The hypocrisy of organised religion never fails to amaze me…
I got this via Rosie, and it was written by Joss Whedon.
It’s one of the most amazingly passionate essays I’ve come across in a long time. Every word he wrote was totally righteous.
I gotta go, cuz I’ve got a letter to write, and I urge all of you out there to do the same. Rosie says inch by inch, I say one person at a time…
Amended To Add
Bam just sent me this. It’s long, but you should read it.
Watch the film, it’s gruesome, but it’s a reality that women in the Middle East, and right here in my own country, have to endure.
I had a Muslim friend who ran away from home 16 years ago. She’d fallen in love with a boy from a different caste, and she was afraid that her father would kill her if he ever found out. I haven’t seen her since. I hope she’s still alive.
I hope every single one of those men burn in hell for what they did to that girl, especially those who took gratuitous pleasure in filming such an evil, and vile act.
Dionne Galace
May 20
9:33 pm
I’m sorry. I can’t even be flippant anymore. I’m sick to my stomach. I read that essay via Whedonesque earlier this week and cried for an hour.
When I first heard of that Elisha Cuthbert film, I thought, “oh, torture porn… when are you going to die?” It’s a snuff film, plain and simple. At least in Irreversible and I Spit on Your Grave, the female character rose up and slew her attackers. Oops, spoiler. We are a nation that glorifies violence on film, we’ve taken that a step further and now glorify violence against women on film… what’s the next step? A pay-per-view even where one can watch a woman being brutalized for REAL by some man in a gimp mask?
Whedon asks, “What’s wrong with women?” What is wrong with us? Why would anyone want to gleefully hurt us in such a way? Why do we tear into each other ourselves?
Ann(ie)
May 20
10:19 pm
Sometimes, Dee, it’s better not to be glib, and this is certainly one of those occassions. Joss proves yet again why he’s one of the most thoughtful people working in the entertainment biz today.
I hadn’t heard about Dua, hadn’t heard about the movie Captivity either. We’ve created a cult of pain in modern society, and yet conversely, due to desensitization, people feel less and less. I liken it to the fall of Roman society — you see such patterns in declining civilizations. Think of the spectacles at the Coliseum. However, if such things can still rouse people to outrage and heartbreak, then there’s hope for the world.
Ann(ie)
May 20
10:25 pm
“Why do we tear into each other ourselves?”
This deserves a separate response, I think. Studies on feminine interpersonal dynamics seem to indicate that women learn passive-aggressive behavior patterns in early childhood. A strong, confident woman who handles her business in a “masculine” way, that is to say directly and perhaps even confrontationally, is often ostracized by her peers. Women are taught it isn’t ladylike to behave in such a way, so they subvert their hostility into catty behaviors that lead to festering jealousies. A group of women, trying to accomplish a project jointly, will likely encounter more petty resentments than a mixed group of male / female colleagues. Furthermore, I would posit that women, as whole, tend to be more uncertain about their own accomplishments, more likely to compare themselves to their female coworkers, than their male colleagues, thus a woman might be more likely to feel threatened by someone else’s success.
There are always exceptions to gender behaviorial archetypes, of course, and I might be talking out my ass.
katieM
May 21
1:39 am
That video made me cry. See its those types of things that make most Americans fear Islam. That may not be typical behavior, but its what sticks in the mind when one tries to understand current religious differences.
Ann Bruce
May 21
2:44 am
Now I love Joss Whedon for more than just his creative mind.
Monica Jackson
May 21
2:53 am
I can’t get past Dua’s death. I saw this on AOL the other day and I felt sick. It was hard to think about. Other women around the world suffer so much. We can’t imagine. Just can’t imagine their lives.
Kristie (J)
May 21
3:31 am
I agree with Monica. I saw it the other day too and don’t have the words. And to film what they did to that young woman-nothing to say.
Anonymous
May 21
3:44 am
To be honest, I wouldn’t call Joss Whedon’s essay “impassioned”. It’s a few steps away from impassioned but if it starts some action, then well and good. I liked the fact he didn’t go down the easy route and single out any one religion/ethnic group for his plea. Because, of course, it isn’t confined to the oh-so-convenient Them. My parents are south-east Asian Roman Catholic, yet my father has tried to kill me 3 times for being something or doing something he didn’t approve of. Away from them for almost a decade now, I still wake up from nightmares where he has pulled out a gun and is about to shoot me while I frantically try to keep my children hidden.
But do you know what the sickest part of it is? My father is actually the saner one of my two parents. Think on that one for a while.
Kat O+
May 21
4:08 am
The thing is, some people see this as a problem with religion when it’s really a problem about how women are treated and perceived–religion is just used to justify their actions. Case in point, the men who stoned her weren’t Islamic and yet I’ll bet many people who saw that news item didn’t even pick that up. Hubby showed me an Amnesty International pamphlet the other day about women in Sudan, who risk gang rape everyday to fetch water because if they let their men do it, the men risk death. And on the news in the past few months have been gang rapes captured on video and distributed to the victims’ friends and schoolmates. So when Bam talks about pay-per-view? It’s already out there. Worse, it’s available for free.
Rosie
May 21
5:24 am
One link leads to another, one story to another. I started with awareness, moving to putting my money where my mouth is. Speak up. Music lyrics, movies, TV that is denigrating to women isn’t just in third world countries. The people we need to help change this are sitting at our dining room tables with us. Our children.
It’s not a happy subject, but let’s start with not being silent.
Anonymous
May 21
1:02 pm
Folks,
You’re kind of missing Wheadon’s point. This is absolutely horrible but this violent reality is the truth for half of the world’s population and it’s not just in a small backwater town that ‘don’t know any better’.
This type of cultural expression happens everywhere and can happen to any woman regardless of race, religion, class or whatever other classification you want to give it. Don’t ever say it can’t happen to you because you are lying to yourselves if you do. Violence against women is pretty darn universal. It’s the one truly common thread.
Don’t think so? Ask yourself what your internal dialogue is if you hear about a woman who’s the victim of sexual assault.
I bet it’s ‘What was she wearing/what did she say to lead the man on/look how she acted, look at her sexual history, etc.’
Come on, be honest. Unless the woman is dead and the victim of a known sex predator, those words or something similar run through your brain unless you consciously turn them off. If you’re the victim, it’s I’m sorry, I was bad, what did I say, how did I look, etc.
Why is it that woman are culturally conditioned to be responsible for and ‘control’ male ‘weakness’? (Note: Predators don’t see this as a weakness in themselves.)
I know, an argument that doesn’t seem to be part of Karen’s original post, but actually it is.
Here’s the original headline from the Daily Mail on May 3rd: (yep, this incident actually happened at the end of April so really this is old news–bravo to Joss and Karen for reviving it. let’s see if it actually leads to a conviction of the three they’ve arrested so far. anyone wanna bet?)
The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy
Here’s what that headline says to me: Foolish, foolish girl. See, (waving finger in a scolding fashion) you brought this on yourself. If only you had listened to your father, this never would’ve happened. Stupid, stupid girl. You asked for this.
Guess what? This horrible tragedy was a vicious murder. The freaking headline should’ve reflected that. What’s worse is that I never saw this story in my local newspaper or the NY Times, the Washington Post, or the LA Times, etc. CNN did pick it up but I would guess only because there was sensational video footage. Otherwise most of us would never have heard about it.
Sadly there’s nothing new here. Bride burning in India, fistula in Africa, rape in Danfur, bride kidnapping in Central Asia, etc. etc. etc. Oprah does a show on this every year.
But if Joss Wheadon and Dua Khalil are what you need to see what’s in front of you everyday, then more power to them.
However, please look a little closer to home. Look at your own cultural attitudes toward gender issues. Think about your own internal dialogue. No, it doesn’t have to be in regards to sexual crimes, just your every day life kind of stuff. I think you might be surprised by the little stuff if you really allow yourself to hear the tacit words culture is whispering in your ear.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Within the comments there was post about the passive-agressiveness of the female gender. I really didn’t think belonged here. I was like WTF. But it really made me think because that study and the quoting of it is also about part of the cultural bias. Because it’s a repeat of what I see in the original Daily Mail headline. Women bring it on themselves. See they are passive-agressive and can’t work together.
BS! Some of the best professional projects I’ve worked on have been done with women. That’s not to say I’m blind, working with women can also be a nightmare, but that comes down to the individuals, not the gender of those individuals not the gender.
Get past the labels, even the other those given by supposedly unbiased professional studies, because those researchers may believe that they don’t have gender biases but that’s impossible. Why? Because culture whispers in their ears too. Don’t believe me.
Look for the NY Times article about the transgender researcher who went from female to male. I for one thought it was rather blatant and quite enlightening how academia views gender as a whole.
Regardless, Joss is right. We get messages everywhere. From the movies we watch, the books we read (I will never read a romance capture fantasy the same way or a possessive alpha male–too freaking close to reality, ladies, way too freaking close), to how sexual crimes are protrayed or ignored by the media. Well, unless she is dead then that’s a whole different ballgame.
Quite frankly, a video like this scares me, but the truth is that at least these ‘men’, and I use that term very loosely (real men don’t do this!!!), had the courage of their convictions and videotaped the whole thing. At least their ‘honesty’ was about their murderous rage. The true crime is that they and a good portion of the world won’t see it that way and that most women in our western culture believe that the problem is something that the ‘uncivilized’ world has to deal with.
Anonymous
May 21
1:40 pm
Oops! Meant to preview that last post and pare it down. Oh well, it still conveys what I meant to say just a much longer version.
Anonymous
May 21
3:23 pm
I came across a blog on the weekend quoting an article written by some NY paper with statistics showing rape averages of whites on whites, black on black, white on black and etc. The comments after the article just about blew my mind as they focused on “why white men rape so few black women”. “Aren’t white (rapist) men attracted to black women” etc. To say I was struck dumb with disgust at some of the comments, would be an understatement. Very few comments focused on the issue of the article but rather tried finding another way to attack females, in this case black (as if they’re doing these women a favour by raping them!). And this in a “civilized” society!. It’s obvious for me that sexism/hatred has no cultural barriers and no monopoly on the uneducated, underpriviledged, religious third world fanatics.
Chandra
Anonymous
May 21
6:06 pm
Ladies – there IS something positive you can do about this type of atrocity. Amnesty International have a campaign to tackle violence against women. They ask their supporters to take certain action, for example email/ write to foreign governments demanding theat the perpetrators of such atrocities be brought to justice.
Please visit their website to see if you can help. I have signed up to this and it is not a big commitment of time. It only takes a few minutes to compose a few emails each year.
Website:
http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/index-eng
Tumperkin
Kristie (J)
May 21
9:36 pm
Anonymous is right. It does happen everywhere. I have a very good friend who works with abused women right here in my own city and while she doesn’t tell me much and what she does say is very very vague for professional reasons, this is a problem that crosses all cultures. It’s not just a Muslim problem although they get a lot of exposure for their atrocities. But it happens in every city, in every country. Women are abused for the simple fact that they are women and some men (and I really emphasize some) men, are bullies who prey on those weaker than themselves. And sadly, I don’t think this is an issue that will ever be solved as long as there are those bullies.
We can rant and shake our fists at the injustice of it all – but IS there anything we can do to save our gender from those who will victimize us?
katieM
May 21
10:32 pm
You know, anonymous, I’ve never thought that we females bring rape and murder on ourselves. That’s never been an internal dialog for me. I do wonder, however, why men blame us for their own shortcomings.
Kat O+
May 21
10:54 pm
Ask yourself what your internal dialogue is if you hear about a woman who’s the victim of sexual assault.
I bet it’s ‘What was she wearing/what did she say to lead the man on/look how she acted, look at her sexual history, etc.’
I can honestly say that this is NOT my internal dialogue.
Anonymous
May 22
1:23 am
I’m not posting this under my real name because I’m not at a point yet where I want to go public, but I will say that Anonymous is right on target with his/her comments. (If Karen has IP tracking on, she knows who this is.)
I’ve always considered myself a feminist, but when I was raped by an acquaintance fourteen years ago, I did the same thing I’d always seen so many other victims do — I blamed myself. I didn’t report it because, oh, I must’ve done something to deserve it, right?
It has taken years of therapy to start to get better. I’m not there yet. I’m still overweight — I gained fifty pounds within a year after the rape occurred — and something in me still wants to keep that weight on as some kind of bizarre protective measure. Yeah, I know, it’s nuts, but I think I’m still afraid to weigh 120 pounds again.
Thanks for posting this, Karen.
Arin Rhys
May 22
3:22 am
I’ve seen this posted in a few places and the comments have been interesting. A lot of women have been pointing out the short comings in women and saying that its a shame, but its even a worse that so-n-so did such-in-such on whoever’s blog when women need to stick together. Its not just men who brutalize women — women happily torment each other every day because the anti-women message is firmly in the female mind.
If that makes any sense.
cecilia250
May 22
3:50 am
I was raised to be pro-female and I think that I am, without forgetting that individuals are just that, and not to be blamed or credited for the actions of another, just because they have a chromosome in common. I wonder whether our infamous alleged tendency to be nasty towards each other is not just a myth. Yes, people lash out, but is that because we’re female, or is that because certain people are assy, regardless of gender?
Regarding the blame-the-victim issue, I’m not convinced that women are going to blame a woman for being raped simply because there’s a deep-seated self-loathing or anything like that. I think there are a couple of things going on. The one I will mention is that I think that for many people who go down the path of asking whether the woman/girl was wearing a short skirt or too much make-up (or whatever), they’re trying to come up with an explanation – not to excuse the rapist, but to feel that they can achieve safety for themselves by not doing those things.
Obviously, these are damaging questions to ask, but I don’t think that everyone who asks them does so out of fundamental misogyny.
Jenyfer Matthews
May 22
6:54 am
It’s always amazing (appalling) to me that people can do such a thing to another human being (regardless of gender) and be so sure they have the moral high ground.
Anonymous
May 22
12:29 pm
Katie M, I don’t think we bring it on yourselves but I do believe that predators of this world use that as an excuse and that parts of society go along with it. I see that Daily Mail headline as a prime example because of what the subtext of the headline said to me.
Kat O, I applaud you because you are a better woman than I am. (No, that wasn’t a dig.)
I honestly believed that of myself then discovered that it wasn’t the complete truth. Logically, I know that sexual assault is about power and not sex, but I was appalled to discover in wayward moments that stray thoughts crept in from time to time. When I stopped and examined them, I knew they weren’t true. But the fact that I had them at all wasn’t a very pleasant realization. I really didn’t like myself at that moment and it shook me to my foundations because that wasn’t who I thought I was. Turns out that I did stay true for the most part but the fact that those stray thoughts made it into my consciousness at all tells me how insidious the problem is.
Anon: Sexual assault is about power. It doesn’t have anything to do with your weight or how pretty you are or what you were wearing. The acquaintance who raped you was/is a PREDATOR. Predators know how to prey on weakness, how to manipulate any situation, and they don’t necessarily believe that there is anything wrong with what they do. Seek professional help and learn how to NOT be silenced. That is the predator’s greatest weapon, silence. Take back your voice. But not here. Not on the internet. The Internet is rife with unknown predators and some of them are definitely women.
The grandmother who performed FGM on her granddaughter against the girl’s father’s refusal is a prime example.
And, Karen, thank you for allowing me to comment. I don’t comment on blogs and didn’t intend to this time, but this is one of those subjects that spoke to me that I couldn’t walk away from.
azteclady
May 22
1:31 pm
Kristie J, you ask what we can do? We can teach our children, male and female, that any human being is worth as much as the next one regardless of plumbing. We can bring this issue up in our conversations with friends and family whenever cultural stereotyping of women and men pops up. We can be aware of our own reactions to news, gossip about friends, images in the media and all around us, and use them as opportunities to change our own perceptions first, then those of our families, friends, acquaintances, co-workers. One conversation at a time, one stereotype at a time.
No, this won’t be change in a day, or a year, perhaps not in our lifetime. But we have to start somewhere.
Karen Scott
May 22
6:02 pm
Azteclady, You. Are. So. Right. A lot of the problems that we face today are due to the way we’ve brought up our children. Throughout the ages, the stereotypes that prevail with regards to women, have been sub-consciously (and not-so sub-consciously) conditioned into children.
If a child is brought up to believe that he is better simply by virtue of being a boy, what kind of man do you think he will grow up to be?
If a girl is brought up to think that the way she looks is the most important thing that she has to offer, and that being beautiful is better than being intelligent, what kind of woman will she become?
There are parents out there who will watch this video and be horrified by it, without realising that they themselves may be part of the problem.
Bringing one’s children up with an equal opportunity ethos, is a utopia that vast parts of the world, including the western nations, are still hundreds of years away from in my opinion.
As for woman-on-woman hate. It surely exists, and it’s not just an evil rumour cultivated by men to divide and conquer us.
You go to any work place, and you’ll find examples of how women constantly undermine each other for toally innocuous reasons.