BBC World News aired a Hardtalk with
Gloria Steinem earlier today. I watched diligently the first couple of minutes,
and I was again struck buy the elaborate, nerdy way in which she puts together
her sentences. Substantively, I still ponder the following question. Ms.
Steinem remade a point she has raised countless times in the past: in the U.S.,
“if you count up all the people who were killed in 9/11, plus Americans
who were , and you count
up all the women who were murdered
by their husbands or boyfriends in
the same amount of time, more women were murdered by their husbands and
boyfriends than were killed in those three events.”
I suppose this is intended as a
condemnation of patriarchy – and I am fine with that, since I have no part in
it. However, I am quite sure – thought I don’t have the patience to look up the
data – that during the same time period even more women (and perhaps children) were
killed in the U.S. by firearms which were not fired by a significant other; and
more women and children per capita were killed by cars in any “developed”
country. So I am left scratching my head – what are these statistics supposed
to tell us?
