“Personally, I watched my mother, aunts, and women in my neighborhood get attacked, beaten, sexually violated by men my entire childhood. One distinct memory of my mother that is engrained behind my eye lids, deep into my subconscious was when this man named Nate barged into my mothers apartment, breaking the window with a brick. He was so big and towered her as she only stood 5 4″. He just kept calling her a bitch for not answering his calls and ignoring him. There were four of us kids at the time and it was our bath time and he starting yelling at her even more to give him what he wants-he had given her money toward her rent, so he said he deserved some pussy and some place to stay. Next thing we saw was him pull out a gun and he starting beating her in the face and chest with it. It was the bloodiest mess, blood splattered everywhere-she fought back, so hard and strong as she had always done. Every part of her skin, her hands, her lips and eyes he had broken began to swell and bleed and turn black and purple. He beat her unconscious, as her naked body limped to the floor. My brothers and me were so scared, but we stood our ground over her body after she had fallen. We tried shaking her, screaming mom to wake her up from an unconscious state, but her body seemed lifeless. We yelled at him not to hurt our mom or make her bleed anymore! He pointed the gun at us and told us to step the fuck back before he shot us in the face. He asked us if we wanted to die. He said that our mother was nothing but a whore and that we would never be anything having come from her. He shot at my moms body that was sprawled out naked on the floor, resembled the vulnerability of Jesus hanging on the cross. The bullet missed her and went into the floor next to her, but it made us jump back into a corner. Then my other brother Antonio who was only 3 or so at the time jumped out of the tub and ran to my mother, laying on her body, hugging her vagina, trying to suck milk from her  breasts, kissing her her mouth, anything to get her to acknowledge his desperate plea. He sort of wiped the blood off of her as he screamed, mommy, mommy, mommy-trying to wake her up. My other brother Jeremiah ran from the tub and jumped into my arms. He was so scared, trembling, and crying. We thought she was dead. Nate eventually left after the assault, and said that he would be back. It was a living nightmare. My families tragedy of violence is tame compared to the countless women that have been murdered in cold blood and tortured by men. It makes me so sad and sick, and very angry that the laws have always stood against us women for so long-. This since of entitlement men have felt over women’s bodies for so long that we’ve come to believe that their entitlement is true. Systems that never stood to protect us so long. Laws that pity men for raping us women. Everyday should be a wake-up call for women and men alike to demand protection of all women. Safety is the very least we deserve.”-Gracie

After the deadly Isla Vista rampage by an alienated young man who used social media to announce his plans to kill, social media struck back — with the hashtag #YesAllWomen. “Girls grow up knowing that it’s safer to give a fake phone number than to turn a guy down. #yesallwomen”, one woman hashtagged. Part of the reason for the hashtag’s popularity was due to the message the Isla Vista suspect had broadcast before Friday night’s rampage. Statistically speaking, such rampages are rare, but man-on-woman violence is not. In 2012, an average of more than seven women were slain every day, and according to the most recent available federal statistics, American women usually know their attacker — who is usually male.

Women and girls are five times more likely than men to be violently attacked by an intimate partner, and women are also more than twice as likely as men to be killed by a partner.
Elliot Rodger had announced in a manifesto and in a YouTube video that he intended to kill women for rejecting him, and the initial stages of his attack reflected the plan that he laid out: First, he killed three people at his apartment building, then tried to attack a sorority before he targeted passersby, police say. He ultimately killed six people and wounded 13 before his own death Friday night near UC Santa Barbara.
Read full article here: http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-isla-vista-women-20140525-story.html