The purpose of this article is to offer a collocation of COVID-19 alongside two adjacent calamities that will likely increase during and after public health responses to the pandemic: suicide and femicide. Both of these forms of violence are patterned and predictable, both of them will manifest in divergent and distinct ways during the chaos of COVID-19, and both are highly gendered. In this article, we characterize the virus, theoretically align suicide and femicide as preventable forms of violence due to the circumstances of the pandemic, and suggest a way forward. We assert that suicide rates will increase for women and girls to unprecedented levels as a direct result of pandemic public health measures and it is also our contention that the gendered impact of COVID-19 will lead to an upsurge in another harm induced by the global health order to stay at home: femicide. In a landscape of competitive catastrophe, we call attention to two social facts that kill: suicide and femicide, and we urge global leaders to attend to prevention now, because for many women and girls, even though we have found a vaccine, it may be too late.
Humanist sociology shares space with positivity fields such as peace and conflict studies, positive psychology, and the wellness arms of health, science, and education to contribute to the “plus” side of knowledge and be part of the “solution” to problems and discord in human living systems. Hope is an often misinterpreted merit. It helps one imagine something different, yes, but it is also deeply connected to a sense that something can be different; something you wish will happen and a notion that change is actually (however unlikely) possible. A critical middle step between identifying spaces in need of transformation and working for change is the capacity to move from the perceived to the possible— the ability to imagine other that than what is. In this article, hope is examined conceptually, including an overview of recent literature on hope, the outcomes of hope, and what the alternatives to hope are. After identifying the importance of hope, hope’s role in the social study of peace and nonviolence will be examined looking at peace education and the potential of a “curriculum for hope.” Finally, this article offers a “how” of hope by presenting hope pedagogy for all to be utilized at the individual level.
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