I am the son of Dee, the brother of Theresa, Sheila, Bettye, and Kimberly, the father of Maya Dee, and close friend to many women. I am writing to call more attention to a crisis in the United States (and the world) and to encourage others to demand community-wide attention on violence against women that arises in so many places, in so many forms, everyday in the United States. I am writing because I care about the physical safety and well-being of these women who have been so important in my life and because I want our society to take seriously its duty to end the persistent threat of violence against all women. I am writing to join women who for too many decades have been voices in the wilderness, calling for an end to violence with quite limited success.

The national statistics are staggering: Every day, every hour, every minute, every few seconds, females, from the very young to the elderly, are molested, raped, beaten, and/or murdered, usually by men, strangers and acquaintances. This abuse knows no color, class, or faith. Every female is significantly more vulnerable to such violence than any male. Many abusers are repeat offenders who have not been punished or who have not had meaningful rehabilitative aid. Many victims have no where to turn for aid. In a real sense, they are trapped. It is long past time that policy makers take seriously this persistent threat of violence and enact preventive and protective legislation.

Every state needs a coherent policy to address violence against females. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected federal legislation to combat violence against women several years ago, but few states have adopted comprehensive legislation that addresses the many different problems arising from such violence. Every state owes all of its female citizens a duty to protect them, to assist them when they are victims of violence, to provide appropriate food, clothing, and shelter, to punish perps and keep them away from victims and their families, and to provide counseling and rehabilitative services. These needs cannot be met solely through private philanthropy. Each state must dedicate resources and personnel to beat back violence against women.

Every person must share this cause since it remains true as Dr. King wrote, “an injustice anywhere in a real sense is an injustice everywhere.” Each time a woman is beaten, each time a young female child is molested and/or murdered, each time a female college student is raped, the violence inflicts immediate harm to the victims, but it also imposes psychic and status injury on all young girls, female college students, and women who are forced to live in fear, as well as their families who must teach them how to live in a world where molestations, rapes, physical assaults, and murders of females are so prevalent. This cause must be the cause of all who live in fear because their status in society is subordinate and marginal. I live in fear for all the women important in my life.

Martin Neimoeller, the German cleric who defied Nazism, made this point when he said:

In Germany, first they came for the communists and I was not a communist so I did nothing; then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak because I wasn’t a Jew; then they came for the trade unionists and I stood silent, and then they came for the Catholics, but I was Protestant, and then, finally, they came for me and there was no one left to stand up.

So I am standing and writing about violence against women because I want to join and help build new, strong coalitions to fight all forms of caste, including violence against females in our world right here where we live. 

As a constitutionalist, I write to remind all of you that while our Constitution has been a model for the world, it was not without substantial defects, including the gross exclusion of women from any substantive constitutional protection for most of our history. Women were left out of the political debates to frame our nation. They were excluded from all deliberations to negotiate the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Although regarded as persons and citizens, women’s rights were defined by men, without women’s representation or consent. As a consequence, as the late Barbara Jordan, the great Congresswoman from Texas, has so elegantly written, women were excluded from the “We the People” preamble and from public life in the United States. They could not vote, hold public office, serve on a jury, tend a bar, own property while married, enter contracts, become lawyers or doctors, work in certain industries and so on. The men who organized this nation had a very provincial view of the role of women.

Tragically, the U.S. Supreme Court did not endorse the basic equality of women until the late 1960s when Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others beat back archaic stereotypes about the proper place or destiny of women. Thus, a century after the Civil War, women were still officially second-caste citizens. Much of our challenge since has been to undo the stereotypes about women, reclaiming the nation’s creed that all persons are created equal. I believe in gender equality and I writing to encourage you to demand it with me, my sisters and my daughter, and yours.

We must stop all violence against women. We must stop rape. We must stop domestic violence. We must stop violence against female children. We must stop the devaluation of women, their bodies, their work, and their wages. We must reverse the sexual commodification of all females and create full citizenship for all women through full, real life opportunities and choices. We must stop occupational segregation and pink collar ghettoes.

We must end the exclusion of women from shared power in human affairs. Eleanor Roosevelt commented once that “we will have a better government in our countries when men and women discuss public issues together and make their decisions on the basis of their differing areas of experience....  Too often, government decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever special values women might have to offer are shunted aside without expression.”

Again, Barbara Jordan admonished us to live our lives as full citizens, respecting others and demanding that we receive respect. She wrote, “Our task is too great. Our hold on the future is too tenuous. Our relationships are too fragile. Time remaining is too short. Life is too large to hang out a sign- For Men only!

I have taken a personal pledge to end violence in all my relationships with women. I encourage you to take and honor a similar pledge. The violence will end when men join women and demand its end.