https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-to-watch-viceland-in-the-uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7DbPE4salw
I strive not to live in fear, to trust in a greater good that shows me that living a kind life will be echoed by the world I live in. However if I were to examine the parameters of my beliefs I can clearly see where being a woman & mother, often alone, is a solid barrier to a wider existence. It's second nature to me always consider my personal safety as a woman when travelling about and now my daughter is starting high school, hers too. My son however goes out alone, I caution him, but instinct just does not create the same ball in my stomach as the thought of her out on the streets alone, and that's in the UK, where compared to many places in the world,women are statistically fairly safe.
http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures
Viceland's series 'Women' provides a powerful snap shot of the lives of women around the world and will open your eyes to some the most extreme conditions in which women are forced to live.It's brutally honest, heart breaking & at times, crushingly frustrating but always with an empowering example of how things can and are changing, the charge usually led by women.As I watch I can feel my empathy with woman kind pulsating through my veins. In simplistic terms, no women deserve to live like that and what can we do to stop it?
Viceland junkie that I am, I savour watching episodes of 'Abandoned' like a spiritual practice. Obsessed with architectural salvage and repurposing myself, I sit in worship of those people who are utilising these spaces and my mind is allowed to create numerous scenarios for the still empty ones.
Episode 8 on the Native lands of Canada showed derelict fisheries and canneries lying to rot, in desperate need of dismantling before they cause environmental catastrophe on sacred Native land.
Episode 3 of 'Women' tackles the problems of the first Nations women,who are suffering today for a long, shocking history of abuse to the native population.
I am idealistic but right now,things as they are,what have we got to lose? Joining the dots between the two programmes I thought why not use one problem to solve the other. Start women's refuges across the world in these abandoned spaces? Simultaneously clearing up the environment and creating self sustaining communities for women who are marginalised in their current societies. Women are strong, resourceful and when put together could easily create a new world where they could live and raise their children free from fear.
Running away of course, does not solve the root problem, but these women are running anyway but into worse situations, so for for now, while Men figure the fuck out that it is not OK to treat women in these terrible ways, they deserve some place safe to go and we need to make it so. No woman or child should have to live that way.
Women have the gift of building a home and the resourcefulness to be able to take the challenge and make it work.Granted it would take time to establish a food supply to make it self sustaining but with enough land it could be done, after all we lived that way for thousands of years before "civilisation" came along. Yes living rurally can be environmentally challenging but I bet women would rather take on Mother Nature than the constant threat of Femicide.
So who can make this happen? Viceland I'm asking you, is there any way one project could serve the other? In Canada could these sacred sites be restored whilst simultaneously giving refuge to the marginalised first women?
Most of the stories featured in both series involved people moving mountains to make things happen.It gives huge hope to see the hard work and ingenuity that people can muster when they're not being spoon fed by society.Contrary to what we know it doesn't have to cost much, if you're prepared to be resourceful. There are empty buildings everywhere and enough scrap that anyone can build a home with very little money.With some basic tools you can cultivate the land and eventually make it as civilised as you desire.Deep down even the most urban of us still have the primal skills to make it happen, especially if you were motivated by building a better,safer life.
Does anyone have Angelina Jolie's phone number ? Surely she could buy some abandoned buildings- there's whole empty communities across the U.S -or land tucked away in South America and Africa and start some women only worlds, on safer land. She's pretty tight with the U.N, she could get the peacekeeping force involved to help them to do it and keep it safe.There should be a better escape route so these women can leave those violent male cultures, let them work it out amongst themselves. Male children would then be raised in a dominantly female community where they could learn a different way from the traditional attitudes of their current culture. Isn't it worth a try for the next generation?
We are clamouring at the perimeters of a gender revolution and we have a long history of fleeing oppression, any woman or child who is suffering deserves somewhere to go and in a world littered with abandoned societies,surely we could make it happen.
As Steinem says, "By confronting the problems once marginalised as Women's issues,we can tackle the greatest dangers of the 21st century."
