Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Overflowing womens' shelter gets funds -- just to stay open

This is the kind of table scrap that women are supposed to consider good news:
"An Ottawa shelter so full that it turned away more than 1,000 women and children fleeing domestic violence last year has received new funds from the Ontario government — enough to make the necessary repairs to stay open, but not enough to expand." [...]
Well, excuse me if I don't pop the cork on that bottle of Moet et Chandon I've been saving for a celebratory occasion. This shelter is so packed to capacity with battered women and their kids that it had to turn away over 1,000 women and kids in one year, and it's getting just enough funding to stay open, but not enough to expand so it could accommodate some of those extra people? What kind of fuckery is this?

Another question one might want to ask is where all these abused people are coming from in the first place, why they had to flee their homes, and what if anything is being done about it?

And yet, among the comments with the CBC article are gems like this:


What an asshole. Misogyny, it appears, is alive and thriving, and even more ingrained in some women than it is in men. I wonder if there could be a connection between that sick little factoid and the overflowing womens' shelters. Ya think?