(Originally posted 3/20/11)
Dear friends,
Last year, I read a piece by a dear friend, award-winning journalist Jenice Armstrong of the Philadelphia Daily News. In her article, Jen talked about the difficulties of, particularly, middle-aged professional African American women finding a suitable mate once they have passed 40 years of age . One of my daughters, Namandje, a medical scientist and college professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has just reached thirty years-old, but she has spoken with me about the here-to-mentioned stats before. Therefore, when I read Jen's piece, I forwarded it to her for comments. Her response showed that she had more concern for the recently (2010) murdered grad student from Yale, Annie Le, and how that incident relates to male/female relationships generally. Namandje's response appears below.
Stop the Violence!!!
G. Djata Bumpus
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Hey Dad, The Yale graduate student murder is the issue that is most on my mind. A young woman and young pharmacologist was strangled in a lab she was working in doing her thesis research perhaps by a man that worked with her and was interested in her. She had done research at the NIH (National Institute of Health) and was now a student at Yale.
Yale has a very well-respected pharmacology graduate program so we are talking about a serious graduate student that was serious about developing her science. She wanted to become a professor in academia, when statistics show that many women for whatever reason (family commitments, etc.) choose not to go that route. This hits close to home for me.
The lab for people that are dedicated to our craft is not the same as the average person's workplace. We live in the lab mentally and even physically in a way. We dream about experiments and wake up to write down what we were thinking and run into lab to test it the next day. Many of us spend more time there than we do at home.
The fact that a woman could be victimized and murdered in that setting is very troubling. Women cannot walk down the street at night, or sleep in their home alone or even work in a lab in broad daylight alone apparently without having to think about the fact that they might be attacked by a violent predator. Instead of women, including myself. focusing on our chances, or lack thereof, of getting married we need to actively combat the objectification of women. Once this happens the definitions of men and women and our places in society can evolve to a place that does not depend on women being lesser which currently in many ways they do. Perhaps then we will all approach looking for and entering into a life partnership in a more productive and intellectual manner.
Namandje
2 comments:
Djata, I did not get the sense that your daughter, Dr. Namandje Ne'fertiti Bumpus, was specifically addressing physical violence against women, although physical violence is what most people think of. The incident at Yale was just one type of violence. Am I correct in thinking she was addressing a more encompassing, and not necessarily graphic violence.
This all encompassing violence would include physical, objectification, lack of feeling secure, unable to pursue whatever is important to them without worrying about expectations of society and others........the violence of the hindering of freedom.
In contrast, we men are free to do whatever. We don't feel insecure about living alone, hindered in pursuing interests, or particularly pressured to marry and have children.....We are relatively immune from the violence of our freedom being hindered because of our gender.
PS: This particular log entry was not on your FB page.
I hadn't seen your remarks earlier...I thought that I posted it on Facebook, btw...I think that your analysis is fairly on point nonetheless.
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