Watching Saving Face was very difficult for me. Not only was it
heartbreaking to see the disfigurations acid attacks have caused the women, but
also the fact that men had such power over the women. In the beginning when the women were talking
to the camera, each explained why they were a victim of an acid attack… and
every single woman said it was a husband or fiancé who threw acid on her. I
cannot fathom how that is okay. I realize that my North American upbringing is
very different from those of the girls in Pakistan, but I it is hard for me to
understand how one human being could do this to another. When watching the
film, I was upset for all of the women who had to go through this. It was
heartbreaking to hear their stories; even more heartbreaking to learn that it
was a husband who did the crime. I
wanted to look away whenever I saw the horrific scars and I felt bad for
wanting to avert my eyes. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for
those women to go out of their homes, knowing that everyone was either openly staring
or shifting away uncomfortably. It was upsetting to see how much these women
have suffered. When one woman began to cry and asked how she was supposed to
live the life God gave her, it really put things into a whole new perspective
for me. I realized that no matter what I was going through, it was nowhere near
as horrible as what these women were going through.
As the movie went on, I became
enraged at the men who threw acid on their wives. They denied doing it and some
even looked smug for having gotten away with it. I was outraged and kept asking
myself, how is this okay? Why hasn’t anything been done? Why haven’t human
rights activists gotten involved? It is tough to criticize the happenings in
another country because culture and traditions are different but in this case,
I do not know how anyone could make an argument for how these acid attacks are
okay.
When watching this movie, I thought
about The House is Black and how in
both films, the people were disfigured and isolated. The lepers were isolated
so they did not infect anyone else and the women were isolated because they did
not want anyone to be discomforted by their scars. Although both scenarios were
upsetting, it was nice to see a happy ending for the women of Pakistan with the
passage of the law giving the men life sentences. It will not undo the pain and
suffering these women have been subject to, but it is a step in the right
direction.
Keleigh,
ReplyDeleteI went online after reading your comment to find out how the U.S. compares. I figured that I would find some horrible stats accounting for the number of women killed each year by their boyfriend or husband, and I was sadly right. Here's what I found:
In 2000, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner. In recent years, an intimate partner killed approximately 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv01.pdf
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html
Between 1998 and 2002, of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, 49% of these were crimes against spouses.
84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse at were female. Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers. 50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fvs.pdf
Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. 25% - 45% of all women who are battered are battered during pregnancy. One in 6 women and 1 in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape.
Nearly 7.8 million women have been raped by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services. Victims of intimate partner violence lost almost 8 million days of paid work because of the violence perpetrated against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends and dates. This loss is the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity as a result of violence. There are 16,800 homicides and $2.2 million (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence annually, which costs $37 billion. The average prison sentence of men who kill their women partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are, on average, sentenced to 15 years. Women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence, men for approximately 15%.
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/facts.htm
Of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds were killed by their intimate partners. The number of females shot and killed by their husband or intimate partner was more than three times higher than the total number murdered by male strangers using all weapons combined in single victim/single offender incidents in 2002.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2004.pdf
So what should we do about the violence against women in this country?
Best,
Spring