speaking up days XII and XIII: personal virtue and mass rape, respectively

Ok, so I missed a Speaking Up Day in May. I meant to do it, but didn't have time in my busy schedule of bike rides to the library and playing with Susan the dog.

May's Speaking Up Day wouldn't have really fit the form anyway. Going along with my manifesto post, I want to challenge those of you who would accept to improve yourself as a means of social change. Specifically, find the one thing that makes you the angriest, find the worst criminal you can imagine, and purge yourself of that very impulse; find the proverbial beam in your own eye.

June's Speaking Up Day has to do with mass rape. Rape is often used as a weapon of war and terror, but doesn't tend to get acknowledged as such. During the Civil War in Liberia from 1989 to 2003, 75% of Liberia's women were raped. In an article, Nicholas D. Kristof (who I really like) describes how this atrocity of war persists to the present.

So I'm piggy-backing on his idea:

"This is one of those fields where links and support from around the Web could create a groundswell to focus more attention on sexual violence, and that’s the first step toward getting respectability for the cause — and, then, for prevention efforts" (from "Silence is the Enemy").

If you're concerned, read the article, link to it, write your Congressperson, do something that will break through our distaste for discussing sexual violence.

UPDATE: There is now a Facebook group.