Insufficient Handouts = ‘State Violence Against Women’
24th November 2015
Janey Stephenson goes the last mile.
This is a sobering week for women’s liberation in the UK. Tomorrow, our Chancellor will announce further austerity measures on the UN International Day to End Violence Against Women. This coincidence would be darkly funny if it wasn’t so devastating. Make no mistake: austerity is state violence against women.
I am not making this up.
We use words like ‘cut’ and ‘slash’ to describe austerity, so how can we deny that it is economic violence? And when it is women’s services at the receiving end of such brutal assaults, austerity becomes state violence against women that reinforces interpersonal violence against women. What better way to assist perpetrators than make it almost impossible for their victims to receive the support they need to flee?
The staff of the Onion must be jumping out of windows; how could you possibly parody this stuff?