"They want us to be stupid things"

Afghan Girls, Scarred by Acid, Defy Terror, Embracing School

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.” . . .


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html?ref=opinion


(Here's an interesting bit: In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government JAPANESE government? Who knew? )

I really don't know how to keep women safe from that level of violence. :(

It's a pipe dream. But could it be possible to build a refugee town for women only, with schools and training in almost everything, and have it run entirely by women? It would be like a women's shelter on NGO steroids.

It could at least be a safe place to come to learn, and a central place from which to organize.

But of course I imagine it would be under constant attack by the men as being unholy and an abomination and whatever else they can think of. :(

is it just ingrained in the typical male psyche? What is it about men that fear women becoming their equals? Why are they so insecure? Why are they so violent?

Women raped, murdered, assaulted, just because they *are* women. Women subjugated and kept economically in chains - and in some countries - educationally ignorant (though it seems education may not matter so much given the incidence of violence in this country, too. The woman who posted about her neighbors daughter being beaten as one recent example.)

Anger, fear, rage, dominance, exploitation, insecurity, violence . . . how can this be changed the world over - crossing cultural and religious boundaries. (Though sometimes I think religion is the culprit for much of the "justification" men use.)

Sorry, this is just a very sore (and real) point with me.


(BTW - Present company, excluded, of course! I did say "typical male".)

I will not be defensive or think you're attacking me when you generalize about men. I know you're talking about the vast number of abusive men out there.

I agree that religion is a major culprit. It is a major justification for all of what is happening to women. It would still happen without religion, but could it be so easily and thoroughly institutionalized?

That's the value and purpose of religion. It codifies values and conduct. In this case very violent and negative values and conduct. But having a world without religion is another pipe dream. :(

...in Catholic, Christian and non-denominational churches. Even before I discovered feminism, I was uncomfortable (and frustrated) by that. I had many discussions (that turned into arguments) w/friends regarding religious doctrine dictating sexism.

One of the last times I attended Catholic church, the priest was on this "women" rant. About how it was our duty to 'procreate', make good homes and support our families. That a woman was nothing unless she had a family. I'm sure that wasn't the first time I'd heard such sentiments offered in church. But that particular day it struck me.

I'm not sure that any one sect or denomination is more or less sexist. Though, if I had to pick I'd say I've been pleasanty surprised by some of the episcopalian churches and their support of women and women's issues.

When I get some time, I'm going to look up some studies. Patriarchy really is the problem. It evolved as a social system for whatever reason, those in power always look to keep power or at least ignore the processes to power, and we end up with a fucking social disaster.

Men by definition are the patriarchy, but many are just ignorant, lazy, or angry. Not all. What the problem is to me, is there is far to much violence against women to NOT call it a very serious pathology, a social disease rivaling a physical one like cancer, A Big Problem That Needs To Be Fixed Yesterday.

What we get are apologists or justifiers. Your point about religion is well taken and is a similar process and part of the beginning. The classic patriarchal religions are one thing, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, but take a good look some of the others. The non religion religion of Buddhism. Like the rest it has some damn fine ideas. But it's not pro woman at all at BEST it's simply not misogynist.

Neither is Hinduism, (Even though If I ever need a God, I'm calling on Kali--She rocks)Which does have misogynist aspects and we won't even talk about Confucius. All my agnostic searching led me to realize that other than certain animist and Aboriginal religions, and not many of those by a long shot, every one of them treated women as property or baby incubates, or worse.

Patriarchy does it to Gays men and women also by a similar process, Gay men are "feminized" and therefore have no value, actually negative value as evidenced by the homophobic violence against Gay men; Gay women are A)"bulldykes" (too ugly to get a man) or B)a walking, talking porn fantasy considered to really 'want' men.

Sick, Sick, Sick. These acid throwers are mentally ill individuals, driven there by, yes, the patriarchy. That one of the many reasons I love IBTP. No punches pulled at that site, no quarter given

(Off soapbox, how the hell are you Thomcat? It's good to read you around DU, you've been kicking a bit of electronic ass here and there I notice)

so I have time on my hands. I'm adjusting to my new condition so I'm thinking more clearly again and writing more.

Hopefully I'll be around a lot more now. I've missed helping out with the electronic ass kicking. :)

I've lost track of a lot of sites I used to read. My memory isn't what it used to be and I find myself just forgetting the names of sites I used to visit regularly. IBTP is one of them. I need to go back there. One by one I'm getting reminded of them, going back, and widening my reading list again to get myself back up to speed.

face it, religion is often a part of, and reflective of, the culture from which it springs -- I don't know about EVERY religion, but I know of NONE which endorses beating or raping

I think a good deal of it is just sheer bullying..."because they can"..That's the answer a feminist writer gave to another woman who asked why men have traditionally enslaved and abused women.

Plenty of rape stories in the bible for instance. And under some crazy-assed fundamentalists interpretation of the Quran, women are sentenced to beating. It makes the news. Patriarchy is a socially evolved system of human interaction. Men hold most of the power, and for many years, the only power women held, and the only value they were considered to have, were fetus receptacles or future receptacles. Some of your greatest Christan minds-- incredible thinkers-- held that women were a sort of failed male.

Thomas Aquinas, in particular, disappoints me in this respect.

Women have been fighting for years. They didn't call themselves feminists. I love to post this one by Margeret Fell, although I doubt people actually read it;
Women's SpeakingJustified, Proved, and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All such as speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus.

And how Women were the first that Preached the Tidings of the Resurrection of Jesus, and were sent by Christ's own Command, before he Ascended to the Father, John 20. 17.

http://www.qhpress.org/texts/fell.html

And this site is fun to look around at

http://www.suppressedhistories.net/


I would question if bulling is a gender trait or a socially evolved, adaptive one. What holds minds in place, or in their place? What happens when you repeatedly tell a people that they have little value, or only a certain value and back it up with force? What do you get out of it as a gender, as a color, as a culture, as a religion, as a nation? One outcome is simply a bunch of ridiculous dichotomies, Order/chaos, peace/war, rich/poor Madonna/whore. "Because they can" isn't answer enough for me.

Where women are making forward strides, these destructive dichotomies lessen. Long way to go.

Lets' skip gender for a moment. What happened when Native Americans, were that they are primitive, ignorant, that their way of life is disgusting, their way of worship was evil, and do this while you're kicking their ass, what is the psychological outcome for the first generation, the next? The next? Currently? What passes down, what is saved?

Religion tends to have violent beginnings. Currently, there are people of faith all over the world trying desperately to reject this violence, but isn't this what most of the stories and myths are founded on?

Jesus seemed to be a bit of a revolutionary, although historically it's my understanding he was an observant Jew, and back then, women were property. There were certain rules, and codes of behavior.


I just read "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. It's ok. But the lack of strong female "goddess" figures-or the ones that were present were whores or "nature" goddesses first irritated me, then I thought within the context of the story, of course their wouldn't be strong female characters in America. He got it right. Sad.

say there is no such thing as a Superiority Complex...That it is, at the core, an Inferiority Complex. There is, I think, some truth to that...Women are "the other" ..Then there's always just plain old bullying...Does anyone believe you think there would be this level of abuse if women were not, on the average, 3 inches shorter and 60 pounds lighter?.