Did you hear, once again South Carolina ranks #1 in rate of women murdered by men. This new data was released just a few weeks before October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Did you also know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
Yes…you will see pink everywhere from products in the grocery store, fountains in downtowns, major state/federal buildings colored pink…we will be pink washed in jut a few days.
If you look on Google Trends, breast cancer (represent in blue) is by far the most searched term of all the cancers since 2004.
You also notice the level of search for breast cancer has slowly declined, yet peeks each year during the October month. My mother-in-law died of triple negative, metastatic breast cancer in 2007, so I am willing to bet my family added to those search statistics. But as awareness for this terrible disease has dramatically increased and washed the nation with pink, South Carolina is still lacking the ability to have larger conversations surrounding domestic violence, violence against women, and engaging men (the perpetrators) in social change. If we look at the Google Trends, you can see the search comparisons between breast cancer and domestic violence since January 2014. You can see only at one point does this graph indicate the Google search index captured more search for domestic violence than breast cancer.
Why am I talking about Google search comparisons? Because Google search indicates a level of awareness influencing an individual to seek information via Google. When you are interested in domestic violence or breast cancer, you use these terms.
Let’s just get to the point…I am tired of talking about pink, coloring stuff pink, having events for breast cancer when there is a larger emerging social problem…men beating, murdering, and abusing women. It is time to drop the pink for the purple. We should paint every football field purple, every website purple, every male purple who cat calls, hits a women, shoots a women, abuses a women.
It is time to let our daughters enjoy the full capacity of the color pink, and quit tainting the color with pink washing narratives that make families of those who lost a loved ones to breast cancer hate the existence of that color. I am waiting for that day when the color pink is no longer the color that represents something so horrible, that we do not need trade pink ballerina tutu’s for pink cancer wigs.
It is time to have a larger conversation surrounding the safety of those little girls, who will become women, who should feel safe growing up in a world of equality…not degrading language that has become a precursor for violence against women.
It is time to do the following:
- Start talking about domestic violence!
- Dads start talking to their sons about violence against women!
- Men stand-up to other men, denouncing abusive and degrading language against women!
- Coaches stop using language degrading women including: “stop playing like a girl” and “take your skirt off”!
- Dad’s encourage your daughters they can play any sport, have any job, compete for any role!
- Men step out of the man box and learn what it means to be a real man!
Why is it time…because the data proves that men need to stop causing the problem and join the movement to MAN UP! #ManUPstate
