Abduction Theme - Part 2
Continuing from last week, here's the second installment on the theme of abduction that runs throughout JUMP.
We passed one building, which, when described affected me as much as anything I had ever heard. As I was told to look at this particular building, it was explained that the building housed the emperor’s ‘concubines’. The voice projected in my head described how the emperor’s militias would comb through the countryside looking for young beautiful girls who they would rip from their families to serve as sexual slaves. The voice narrated the story as if a garden were being described. I did not hear about a controversy; I did not hear about how wrong this was. I looked around and saw no signs commemorating this building as a place of crime.
My daughters at the time were little girls. I stopped, took off the headset and tried to imagine how I’d feel if the agents of the government visited my family and took away my girls. It was an unbearable horrific thought. That’s all I could take of the Forbidden City. I was fuming. I turned off the headset and ran to the nearest exit, well before I was a third through the tour.
Which brings me to JUMP. Since the beginning of recorded history, the inhumane treatment of women has been the cornerstone of man’s power and sexual prowess. Man’s mistreatment of women has been documented throughout the ages ranging from state approved rape as in the case of the Chinese emperors to ethnic cultural cleansing that occurred during the Yugoslavian war in the 1990s. Women have been mistreated by emperors and kings, their fathers, brothers and husbands and are routinely attacked all over the world for the sexual gratification of man.
Since my visit to the Forbidden City, I have been super-sensitive to any story about women being mistreated. The cases of Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard had a significant impact on me and as a result, may have subliminally contributed to a central topic described in JUMP. Coincidently, JUMP was released as an e-book the week that a story broke in Cleveland about the ten-year abduction and sexual slavery of three young girls, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight.
We passed one building, which, when described affected me as much as anything I had ever heard. As I was told to look at this particular building, it was explained that the building housed the emperor’s ‘concubines’. The voice projected in my head described how the emperor’s militias would comb through the countryside looking for young beautiful girls who they would rip from their families to serve as sexual slaves. The voice narrated the story as if a garden were being described. I did not hear about a controversy; I did not hear about how wrong this was. I looked around and saw no signs commemorating this building as a place of crime.
My daughters at the time were little girls. I stopped, took off the headset and tried to imagine how I’d feel if the agents of the government visited my family and took away my girls. It was an unbearable horrific thought. That’s all I could take of the Forbidden City. I was fuming. I turned off the headset and ran to the nearest exit, well before I was a third through the tour.
Which brings me to JUMP. Since the beginning of recorded history, the inhumane treatment of women has been the cornerstone of man’s power and sexual prowess. Man’s mistreatment of women has been documented throughout the ages ranging from state approved rape as in the case of the Chinese emperors to ethnic cultural cleansing that occurred during the Yugoslavian war in the 1990s. Women have been mistreated by emperors and kings, their fathers, brothers and husbands and are routinely attacked all over the world for the sexual gratification of man.
Since my visit to the Forbidden City, I have been super-sensitive to any story about women being mistreated. The cases of Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard had a significant impact on me and as a result, may have subliminally contributed to a central topic described in JUMP. Coincidently, JUMP was released as an e-book the week that a story broke in Cleveland about the ten-year abduction and sexual slavery of three young girls, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight.
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