Women all over the world are exposed to physical, psychological, economic and sexual violence. The root of this violence lies in gender discrimination against women. This gender discrimination is ingrained in the traditions and customs of the society. The traditions and customs of the society also cause this discrimination to become stronger day by day. When we look at our own society, expressions such as "walking like a wife", "laughing like a wife" are used in a derogatory sense by people in daily life, and sentences like these, which have become embedded in the society's vocabulary, continue to feed this gender discrimination. The society, which makes the female gender a derogatory adjective, continues this psychological violence not only with its sentences but also with its behavior. Society describes women as "weak, fragile, in need of care" and thinks that they need the care and protection of a man. While adult women try to fight against these labels, newborn girls are raised according to the rules of the order they were born into. This unfortunately results in the continuation of the cycle of discrimination and violence arising from discrimination. Violence does not only mean applying physical force such as slapping a person, if you take away his freedom and apply constant psychological pressure by restricting his life, this is also violence. Unfortunately, this is a type of violence that women are frequently exposed to.
The most devastating consequence of discrimination is the violence, harassment and murder that each of us sees in the news every day. These news must be on the agenda at all times, on every platform, for the women who are the subjects of these events, for the women who are forced to be afraid of being the subjects of these events. Even though the names change, the murderers are always the same and the victims are always women. One day we may be our mother, one day our best friend, and one day we may be the "woman" in that news. The fact that this possibility seems so possible to all of us is due to the order we live in and it pushes us to be afraid when walking alone in the dark and to prevent us from wearing our favorite clothes in our closet. At this point, we again see that women's choices and freedoms are restricted. Block It is not the women's freedom that needs to be defeated, but those who find the right to take their freedom away.
Every year, hundreds of women are victims of murder, harassment and violence. Statistics show that the number of femicides has increased threefold in the last decade, 300 women were killed in 2020 alone, and the deaths of 171 women were recorded as suspicious. These are not numbers that we can quickly read and pass on, they mean the loss of hundreds of lives. These women, whose numbers are increasing, continue to be victims of a man's anger and jealousy. Statistics show that almost all of the murders and violence are committed by the woman's closest relatives, such as her husband, father and brother. If a person cannot trust the family he was born into and the family he created, who else can he trust? A woman who is subjected to violence experiences a trauma that leaves deep scars in her life and feels a sense of helplessness to continue her life. There can and should be no justification for such evil, whose traces cannot be erased.
So what causes violence against women? Why are thousands of women subjected to violence, defenseless, in front of their children? The concept of honor, traditions and customs cause hundreds of women to lose their lives in this country every year. Women are defined through the concept of honor that society gives meaning to, and are restricted because of this concept. In our country, everyone has a say in the female body except the woman herself. What and where a woman should wear, at what time, where and for how long she should be present are limited and specific according to the society's point of view. A woman cannot laugh out loud or be out late at night. Women's honor is an element protected by inflexible rules in our society. Violence against women occurs everywhere, at any time: at work, at home, at school... Women are exposed to violence, whether psychological or physical, in most periods of their lives
Most forms of violence have been normalized by society. The proverb “He who does not beat his daughter will beat his knee” is a simple example of how violence is normalized by society. A father resorting to violence against his daughter because of the clothes she wears, a lover's girlfriend going out because she is jealous, etc. and many other examples are stories of violence that should not be normalized in women's lives. At the point when violence begins to be normalized by society, the real chilling part emerges. People begin to interpret whether a woman deserves this violence or not based on where she is, who she is with, what she is wearing and what she is doing. The fact that even the unjust violence of a person and the killing of someone at a young age is open to discussion shows us how dire the situation is. While men have the freedom to do whatever they want wherever they want, women are held responsible by society for the bad events that happen to them because of a man. Because our society avoids women with all the concessions it gives to men. This growing discrimination against the people who feed it causes thousands of dreams to fade away. In order not to see the words "violence" and "woman" side by side, all these factors that create violence and make concessions to those who commit violence must be eliminated. Let us never forget that every mentality that justifies violence is the same mentality that leads to violence.
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