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And by international agreement since 2012, all countries have zero-tolerance for genital mutilation:
The International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is February 6, today.
But when Zero Tolerance becomes a law, its job is to prevent future damage. Changing behaviors by enforcement now is meant to change attitudes over time. Does this work? Can it work? Should it work?
Here are 2 personal examples:
Here are 2 personal examples:
(1) I recently witnessed a speaker at a library event give contact information for female circumcision, and no one objected. A lady next to me shushed me when I bristled, and said, "We try to tolerate everybody." Later I asked the Library Director why he allowed it, and he said he hadn't heard it. People try not to know, I think. But how can I be shocked when I didn't follow through myself?
(2) In my high school English classroom, I had zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind. To enforce it I had to insist students were in MY space, not public space where free speech is legal. Imagine the debates! I had to renew the contract with each new group of students.
Your Challenge: Take one tiny piece of this vast topic to illuminate in a new poem using your stories, images, experience, wishes, and potential solutions. Feel free to focus on FGM.
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| From "Crisis Communication," a slide share by Dr.Arivalan Ramaiyah Director of Praxis Skills Training and Consultancy |
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“We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.” ―
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Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits—
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.
It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy ..
'It is a foolish thing,' said I,
'To bear with such, and pass it by;
Yet so I do, I know not why!'
And at each clash I would surmise
That if I had acted otherwise
I might have saved me many sighs.
But now the only happiness
In looking back that I possess —
Whose lack would leave me comfortless —
Is to remember I refrained
From masteries I might have gained,
And for my tolerance was disdained;
For see, a tomb. And if it were
I had bent and broke, I should not dare
To linger in the shadows there.
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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.
(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Love. )
