The world is, and has always been, full of acts of cruelty and acts of kindness. On the whole, acts of cruelty are more likely to make it into the news than a acts of kindness. Both exist.
You point out that so much of that cruelty is seemingly directed at women. Again, this has always been so. People suffer. We're good at surviving mental, emotional and physical distress. Within that framework, women and children are most at risk of such suffering, either through physical, or through economic and cultural 'weakness'. We are animals. What lifts us above the rest of the mammals is that we see such cruelty as a problem at all.
I have had to work very hard at not being angry, all the fucking time, about this stuff. Studying gender identities and the historical roots of their formation within my own culture has helped me in this. From time to time though, that anger boils up.
These things are not soluble in the short term; but there is power in social movements. The waves of change. Trust to the future to find better answers. Deal with the present as best you can. Accept the past for what it was and understand that for some cultures there is great corrolation between their present and your past and vice versa. But most of all, live with the reality that we are animals and sometimes animals act in inhumane ways.
And then...
Recall that some of these two legged animals do marvellous things. Risk life and limb, study long and hard, sacrifice much to help others. Know that there are random acts of kindness to set against the cruelties of the world. And that daughters may forge paths mothers never dreamed of and brothers and sons may help them pave the way. The world spins. People live and die and that is all there is.
Happy Birthday
