The Terrorism Women Face Every Day December 2, 2008 Jill Nicholas Kristof reminds us that women face acts of terror every day, for having the audacity to divorce their husbands or go to school. It’s also worth noting the degree to which women rally around each other to provide support and services.
thanks for posting this. not enough attention is given to these kinds of horrors. that picture is absolutely shocking.
“This month in Afghanistan, men on motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who dared to attend school.” Ok, I’m going to try to stop complaining about how rough i have it as a poor, stressed-out grad student.
Why on earth would anyone have a *legitimate* excuse to purchase sulphuric or hydrochloric acid in a high enough concentration to do that kind of damage?!?! I can’t think of ONE practical use for it. (Other than possibly opening up drains, but that would cause ridiculous damage to the pipes over time.) And all that will happen in THIS country is that people use/will use these attacks as a means to justify their attitude of “you can’t reason with those people — they’re all barbarians”. I so hope that Senator Biden’s resolution is passed. Grrrrrrrrr…
Laurie: there are legitimate uses for high concentration acid for chemistry wonks. I’m not one, so I can’t give you details but they exist. The governments need to look at the trade off, and if this is as widespread as it seems from the article, there is a very valid point Beyond that, the acid is a symptom not a cause. If and when it is taken away the men who do this will find other tools to hurt women. This is disgusting and abominable.
polerin said: there are legitimate uses for high concentration acid for chemistry wonks. I can understand that, really, but to have it easily available in public shops? For people who are NOT “chemistry wonks” to buy on impulse? What I am saying is that I can’t imagine a use for it that would require it to be that easily available to the *general public*. Which is generally not made up of chemistry wonks in my experience. I’ve had difficulty finding chemicals* used to dye/distress costuming in the US. I can’t imagine running down to the local drug store and getting hydrochloric acid in a high enough concentration to do that kind of damage. “Beyond that, the acid is a symptom not a cause. If and when it is taken away the men who do this will find other tools to hurt women.” Well, yeah; that sort of goes without saying. But *my* point is that acid is a ridiculously dangerous substance to have that easily available, given the damage it does for very little apparent effort. After all, men can do ridiculous damage with their fists or a baseball bat/big stick, too. In fact, if one were systematic, one could disfigure someone very, very badly in that manner. Scalding water will do a hell of a lot of damage as well. My point is, why allow it to be that easy to allow the general public (especially after MANY attacks of this sort) to be able to get their hands on acid? You’d think the government would have a clue that this is a bad thing. 🙁 I’ll agree with disgusting and abominable, and raise you appalling. 🙁 *Potassium promanganate, and I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t looking that hard.
Agreed about limiting access to acid. Acid is a dangerous substance with some legitimate uses, but wide availability is unnecessary. In my local hardware store they lock up the razor blades so that you have to at least ask for them; it seems with an even more dangerous substance, some sort of required ID wouldn’t be too problematic. Or at least keep it behind the counter or locked up so that a buyer is easily identifiable. And yes, people who want to do harm can always come up with other ways. But, as sad as this sounds, making them work for it will at least alleviate some of the damage they do.
This story is why I thought of the difficulties that can be encountered by people with chemistry as a hobby. I’m not convinced either way… I do think it should be available to people who are intending to use it for research and learning, but taking a favorite tool out of the hands of abusers is a good thing. Torn torn. Meh. Anyhow, the bigger thing I’d like to see is an increase in prosecution of the people who are committing the crimes. A 2% prosecution rate is tacit social approval of the attacks on these women, and until that is brought under control, atrocities like these will continue to happen.