07/26/2025
Rebecca Solnit
I wrote my first piece about the most pervasive and impactful violence on earth forty years ago, and that would be violence against women, which in this country occurs at the rate of nearly a r**e a minute, domestic violence far more frequently than that (every eight seconds, in an older statistic I recall), multiple daily murders. Worldwide intimate-partner violence is the leading cause of injury for girls and women between about 16 and 44 (again, statistics from memory). Over the past twenty years I've written extensively about this issue, in books as well as essays, and spoken publicly about it again and again.
The majority of men have nothing to say about this. There are some magnificent exceptions, and I'm seeing more men take on addressing misogynist and abusive stuff when it arises (and just heard a story about a remote community addressing a domestic abuser as a community). You cannot treat crimes committed by men as a women's problem that women somehow have to solve on our own, even though that's largely how it's been regarded since 1970s feminists made it an issue.
I could upbraid men for their silence or I could welcome those who've found the engagement and moral strength to speak up. In a moment when we're discussing on another issue whether to welcome or upbraid those getting onboard now, I thought I'd offer this example. (Which could also relate to the open secret shared by many powerful men that Epstein was running a child s*x trafficking operation, with the help of many others. He did not operate alone, and what was most exceptional about his crimes was the scale, not their nature. Sexual abuse of minors is extremely widespread, and patriarchy plays a big role in that, and oh yeah about 94% of it is by men.)
If you're someone who hasn't thought about the issue, you need to recognize the statistics above are only about those to whom specific things have happened. This violence affects all women, in all the choices we make about where to go, what jobs to take, when to speak up, what to wear, and more subtly in that the threat of violence by some men and actual violence by some men against some women establishes female vulnerability and fear and disempowerment far more broadly. It is an engine of inequality that benefits all men insofar as being more equal than others is a benefit. I wrote about this extensively in Recollections of My Nonexistence.
p.s. From a recent Ms. Magazine article: "The U.N. issues annual femicide reports, and the latest one is damning, finding a woman is murdered by her partner or family member every 10 minutes. Gender-based violence remains universal, as does the discriminatory culture against women and girls that fuels it. Though global, the problem is worse in our region. The Americas have the world’s second-highest femicide rate (1.6 per 100,000 women). The United States, specifically, accounts for 70 percent of all femicides in high-income countries. In 2020, over 2,000 American women were murdered by men—most of them (unsurprisingly) with a firearm."
And the Trump Administration by handing guns back to criminals, dismantling d.v. programs, and taking away reproductive rights (having a kid can make you more dependent which makes it harder to get away from an abuser, whose parental rights may also allow him ongoing access).
