Skip to content

‘Armageddon’on the rise

Re: Article on the introduction of a lingerie football league to the Abbotsford Sports and Entertainment Center.

Re: Article on the introduction of a lingerie football league to the Abbotsford Sports and Entertainment Center.

Followed closely was an article announcing that the Taboo: Naughty but Nice Sex Show had been suddenly cancelled from Tradex’s schedule this year, to which Darren Blakeborough is quoted as commenting:

“The argument then (when the show was introduced to Abbotsford three years ago)was the show was symbolic of the ‘decline of our civilization’ and that all ‘civilizations have failed’ because of this attitude toward sexuality. Four years later, I don’t think we’ve had to face an Armageddon.”

I then read of a brutal sexual assault that took place Feb. 2. I wonder if this 19-year-old girl, as well as the tens of thousands of Canadian sexual abuse victims each year, would argue that Armageddon has in fact seemed to have taken place in their lives.

May I suggest to you that the “Armageddon” we face has been on the rise for decades because our value for women in mainstream society has been gradually but methodically brought to the sexualization of their bodies?

We have lost hope and laughter and instead we find fear and counseling sessions as our city’s own young women are assaulted in the rear seats of trucks.

How can we pretend that these issues are not connected? An individual who will enthusiastically sexualize the body of a stranger for pleasure and entertainment has participated in the same foundational wrong as those who rape and assault. It is a result of the reduction of a multi-dimensional human being to an object for self-gratification.

Obviously the consequences to both the victim and perpetrator are extremely different from each of these said crimes, but if we want to find solutions we must go to the root of the situation and not just chase down the “extreme offenders.”

In a nation that boasts of great human rights, I wonder why more have not noticed the lack of real freedom on our streets.

Look at the statistics. Look at your children. Remember your own heart and the difference between how it feels to be lusted after and how it feels to be embraced with love. We must open our eyes and value those around us, male and female, for who they are beyond what we can see on the outside.

 

Bonnie Pue