on a man's life that was ruined by a false rape charge:

http://www.cotwa.info/2012/06/bygones-be-bygones-unspeakable.html

There's good money in faking a rape charge.
10:24 AM on 09/26/2012
What does that even have to do with whalepeace's comment?

You must be disillusioned if you think women would be willed to go through the stigma attached to being a victim of rape. Rape is one of the most under-reported crimes. I am sick of the fact that there seems to be no space to discuss the real threat rape poses to women without someone pulling out false rape accusations. I am not saying these wouldn't take place at all, but this is not related to the actual discussion.

It happens everywhere where rape is discussed, always someone has to come up "but y u no think of all the poor men bla some random false accusation, now plz make it bout the menz" in a discussion that is ABOUT THE IMMEDIATE THREAT RAPE POSES TO WOMEN'S LIFES AND HEALTH EVERYWHERE.

What does one false accusation of rape even have to do with this very topic? Nothing. Quit this derailing.

It's comments like these that have no place in a discussion about rape.Comments like these, and the thinking behind it contribute to the fact that rape is one of the most under-reported crimes. 1 in 16 rapists will ever set a foot in prison, 1 BILLION women are subjected to the horrors of sexual assault but ofc it has to be about the men.

I am so sick of seeing that in every bloody discussion about rape, in comments on news about rape and sexual assault.
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jf12
When I saw her I marveled greatly.
12:07 PM on 09/26/2012
This doesn't help. whalepeace's overall point was that men tend to minimize the actually enormous problem of male-on-female sexual violence. And then you tried to minimize it, proving her point.
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12:56 PM on 09/26/2012
What is the significance of 1/3 of women are raped? There is not one single perpetrator, or even an internationally organized group of perpetrators. This is a statistic on a specific crime internationally...too general for root cause, for solutions, for any action. Honest discussion of rape prevention is regional, so it can focus on specific causes. Much of rape occurs in Africa because there is no structure or culture for enforcement. Now that's a start.

There are such astounding statistics on murder and crime in general. Understand (and this is why math is very important) that this statistic (1/3) has little to do with the probability of someone being raped in America, for example. There is legislation and there is enforcement. What there is not - for ALL crime - are resources. News is driven by ratings and profits.

There are also wars, uprisings in the Muslim world, and corruption. Those don't make the news too much in this coutnry either.
Bianca S
You can't go trick-or-treating. Ever. For a week
10:56 AM on 09/27/2012
Dude, did you really just ask what the "significance" of one.in.three.women.will.get.raped is? Do you realllly need to someone to explain to you what that's important or are you just deliberately pretending not to get it? Also, did you really pull the "well, it's rare (I'm not even gonna touch on why that's not even true) in America so we don't need to worry about it" card, while doubling down and explaining to her why Math is important? LOL.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Dave Ryan MD
Husband. Father. Surgeon. Democrat.
05:20 PM on 09/28/2012
You take up lots of space with your noise. Wish more of it were backed with information.

All developed countries keep stats on crimes. They're readily available to anyone who wants to investigate them. Get a research librarian to help you research this validity. Talk to the WHO about the issue. Developing countries keep stats that downplay their crime numbers; the 1 of 3 ratio is likely an underestimate. Undeveloped countries try to let these crimes go unnoticed, but NGOs keep track there.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
TedEjr
How can they be Right when they are wrong so much
10:45 AM on 09/25/2012
Fact.

Rape is less about the sex, than it is an expression of dominance and control.

Ergo lumping together beatings and rape is a valid method of categorizing.

The stats are unfortunate and saddening. At the same time, it is a reflection of who we are as a species. We have a long evolutionary way to go before some in society are able to overcome the prediction to express their desire for control through physical acts.

On the positive side, if one can look at this from that perspective, 1 in 3 subjected to this means conversely that 66% of the women do NOT experience these acts.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Chockolate
Four swirling square pegs in a round hole.
05:54 AM on 09/26/2012
So should we consider rape a type of assault then?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
farmerlady
Blonde, Democratic socialist, and unwilling expat
06:45 AM on 09/26/2012
Rape IS legally categorized as assault---sexual assault.
09:55 AM on 09/25/2012
I feel like the majority of people commenting here really don't get it. Who cares how sensational the article may be. There is obviously something horribly wrong with anyone being abused in anyway so instead of arguing about whether the statistics are right, or arguing about who is to blame why not do something to help it stop.
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ResidentPragmatist
My dog is the best person I know.
02:26 PM on 09/25/2012
Excellent point.

F&F
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04:18 PM on 09/25/2012
totally agree with you... however, check this out..... I mentioned something about abuse one time and my father said there are different 'ways' to look at it. and I'm sure my father is not the only one who has this type of thinking.
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06:24 PM on 09/25/2012
Definitely not. There is a whole contingent of guys here, on HP, who espouse those views.
09:01 AM on 09/25/2012
Its pretty crazy. I wonder what makes a man do that? I couldn't even think of doing something so messed up.
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12:26 AM on 09/26/2012
The human mind is very complex and at the same time, like a computer, very corruptable. A stable balanced mind is actually much less the norm than we think.
07:58 AM on 09/26/2012
Isn't that the truth.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Yellowcab
100 % Cotton
09:46 AM on 09/26/2012
What makes any person do what they do? How many children are beaten, abused and molested in the world? The majority of it is done by their own primary caretaker...which are...women.

Why don't women find a way to stop women from doing evil in the world? For the same reason men don't. PEOPLE who don't have a clue what motivates a criminal to do a criminal act really don't seem to be very good at stopping criminals from doing what they do.

See how that works?
10:07 AM on 09/26/2012
The vast majority of sexual molestation of children - well over 90% - is done by men. The majority of serious physical abuse of children is also done by men. The only reason that women are counted as high as they are in data gathered regarding child abuse is because Neglect is considered a form of child abuse - and men who abandon their children are not counted as neglecting them, but women who do take care of the kids will be counted as neglecting them if an incident occurs. So basically a guy who takes off completely, leaving his kids to starve, is not counted as a child abuser, but a woman who leaves her kids home alone while she goes to work, can be prosecuted for child abuse.

But don't let me interrupt your daily misogynist missive. Hating on woman is apparently a full time job for you, Mr. Mom.
10:27 AM on 09/26/2012
yep, i do.
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dennis1943
whatever the voices in my head say.......
08:22 AM on 09/25/2012
Much questioning of the statistics..........that we would even entertain the possibility of the probability is unacceptable.........
03:51 PM on 09/25/2012
Men care more about arguing numbers than they do abotu the rape and suffering of women. Men are entirely unable to empathize with the suffering of women which is one reason why men are the perpetrators of these crimes of violence against women. Men do not see us as people who bleed, cry, suffer, ache or deserve compassion. And so men rape us, dismember us, beat us, murder us, while the supposedly good men stand by and do nothing.
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dennis1943
whatever the voices in my head say.......
04:07 PM on 09/25/2012
I have never beaten or raped a female........neither would i countenance same.....and i certainly cannot be alone.......and though i take a dim view of the behaviours of some (many) men,painting with such a wide brush does some of us a disservice.....
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12:29 AM on 09/26/2012
K. So you think all men are horrible creatures. Got it.
08:04 AM on 09/25/2012
Very sad statistic. The world needs to change.
03:51 PM on 09/25/2012
Men need to change. Tell the truth.
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04:20 PM on 09/25/2012
i think women do too... they need to empower themselves and say enough is enough, we ain't taking this crap anymore. We demand to be treated with respect and equals...
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Akbar Elsburn
t.l.o.l.u.c
07:34 AM on 09/25/2012
What I find amazing, is that even the wording of this statistic overlooks the banality of the men who commit rape.

What's worse than that, are the comments I'm reading on this page, that place blame on women for this beastly behavior, and infers responsibility for the atrocious acts inflicted--on women.

Really?!
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
kepowell5
06:45 PM on 09/25/2012
Thats why it never goes away.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Yellowcab
100 % Cotton
09:57 AM on 09/26/2012
Ever been to prison, akbar? Ever worry about going to prison because of a false accusation, akbar?

If not...maybe you should.
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Akbar Elsburn
t.l.o.l.u.c
01:38 PM on 10/01/2012
Valid questions. Well, the second one at least. I get the point, although it's not relevant in response to my comment.

I was speaking to the commonly made error of placing blame for rape, on the rape victim.

People who exploit the justice system, for personal gain, or otherwise--are despicable.

Being black, I am particularly aware that this type of person exists, and accordingly, that there are victims on both sides of the equation.