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Flash!

Posted September 1st, 2019 by Lesley Hazleton

Looks like the accidental theologist is on her way to becoming the accidental ontologist.   Story of what I’ve been up to this past year or two to come, but meanwhile, here’s a hint of where I’m going, just published in The Stranger (yes, The Stranger!) with this great illustration:

menopause

https://www.thestranger.com/features/2019/08/14/41072753/mysteries-of-menopause?fbclid=IwAR21z8SL0-ysaSmT9QaCPJO7Ms0UqUZfPgTUfUJU8fZlPqLKAXUldfl8k9o

(Note to self:  got to get a pair of glasses like those.)

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File under: existence, feminism, women | Tagged: Tags: 'loss of libido', Addyi, age, andropause, estrogen, fear and trembling, hot flashes, menopause, post-sexual, sex, testosterone, Viagra, Vyleesi | Be the First to leave a comment

Strong Words For Strong Women

Posted October 9th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

A couple of years back, I started referring to my friend Rebecca Brown as “the divine Ms Brown” (as in “the latest piece by the divine Ms Brown…”). Not that I have any desire to worship her – or anyone or anything else for that matter – but her writing definitely touches on the transcendent. The word fit.

robin_seattlemetThen I realized that another friend, contemporary-art curator Robin Held, deserved a better adjective than all the “amazings” and “wonderfuls” constantly used for her. I started thinking of her as “the iconic Ms Held.” That fit too.

I could always stick with the usual words, of course. But when “awesome” is used for everything from the latest video game to a new flavor of ice-cream, it becomes meaningless. There’s no real awe there, just as there’s no real wonder in “wonderful.”

“Amazing” is popular, but seems to indicate surprise that any woman could be strong and intelligent and outspoken.

“Incredible” begs the question.

And as for “courageous” – if it takes courage for a woman to speak her mind and be active in the world (at least in the West), then we’re in worse trouble than I thought.

There’s a whole range of monikers we could use instead of the standard wonderfuls and awesomes and amazings.  I began jotting them down, and found that I could put names of women I know to every one of them. I’m pretty sure you can do the same:

— the badass Ms X

— the incomparable Ms Y

— the unstoppable Ms Z

— the outrageous Ms A

— the formidable Ms B

— the dynamite Ms C

— the fearless Ms D

— the fearsome Ms E

— the notorious Ms F

— the path-breaking Ms G

— the ferocious Ms H

— the inimitable Ms I

— the indomitable Ms J

— the brilliant Ms K

— the magnificent Ms L

— the dynamic Ms M

— the genius known as Ms N

— the epic Ms O

— the mind-blowing Ms P

and this isn’t even the whole of the alphabet.

Some of these tags are stronger, some less so, but you get the idea: We need better accolades for strong, intelligent women. And quit with the weak female-only ones.

Words like “gutsy” don’t cut it — who ever describes a man they admire as gutsy?  “Ballsy?” — oh puh-lease…  “Incredible”? — really, you find it hard to credit?  “Innovative?” — aren’t we all?

So let’s innovate.  No matter what gender you are, feel free to pitch in and share better suggestions in the comments.  And start using them. Liberally.

Think big, think strong, and celebrate strong women with strong language!

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File under: existence, feminism, women | Tagged: Tags: amazing, awesome, courageous, Rebecca Brown, Robin Held | 7 Comments
  1. Francoise Simon says:
    October 9, 2015 at 3:18 pm

    How about the intrepid Ms. F?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 10, 2015 at 9:07 am

      or the intrepid Ms Simon!

  2. Darlene Mitchell says:
    October 9, 2015 at 4:33 pm

    I will use this new approach, Lesley, for the epic women in my life . Brilliant! And in case you hadn’t heard, “There is a New Message from God in the world, and one of the things that it calls for is the emergence of women leaders, particularly in the area of spirituality and religion. It is time now for certain women to be called into these greater roles and responsibilities, and it is important around the world in different quarters and in different religious traditions that this be allowed.”

    http://www.newmessage.org/nm/the-age-of-women/

    It’s been 1400 years, so God is speaking again. It’s about time, isn’t it? I thought you’d like to know. If you read just a few of the revelations, you will find the Mystery and the Gnostic that you are yearning for but haven’t found. Best to you.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 10, 2015 at 9:06 am

      Yes, we need women to step up to being bishops and archbishops and ayatollahs and chief rabbis and all. But really, no mystic yearning going on in my head (or my body either). Being agnostic means that I’m not seeking or searching for anything. I simply explore, with both delight and bemusement. More in Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, due out in April. — L.

  3. Catherine Hiller says:
    October 10, 2015 at 10:22 am

    The indomitable Lesley Hazleton!

  4. lynnrosengiordano says:
    October 10, 2015 at 5:59 pm

    The irreplaceable Ms H. Stay strong, as is your wont.

  5. Huw Price says:
    October 12, 2015 at 9:12 am

    the forthright Ms Hazleton perhaps?

A Hard Choice? Really?

Posted October 1st, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

The right-wing is trying like hell to do a number on the minds of American women. You know that thing about abortion being the hardest choice a woman will ever have to make, or the one she most regrets? Bullshit.

90_percentIn fact 90% of all American women who’ve had an abortion are either glad or simply relieved they did (click here for the research.)  And for every woman I know who’s had an abortion (that’s half the women I know, and quite possibly half the women you know too), a safe, routine, minimally invasive procedure was far from the hardest decision of their lives. For many, like me, it was the simple, sane choice. The only hard part was finding the money to pay for it.

You want a hard decision? What about marriage? Or divorce? Taking on a mortgage? Choosing a cancer treatment? Allowing a terminally ill spouse to die with dignity? What about the multitude of hard decisions we all have to make in the course of our lives, men and women?

But right-wingers don’t think women capable of rational decision-making at all.  It’s apparently especially hard for us delicate souls, which is presumably why they think we agonize over it and decide wrong.  How very Victorian of them. They’re apparently white knights in shining armor, out to save every woman from her own distressingly poor judgment.  In their ideal world, no woman would be “allowed” to make a decision without prior permission from the Republican caucus.  Certainly not any woman with an income under a million a year.

But it’s not our decision-making that stinks, it’s theirs.  Because not only is it morally and ethically bankrupt, it’s full of lies — deliberate lies.

— Like Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina pretending to be near tears as she talked about watching a video that didn’t exist and never had.

— Or the head of the House Oversight Committee trying to play gotcha with the head of Planned Parenthood by using a bogus chart created by an anti-abortion group.

— Or abortion opponents pretending there’s no such thing as an embryo.  They’d have us think that every abortion is that of a full-term viable fetus, when none are.  The vast majority of abortions are embryonic, medically defined as up to eight weeks from conception.  But hey, you can’t see an embryo on a sonogram, let alone wave photographs of it in an attempt to guilt-trip women.  So lie, baby, lie — and screw the lives you mess up in the process.

It’s clear by now that nobody cares about facts in the fantasy world of today’s Republicans.  Real facts, that is, as opposed to imaginary ones.

Those of us who live in the real world know for a fact that imaginary facts are dangerous.  Remember those non-existent weapons of mass destruction used as the reason to invade Iraq?  Or those non-existent scientists asserting with great authority that there was no such thing as climate change?

Forget hard decisions for the moment.  Here’s an easy one:  A year from now, do all you can to make sure we send this gang of women-hating, war-mongering, planet-polluting liars back to whatever slime pit they crawled out of.

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File under: feminism, US politics, war, women | Tagged: Tags: abortion, Carly Fiorina, embryo, imaginary facts, Planned Parenthood, Republicans | 7 Comments
  1. Amna says:
    October 1, 2015 at 11:36 am

    Right on Lesley!
    But I am afraid that this whole country is blinded with madness and hatred and stepping away from humanity, humility and humanitarianism …The way things are going we could have the republican president representing this country next year and that will be the beginning of dark ages,once again… All my reasons for coming to this country in hope of finding equality, prosperity and freedom will be wiped away… there is less and less concern in this country for minorities, women and suffering of people in other parts of the world. America will turn the corner for worse and will never be the same….

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 1, 2015 at 12:00 pm

      Not the whole country, Amna. Nowhere near. But a warning that we can never take sanity and progress for granted. We always need to stand up and be counted, speak out, and call the bluff of ignorance and bigotry. Each in our own small way.
      Here’s Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

  2. jveeds says:
    October 1, 2015 at 5:42 pm

    Not to change the subject…well, OK, to change the subject…do you have any thoughts on the Pope’s personal audience with the Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis? I read Andy Borowitz’s satire on it and thought he was making that part up. But it really happened. But the weird thing is, no one from the Pontiff’s team seems to be willing to say why the abominable Davis was invited, what they talked about and there’s even some speculation that the Heir to the Chair wasn’t entirely aware that the meeting was being set up. That’s pretty hard to believe and maybe by the time you get to pontificalizing on this yourself we’ll have more info.

    But in the meantime, I’d love to get your take on this. Maybe His Petership was calling her in to say “STFU,” albeit in more popely terms.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 2, 2015 at 9:40 am

      Oh yes, it’s a weird kind of fun to watch Vatican spokesmen trying to spin this! The rationalizations are fascinatingly torturous. Yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/us/pope-francis-kim-davis-kentucky-clerk-washington-same-sex-marriage.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 and then today: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/europe/pope-francis-kim-davis-meeting.html
      Me? No pontif(f)icating for now. I’m just continually amazed at the screwed-up stance of orthodox religion on anything to do with sex (viz abortion, women clergy, gay marriage, contraception, priestly celibacy, pederasty).

  3. jveeds says:
    October 2, 2015 at 10:41 am

    Either way, I’d say this was a monumental failure of the Pope and his handlers, an epic miscue whereby either the Pope was under-informed, or misled, or simply had no conception of the political implications of having this notorious and divisive evangelical yahoo anywhere near his midst.

    It’s hard to believe that the papal PR machine allowed this to happen. In my view, it spoils much of the goodwill that the entire visit to America had gathered. So so sooooo stupid to let something this obviously misguided to happen.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 2, 2015 at 11:10 am

      Agreed. A ton of secular goodwill went out the door the moment Kim Davis entered it. Or maybe it was just a sudden jolt of reality.

  4. chakaoc says:
    October 9, 2015 at 5:34 pm

    Go, Lesley – morons and liars all. Their investigation into PP found nothing but there will be no exoneration because….well, it served their purpose. The slime pit beckons – hope they heed the call.

Who’s Really Pro-Life?

Posted September 10th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

How have we allowed this to happen? How have we allowed anti-abortion activists to call themselves pro-life? How have we not called them out, loud and clear, on this Orwellian double-speak?

Many of those against abortion are the same right-wingers who want to nuke the hell out of Iran or any other designated enemy of the day; who support the death penalty no matter how many death-row inmates have been proven innocent; who obstruct all attempts at gun control even when kindergarten kids are massacred; who see nothing wrong about cops shooting unarmed black men in the back. But a single fertilized egg inside a woman’s uterus? Suddenly, that’s sacred.

They’re not pro-life. I am. And Planned Parenthood is. And NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League, is. Because nobody here is advocating for abortion per se; what we’re for is the right to have one. For motherhood to be a matter of choice, not compulsion. And for a child’s right to come into the world wanted and welcomed. What we’re for, in short, is life. Not life in the abstract, but real life, as it is lived.

What we’re for is not more but fewer abortions. And the way to achieve that is clear: sex education in schools, and freely available contraception for women. Yet the anti-abortion crowd is against both. Which means that all they ensure is that there’ll be more abortions.

no-more-coat-hangersThe historical record is clear: women have always aborted pregnancies, whether with herbs, with knitting needles, or with wire coat-hangers in back-street abortions such as the one that nearly killed a close friend when I was a student. So now that abortion is safe – a minor medical procedure – the anti-abortion crowd are doing everything they can to make it dangerous again: to make the woman pay for having the gall to be sexual, and to make the unwanted child pay too.

If a woman chooses to carry a pregnancy to term and then give the child up for adoption, I totally support her choice. But it is cruel and punitive to force her to do so. It is downright obscene to insist that a rape victim carry her rapist’s child. And to make a woman give birth to a severely disabled child doomed to die in pain within hours, weeks, or months is nothing less than torture, of both mother and child.

This isn’t about the Bible or the Quran. It’s about punishment, about a basic attitude of life negation, of harshness and joylessness. It isn’t pro-life; it’s anti-life.

If its advocates weren’t causing so much misery and suffering, I might even find it in myself to feel sorry for them.

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File under: existence, feminism, US politics, women | Tagged: Tags: abortion, contraception, double-speak, Naral, Planned Parenthood, pro-life, sex education | 11 Comments
  1. iobserveall says:
    September 10, 2015 at 12:25 pm

    I agree with every word you wrote.

  2. avasterlingauthor says:
    September 10, 2015 at 12:50 pm

    I agree with some things you say, but you do use a pretty broad brush toward your opposition to further your point. ; )

  3. Mary Waechter says:
    September 10, 2015 at 11:31 pm

    Very well put. I agree 100%!

  4. Fran Love says:
    September 11, 2015 at 8:29 am

    Lesley, you’ve covered all the issues perfectly. I wish I could have said it as well as you did. Other than posting here at your blog, have you published this article anywhere else?

    I know I could send this to a few of my friends via Facebook, but it wouldn’t get the coverage it deserves. I also realize there will be plenty of opposition to your statements, but they have to be said. We have to keep speaking out, especially because of the opposition. Thank you.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 11, 2015 at 8:38 am

      Thanks, Fran — and of course share on FB, and urge others to share. That can be enormously effective in spreading ideas. — L.

  5. Amin Tan says:
    September 11, 2015 at 10:13 am

    Dear Lesley Hazleton,
    You have said it all. I concur absolutely. Some people are so dogmatic about opposing abortion regardless of undesirable circumstances like rape, poverty, young and immature age, broken or mistaken relationship and so on. One must have basic common sense in life.

  6. Justine says:
    September 13, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    Would you mind if I linked to this from an opposing viewpoint?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 16, 2015 at 10:39 am

      The blog is in the public domain, Justine, so of course feel free to do so. I will read with interest.– L.

  7. Tea-mahm says:
    September 14, 2015 at 9:02 am

    Lesley, this is it. Lets get every news agency to carry your message.
    I’m cheering for your words. Thank you, Tamam

  8. Joan says:
    September 14, 2015 at 9:18 am

    Agreed on all points. And I’d like to add another. The same people who are anti-abortion want to drastically reduce the social support system that helps care for the children (and parents) they insist should follow through with unwanted pregnancies, including the organizations that help prevent those pregnancies in the first place (e.g., Planned Parenthood).

  9. Denise Kaufman says:
    September 15, 2015 at 12:12 am

    I’ve said for a long time that we’ve let the other side define the terms. How did we let them co-opt the term “pro-life”? At the very least, we are all pro-life. I personally think that proof of “pro-life” includes supporting universal health care and early childhood education for all children. Many people are pro-birth but anti-childhood? We are pro-choice and they are anti-choice. Some new terms are needed!!

My Abortion

Posted August 27th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

Planned_Parenthood_busNearly every woman I know has either had an abortion or helped another woman get one. I know this because as the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood ramps up, I’ve been asking. Old and young, black and white and brown, married and single, straight and gay, religious and irreligious – women have been telling me their abortion stories.

But I think we need to tell them publicly too. To break the weird veil of shame and secrecy that still hangs over the decision, even when abortion is legal. To stand up and say “Yes, sure, I had one.”

So here’s the story of mine.

I was 20 years old – young and dumb, as every 20-year-old has every right to be. Not that dumb, though, since I was using a diaphragm thanks to the Marie Stopes clinic, the one place in the whole of England at the time that would provide contraception to an unmarried 17-year-old.  And the diaphragm worked fine until my first summer in Jerusalem, when it didn’t. Not because of any fault in the device, but because I hadn’t put it in. Carried away, late in my menstrual cycle, I’d said “Come on, it’s okay.” And three weeks later, realized it wasn’t.

There was no doubt in my mind what I needed to do. The guy I was with was a no-goodnik, the result of a bad case of delayed teenage rebellion on my part. I had an undergraduate degree in psychology but no idea what I wanted to do next, only that since I could barely handle myself, no way could I handle a baby. But abortion was still illegal in Israel. And I was dead broke.

I found my way to the Jerusalem branch of an aid organization for Brits – a single room with a single occupant, who took one look at me as I stood miserably in the doorway and before I could open my mouth said “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

I nodded yes.

“And you need an abortion.”

Another nod.

“And you don‘t know where to go.”

Again, a nod.

“And you don’t have any money.”

At the final nod, she said “Sit down,” and made three phone calls: one for an appointment with a leading gynecologist who didn’t believe in forcing women to have children; one to her HQ to get approval for a loan to pay his fee; and one to a publishing house to get me a job as a copy-editor so that I could pay back the loan.

We have been firm friends ever since.

The procedure itself was a non-event. (The doctor gave me a prescription for the pill and said he hoped to never see me again, though in fact he did, but not with me as the patient – he ran a maternity clinic, and was the obstetrician for three of my friends as I helped with their labor.) I parted ways with the no-goodnik, and set about the never-ending process of growing up.

And now, almost half a century later? No regrets. Quite the contrary, since I suspect this was the one rational decision I made the whole of that year. In short: thank god I had an abortion.

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File under: feminism, US politics, women | Tagged: Tags: abortion rights, contraception, Marie Stopes, Planned Parenthood | 31 Comments
  1. rachel Cowan says:
    August 27, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    I agree Lesley that we should be telling these stories. AS you say, we all, myself included, have had one or have helped a friend, or both. But where to tell them? How to publicize them in some impactful way? The impact of undocumented young people telling there stories was important in opening up the immigration debate. Does anybody know somebody who is organizing this?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 27, 2015 at 1:10 pm

      Looks like I’m organizing an event at Town Hall in Seattle, with thirty women speaking two minutes each, telling their own stories. Alas not until January.
      Wouldn’t it be great if there was a “speak-out day” nationwide with women doing the same?!

      • rachel Cowan says:
        August 27, 2015 at 1:17 pm

        That is great Lesley. Have you posted this on FB? Want me to as well?

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          August 27, 2015 at 1:46 pm

          Want to get a firm date first, but after that — surely!

          • Lesley Hazleton says:
            August 27, 2015 at 1:47 pm

            But re a “speak-out day” — go right ahead! Thanks.

      • Athena Nation says:
        September 2, 2015 at 3:09 am

        Count me in.
        I’ll tell my story.
        And, well, I’m already in Seattle.

        athenanation1308@gmail.com

  2. Nancy McClelland says:
    August 27, 2015 at 1:23 pm

    Incredibly touching story, and thank goodness those adults were there to provide help in your otherwise isolating situation. I also love that they got you a job to pay back the loan. And how wonderful to hear that you’re still friends with the counselor, and that you had continued interaction with the OB after that. Thank you so much for sharing.

  3. Justine says:
    August 27, 2015 at 1:29 pm

    I’m sorry to hear your stories, I am a different kind of person, I urged someone very close to me not to get an abortion, to instead consider adoption. Thank goodness she didn’t go through with it. I can’t imagine the emotional turmoil that would take place if you were truly honest about what sort of ‘procedure’ you and your friends are so nonchalantly discussing.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 27, 2015 at 1:51 pm

      Nothing at all nonchalant about it, Justine. And you’re making unwarranted assumptions. Some women do go through emotional turmoil; some, like me, don’t.
      Further, I don’t know how many adoptees you know, but those I know are haunted by the idea that they were “given up” at birth. Maybe it’s you who are being nonchalant.

      • Justine says:
        August 27, 2015 at 8:24 pm

        I didn’t mean to misread your tone. I do realize that many people have been adopted have questions throughout their life, but I would ask you if you feel that the possibility that a child or grown adult may feel ‘abandoned’ at times is reason enough to not give them a chance at life.

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          August 28, 2015 at 9:24 am

          I hear you, Justine, but would ask you to consider what it’s like to come into the world unwanted. And what it’s like to carry a child to term and then let it go. The emotional damage I have seen done to both mother and child is enormous.
          I truly cannot imagine the pain of knowing that if I had not had that abortion and had opted instead for adoption, my child would have been a stranger among strangers, and would have asked all his or her life why I had abandoned him or her. Or to live my own life with no idea whether the child had been delivered to a good home or, as too often happens, a bad one.
          We’re talking here about a very private decision that has been cynically politicized for electoral purposes, and because making your private life public is a hard thing to do for those unused to being in the public eye, I have enormous respect for those women willing to do it.

          • Justine says:
            August 29, 2015 at 10:10 pm

            I guess I just don’t understand why the best alternative to any of the POSSIBLE outcomes that you might perceive as being negative to the child is the death of the child before it has a chance to experience life. I think the most innocent beings in our society need to be protected. And there are great options, like open adoption, where the baby wouldn’t have to be a stranger. Thanks for hearing me out!

          • Lesley Hazleton says:
            August 30, 2015 at 5:56 pm

            I know I can’t convince you, Justine; you are deeply committed to your stance. But your comments do make me think further on this subject, to the effect that this divide between pro-choice and pro-life is an entirely artificial one — a meme dreamed up by dogmatists. I am pro-choice precisely because I am pro-life. That is, pro-choice IS pro-life. I’ll write a post on this in the coming week, and thank you for prompting me to do so. — L.

  4. caitlin says:
    August 27, 2015 at 6:30 pm

    Thank you for sharing your story. We need a world where people feel comfortable sharing such stories, rather than shamed for making the best decision for themselves.

  5. nasir khanzada says:
    August 27, 2015 at 9:23 pm

    The Torah and the Quran strictly forbids this. We shud discourage rather than encourage and publisize this!

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 28, 2015 at 9:06 am

      “We”? Speak for yourself, please, not for everyone else.

    • Jafar Siddiqui says:
      September 2, 2015 at 1:51 pm

      Would you please cite the actual verses where abortion is strictly forbidden in the Quran? I need some enlightenment.

      • Lesley Hazleton says:
        September 2, 2015 at 2:03 pm

        I’m curious as to where it could possibly be in the Torah, also.

  6. amin tan says:
    August 28, 2015 at 3:41 am

    Dear Lesley Hazleton,
    Your story is a lesson that must be broadcasted world wide for the benefits of unwed mothers and those in similar predicament. This is the universal problem encountered by young people in a relationship. We need sensible solution to a potentially devastating turmoil in the life of a young person. Thank you for sharing your life experience with us, even though it was very personal and a long time ago involving ‘nogoodnik’.

    amin tan

  7. lynnrosengiordano says:
    August 29, 2015 at 1:25 am

    Leslie,
    Anything against sharing this with my local Planned Parenthood Director, Linda McCarthy? She’s a mensch who would be so behind a “speak out” date and there are many others I know of who feel that this would make a dent. We’ve often spoken of it in exactly these terms. It would be smart to co-ordinate events.
    I know I’m being a political engineer here, but your story is so many’s and they all need to be “packaged” for the greater good. This nonsense has to stop.
    Love you – really.
    Lynn

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 29, 2015 at 11:10 am

      Of course share, Lynn! Thank you. Happy to pool efforts. — L.

  8. jveeds says:
    August 31, 2015 at 11:04 am

    I’m becoming more and more inclined to get rid of the loaded terms “pro-choice” (or “choice”) and “pro-life”(as Lesley perhaps begins to hint at). I understand that there is a cultural context in which the terms arose but I believe they are ready to be retired as being no longer of any descriptive or argumentative value — they’re simply dog-whistle terms for staking out a position. “Pro-life” is particularly galling since it would seem to be all-inclusive. If you’re really pro-life you should be against all wars and all guns as well as capital punishment…and not just against “some” wars or instances of what some would call justifiable homicide like an armed home intrusion. If you’re really “pro-life” then all life should be sanctified beyond quibbling about exceptions. Unfortunately, that leaves us with the somewhat distasteful (to some) but accurate term: “abortion.” Of course, “pro-choice” does not exactly equate to “pro-abortion” so there’s at least a semblance of rationality to that term. No one’s across-the-board in favor of abortion in all situations; it’s really a question of having the choice. But presumably we couldn’t leave pro-choice alone and ban pro-life…so both have to go.

  9. Lesley Hazleton says:
    September 2, 2015 at 11:44 am

    Great, Athena! Plans are afoot. Will keep you in the loop. — L.
    (and congrats on your return to writing — gutsy and good.)

  10. jafar siddiqui says:
    September 2, 2015 at 2:01 pm

    Nobody has the right to dictate what a person (man or woman) may do with their body, especially not in forcing a woman to have child she does not want. “Adoption not Abortion” has a good marketing ring to it but it ignores the fact that the woman is being forced to nine months of unwanted pregnancy, limiting or destroying her career and a lifelong guilt of having and then giving up a baby that is now “out there”.
    To be sure, there are many people who were adopted and who turned out to be wonderful people, but that argument is tangantial and irrelevant; it is STILL the woman’s choice to make and only hers. — Penjihad.wordpress.com

  11. Marissa says:
    September 21, 2015 at 3:32 pm

    I’m in Seattle, and will gladly tell my story of both of my abortions.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 28, 2015 at 10:30 am

      Thanks Marissa — we’ll be moving ahead in October, and will let you know when and where as soon as we have it finalized. — L.

  12. Shelly says:
    September 21, 2015 at 5:57 pm

    My story is probably not the “type” of story you are looking for, but I still feel it is an important story to tell. I was pressured into an abortion by my partner and it was a very traumatic experience. I still haven’t gotten over the anger I feel for not standing up for myself and my feelings. That being said, I still support all women making the choice for themselves. This is a deeply personal choice that can’t be made by anyone other than the pregnant women.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 28, 2015 at 10:28 am

      Thank you Shelly — and I totally agree that yours is as important a story to tell as all the others. This is what we need: women refusing to be cowed and intimidated, and making their own choices. I deeply regret your regret, and as deeply appreciate your support of all women having the freedom and the self-respect to choose for themselves.

  13. Carolyne Wright says:
    October 11, 2015 at 3:53 am

    Please let me know about the Seattle event for this. Thanks so much!

  14. npear says:
    January 18, 2016 at 2:25 am

    Thankyou for writing about this. Although I admit I was disheartened the way your story ended. Not at all because I disapprove, but why is it that of all the (few) stories that women share about their abortion experience it typically ends with a “yes it was the right decision and I’m glad I did it”. Well what if its not the right decision? What if, you thought you were ready for a family but you’re marriage imploded at the same time that you found out you were pregnant, like I did three years ago?
    And while there was a such a strong and powerful feeling that you could do this on your own and you loved this child enough to see it through, you were overcome by the sudden, terrifying notion you were going to be a single mum and you couldn’t bear that the man that helped you conceive would be the father. For many, many reasons I didn’t / couldn’t live with this. So I had an abortion and I regret it. There I said it. One year of therapy and I still regret, feel tremendous guilt and sadness over my decision. Maybe one year was not enough or maybe its just something that I just have to learn to live with and accept.

    So can we please open up the conversation to all women and all experiences? I’ve considered whether the weight of my guilt is in part because of how I might be perceived for having done what I did and for feeling what I feel. Surely I am not the only women in the entirety of human history that has been through this and feels this same way? It would be nice to know that I’m not! And perhaps through sharing stories if will take some of the fear and loneliness out of such experiences.

    Thankyou again for sharing your story Lesley. People like you and the books you write restore my faith and love for humanity.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 18, 2016 at 11:33 am

      And thank you for your story too, which must have been very difficult to write. The sadness I totally understand, even if I experienced none myself; but as I see it, you have nothing to be guilty about. You sound as though as you are still grieving, and if this is so, then it seems to me that you are grieving less for the child that might have been than for the marriage that broke up — the marriage that you hoped for, that might and should have been, and that was not. Here’s what I wish for you, then: to begin looking forward instead of back, towards a good, committed, loving partner with whom you will become pregnant again, and fully share in parenthood. In hope — Lesley

That’s Entertainment?

Posted June 12th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

Does this television sequence sound familiar?

Night time. A woman brushing her teeth in the bathroom. A dark shadow appears behind her. A gloved hand clamps over her mouth. A struggle. A knife. Cut to morning. Bloodied body on the floor. Enter detective, with dumb ‘witticism’ along the lines of “Had a hard night.” Cut to commercials.

Pcriminal mindsrime-time television makes a fortune out of women being stalked, beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered.   All in high-def detail, of course. Programs such as Law and Order’s sleazy ‘Special Victims Unit’ spinoff and the even sleazier Criminal Minds are huge money-making franchises, every episode sold on first to cable and then throughout the world.

patinkinMandy Patinkin, one of my favorite actors, walked out on Criminal Minds after its first two years, calling it a huge mistake to have ever accepted a starring role on it. “I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year,” he said. “It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.”

It is very destructive to all our souls and personalities.

So why don‘t all the other actors walk out? (I know — money makes their world go round). Why in fact does anyone watch these programs? (I may not really want the answer to that.) Why do advertisers pay to be in those commercial breaks? (oh yes: because people watch.) And what exactly is going on in the minds of those who write and produce and air such programs?  Doesn’t anyone in television-land realize that they‘re presenting violence against women as entertainment?

Or worse still, do they realize it very well?

No, I’m not saying that such programs create rapists and murderers, or that they present rape as okay.  Their ostensible focus is on the horror of rape, and at least on the surface, they seem to be raising consciousness of how brutal a violation it is.

Beneath the surface, though, there’s a deeply creepy fascination with rape, one that feels darkly voyeuristic.  So what I am saying is that such programs are a very visible part of a world-wide culture that still does not take rape with full seriousness — a culture that still doesn‘t register it for what it is:  not “sexual assault” nor “sex crime,” but brutality.  Rape is not about sex; it’s about brutalizing women.

There has to be someone out there who is as pissed as I am at this but with far better organizing skills.  Someone who can get at those who make such programs where it really hurts:  not in their balls, but in their pocketbooks.  Someone who can create a campaign to pressure advertisers to stop supporting programs that use violence against women as entertainment.

Imagine a boycott of the goods and services of all such advertisers.  Imagine stickers pasted on toilet paper and antacids and “feminine-care” products in supermarkets saying “This product pays for rape as entertainment.”  Imagine the publicity, the “bad PR,” the panic this would induce among directors of marketing.  They’d cave.

What Mandy Patinkin did, we all need to do. We all need to walk out on this sleaze.

 

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File under: ugliness, women | Tagged: Tags: advertising, boycott, Criminal Minds, Law and Order, Mandy Patinkin, murder, prime-time TV, rape, sex crimes, violence against women | 8 Comments
  1. charlotteoften says:
    June 12, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    In my inbox today, I received a Youtube video from the Campaign for Truth & Justice in Sri Lanka in support of their Stop Torture campaign, and I was very puzzled by their “public relations.”

    In Sri Lanka, women and girls are raped and tortured with impunity by members of the military police, and they have no legal recourse.

    Cara Delevingne, a very pretty, blond actress, performed a dramatic reading for the Campaign during which she read a Tamil woman’s actual account of her own torture and gang rape. There was a warning on the video stating it may be very upsetting to watch.

    That she’s pale and blond while Tamil women are dark was a little disconcerting at first, but I figured this is about human rights, after all. Why discriminate against blonds?

    But did she really have to be NUDE to make this reading persuasive?

    No doubt, Levingne was sincerely trying to help Tamil women. But again, where do we draw the line between censorship and titillation?
    http://youtu.be/IFWkciRKPYc

  2. Nuzhat says:
    June 12, 2014 at 8:26 pm

    Sad Lesley, that people like us who’d protest against the media projection of this atrocity, are termed ‘prudes’, here in India. As I mentioned in your previous post on this topic, respect to women is not being ingrained in our society at all.
    I thought my country tops the list in this sphere, but it’s sad to see this atrocity being almost ‘glorified’ for public view all around the world.
    A minister in our Parliament was ridiculed for asking to put a stop to such television serials, or films which can in a sense aggravate, rather than curb this spreading menace.
    The most stringent of action is to be taken at all levels. And yes, the first step is to ban this ridiculous exposure of violence through visuals.
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 13, 2014 at 9:32 am

      Two things about censorship, Nuzhat: first, it doesn’t work — it just drives things underground — and second, whoever does the censoring is liable to start censoring many other things.
      Plus, I find the phrase “respect for women” problematic. It’s been co-opted by religious fundamentalists and conservative politicians, who take it for granted that women are somehow lesser and therefore need to be set apart as a matter of ‘honor,’ of men protecting “their” women. In other words, such professed respect is not respect at all. It still sees half the world’s population as a lesser class of humanity, and implies that respect is a gift instead of a basic human right. Try turning it around and advocating “respect for men” and you’ll see what I mean.

  3. Nuzhat says:
    June 13, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    Sure, respect should come naturally, but it is eluding the warped and complicated Indian family system. Barring a few so called ‘literate’ of the society, the family ‘honour’ is the most protected of virtues here. Hence the differentiation between the male and female values, esp.in bringing up the girl child, is ingrained in the mindset. And the debased female sex remains so. There are so many aspects of it, that it can only leave you disillusioned.
    Yes, there’s no defining the boundary of censorship, but at least our senses can be saved from the very explicit, to which these visuals resort to.
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 14, 2014 at 11:57 am

      I hear you, Nuzhat. It’s a long battle that in many ways and many places has still only just begun. What encourages me is that fact: that it has indeed begun, however long it takes.

  4. Fatma Kalkan says:
    June 15, 2014 at 9:38 pm

    Hollywood uses women in every abusive way possible in my opinion Lesley. They show women as a sexual object to play with, beet up, sexually abused, tortured etc. this way they brain wash women that they are not valuable! They are powerless! Not to be respected since young age. Girls lose self respect as a result they become victim of predator style man. They accept the role Hollywood gives them in their life. Do you think after all this pre-conditioning there will be many women will be on the same page with you? I doubt it ! I feel that in this country girls are been wasted by this society.

  5. Tea-mahm says:
    June 16, 2014 at 8:27 am

    Yes, Lesley — This abuse is under so many layers as we turn to the criminal shows as a way of relaxing. Hardly notice the reality that is being offered over and over. Thanks for bringing this glitzy darkness to the surface! Tamam

  6. thecausticsoda says:
    July 29, 2014 at 6:11 am

    I think so many of these disturbing trends seen in our society come from how sexually repressed we are all made to feel. The more we silence natural human inclinations for contact with others, the more these same inclinations will begin to manifest themselves in darker ways, be that a fascination with rape and sexual abuse on television or with the increasingly extreme forms of pornography being made readily available online.

The Antidote

Posted June 9th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

The video is chaotic.  It shows a woman being stripped, tossed around, hit, kicked, held down, penetrated, beaten into unconsciousness by a mob in Cairo.  It’s described in this New York Times report, which avoids any link to the video itself.  In fact the original YouTube upload has been deleted.  Deleting it, however, is just another way of trying to cover it up.  As I write, this one is still active.  And yes, you are warned, it’s brutal.  As all rape is.

I know that those who read this blog, men and women alike, will be incapable of watching these couple of minutes with anything but horror.  But I also know that part of the reason it went viral when first posted is that there are men out there who are turned on by it.

Just the thought of that makes me want to gag.  As does the boys-will-be-boys response to it from an Egyptian TV host, who said, with a stupid giggle:  “They are happy.  The people are having fun.”

This isn’t “just” an Egyptian problem.  Or a Nigerian or Somali or Brazilian or Turkish or Italian or Swedish or Indian or Pakistani one.  My first association was with last year’s photo of an unconscious near-naked girl being lugged around by wrists and ankles, like a carcass, by high-school rapists in apple-pie Steubenville, Ohio.

This sickness infects some men, but affects every woman.  Yes, all women.  The Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen took off in response to the misogynistic shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, California two weeks ago, and here’s the formidably intelligent Rebecca Solnit on what it means.

Solnit was in Seattle last week talking about her new book, Men Explain Things To Me, and when she mentioned her unease at finding herself alone on an elevator at night with a strange man, there was a lone weird laugh from a man behind me in the audience.  It wasn’t clear what he found so funny.  Perhaps he simply couldn’t understand this kind of unease.  But every woman can.  It’s the year 2014, and yet it’s still not “wise” for a woman to go down a dark street at night, or ride in an empty subway car, or walk in the woods.  What was most remarkable about Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, was not the length or the difficulty of the hike, but the fact that she was a woman walking alone.  If she had been male, there would have been no book to be written.

It’s absurd that the onus is still on women to avoid being subjected to violence.  One way and another, we are told to avoid this, avoid that, take care, take karate classes, be on the alert, be afraid.  Don’t go out at night, say some.  Stay home, lock yourselves in, adopt the behavioral equivalent of a chador.  (Don’t go out at night?  An equally rational ‘solution’ would instead be to tell men not to go out at night.)

But there’s an antidote.  And it comes from men — men who really do respect women, and who know that to remain silent in the face of woman-hatred is only to give it free rein.  As former president Jimmy Carter put it in A Call to Action, violence against women is not only a woman’s issue;  it affects us all, and the only way to win this battle is to work together.  I take heart from this photo that artist D.K.Pan posted on his Facebook page after the Santa Barbara massacre.  Women are finally speaking out;  we need more men like Jimmy Carter and D.K.Pan to speak out with us.

dkpan-yesallmen

 

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File under: ugliness, war, women | Tagged: Tags: #YesAllMen, #YesAllWomen, Cairo, Cheryl Strayed, D.K.Pan, Jimmy Carter, rape, Rebecca Solnit, USBC, YouTube | 6 Comments
  1. lavrans123 says:
    June 9, 2014 at 7:13 pm

    I don’t know where to go with this sort of behavior. I see it celebrated in so many ways- our entire sport culture (anti-culture?) promotes it with the objects. Music videos.

    I stopped to get coffee and was taken aback to find the barrista wearing nothing but lingerie.

    All the power structures in the world celebrate their ascension to the rank of power as being elevated to a place where others are objects.

    And that’s what it comes down to, that’s where the trickle winds up- at the point where that is no longer a person, but an object. That’s the same method that we use to teach our children to torture and kill people; make those people an “other” that isn’t human, or that one should do these things to. The “other” is central to all the religions, and is how they maintain their long-lasting violence.

    The mere existence of police forces creates violence. They promote rape as directly as the judges do; by taking the responsibility from people to act human, and making it a law and then placing anyone who breaks the law (or pushes it, or bends it) in an “other” category.

    So, we know that the rapes in Egypt have nothing to do with any collapse in police forces and everything to do with collapses in social cohesion. We know that religious fanaticism makes rape a victimless crime that has no accountable person but the woman.

    I just don’t see it happening without removing the governments and the police and the judges and religious certainty… But maybe I’m just upset.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 9, 2014 at 7:32 pm

      Thanks for the touch of irony at the end there, Lavrans! Appreciated. Yes indeed, women had enough of men telling us we’re “just upset.” Good to see some men have had enough of it too. — L.

  2. Nuzhat says:
    June 9, 2014 at 9:05 pm

    Here in India the onslaught of rape news is increasing with staggering regularity, making its acceptance with apathy, a chilling reality among the young. This has sadly become a case of “crying wolf” once too many a times.
    Outrage, protests, and then just ‘throwing up hands’ in an act of helplessness by authorities, has made these gruesome news items into momentary coverages in papers and television.
    Wonder if rapid capital punishment in such cases will deter the rest of the perpetrators. There has to be a stopping of this carnage with the help of males, whose actions against their fellow “evil” males should at least deter this unforgivable trait of disrespect towards women. Men should hold talks, men should garner support of their own, and yes! men can help in restoring the dignity of women throughout the world.
    Show your brawn and worth in the right place Man!!

    Nuzhat

  3. fatmakalkan says:
    June 10, 2014 at 9:17 am

    Dear Lesley, there are millions of women all over the world who are raped, beaten up, yet this horrible actions of man is not subject to capital punishment in man- made laws!
    Isn’t it?
    But if God made law of Torah or Quran was in effect in that countries this rapist would get capital punishment. There is a dark side of some evil man! It is a reality! And who created mankind knows how violent some evildoers can get towards women and girls. To prevent that God orders this evildoers to be punished maximum dose so other evil man that sold their soul to Satin ( Shaitan ) will be scared to harm women or children. God’s law looks harsh at first side but it discourage evildoers, prevents this violance get out of hand all over the world. One evil man gets killed because of his rape, murder yet millions of innocent women and girls, boys, being saved!

  4. Niloufer Gupta says:
    June 11, 2014 at 5:14 am

    Did you read about the two teenage girls who were raped ,after they were returning home from their local field ,in badaun ,U P , India , defecating- they did not have a loo in their village home-then lynched and tied upside down on the branches of a tree. The patriarchal repressed mindset has to be changed. But how ? Niloufer gupta india

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 11, 2014 at 8:09 am

      Yes, that was reported here, as was the building outrage that ensued. I hope it continues to build. And that many more men join women in expressing their outrage at it. After all, that perverse mindset is not only a danger to all women, but a deep insult to all good men.

“Do Arab Men Hate Women?”

Posted February 27th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

Two excellent minds — liberal activist and journalist Mona Eltahawy and Huffington Post UK political editor Mehdi Hasan — went head to head at the Oxford Union on whether, per the provocative headline of Eltahawy’s article in Foreign Policy Magazine, Arab men hate women.

Go to it, accidental theologists!  But…

Please view the whole video before you comment.  Let’s get beyond knee-jerk reactions.  It’s true that it’s a long video, but if you don’t consider the whole issue important enough to merit 47 minutes of your time, I hereby suggest you forfeit the right to comment.

–

[youtube=http://youtu.be/T9UqlEmKhnk]

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File under: feminism, Islam, Middle East, women | Tagged: Tags: Egypt, Foreign Policy, Mehdi Hasan, Mona Eltahawy, Oxford Union, Saudi Arabia, sexism, Tunisia, Yemen | 15 Comments
  1. Stephen Victor says:
    February 27, 2014 at 2:27 pm

    I appreciate you for posting this video. Thank you!

    I am heartened with the fact that Mona Eltahawy is providing counterbalancing forces to the forces of misogyny in our world. And I applaud how she is doing this. Her provocative essay title landed her this interview. As a result, more of us have become informed. Well done!

    I see the issues of gender inequality as pandemic. Even though Ms Eltahawy spoke of this, her focus, in the context of this interview, was primarily the Muslim world. Good for her!

    To me misogyny is in our DNA whether we are women or men – girls or boys. Misogyny is in the atmosphere we breath. In the water we drink.

    Most compassionately intelligent aware and caring woman or girls, boy or men would be horrified to know that they behave, in subtle or not so subtle misogynist ways. If we are at all representative of our respective cultures, we cannot not do this. We perpetuate misogyny unwittingly and without intent. I see myself and Mehdi Hasan in this group as well.

    This is why your post, Mona’s work and Mehdi’s interview, and this video are so vitally important. We need to educate ourselves. We can no longer afford our ignorance. We need take on the disciplined personal responsibility and being wholly mindful – open-heartedly mindful:
    • in the reconstruction of our personal worldview – our personal cosmologies
    • of the states of being we embody
    • to consciously choose mental working models that genuinely work – that are just
    • in how and where we deploy our attention
    • of our thoughts, convictions and beliefs;
    • in our communicating and the actions we take.

    If we respect life…if we espouse justice…freedom…if we value gender-based relationships, whatever one’s orientation…if we purport to revere love, human dignity, beauty, and the innocence and lightness of being – we can no longer act in accord with a worldview that hates freedoms for any life-form, let alone girls or women. We must take a stand and change ourselves. This is not about others. This is about each of us individually.

    Those who subjugate others are themselves subjugated by this very act. Misogyny has colonized us all.

    Life cannot hate life. Yet we persist in acting as though we do. The great divide is between those with the capacity to intentionally and willfully injure another, and those who, though they can, and do injure others, do so as a consequence of unhealed injuries – never volitionally! We can change this. This is our responsibility.

    What possibly could be more important in our lives?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      February 27, 2014 at 2:40 pm

      Thank you, Stephen — beautifully put.

      • Stephen Victor says:
        February 27, 2014 at 2:54 pm

        You are welcome… there is one more bit I believe relevant: Might it be worth considering that those who are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of witting and unwitting misogyny in our world are really reluctant to change themselves? If one allows oneself to see what is – one cannot help but be changed…and as such one must think and act differently…

  2. Lesley Hazleton says:
    February 27, 2014 at 2:37 pm

    And here’s another thoughtful — and more critical — response from my friend Tarek Dawoud here in Seattle.

    On my Facebook page, he suggested this video of a Deen Institute conference called “Can Muslims Escape Misogyny?”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leyJaLCf8ks
    and commented as follows:

    “Much more thoughtful and realistic, a lot less about “provoking” and “grabbing headlines” and a lot more about breaking down the areas where misogyny appears and offering solutions/alternatives.

    “As for this conversation, I watched the full video a few days ago. The main problem with it is of course that it’s completely unscientific and lacking in methodology. So, when one presents an argument “Arab Men hate women” one would need to present evidence based on some social studies that shows that Arab male attitudes towards women are particularly negative compared to others. Or perhaps even (God forbid) survey the women in question. Instead, she opts for the unscientific approaches of tokenization and over-generalization. She picks a bad act that happens in 1% of rural families to depict “an Arab male attitude towards women in this country” and then spreads that across to all other countries too, even those that do not have it. And then, without trying to understand the socio-economic reasons behind the bad act (say rural families marrying their daughters young to rich men from the gulf), she totally explains it away with hate/scorn for women. In addition, as the student cleverly asked her (and she dodged), she is committing the age-old colonialist crime of advocating for freedom, but only freedom she likes. She knows what is best for all Arab women, they don’t.

    “This is not scientific or helpful. She’ll neither get support from scientists, social workers or social leaders. In my opinion, this is 60s style feminist “controversial writing” only done in 2014 when not many like that style any more.

    “I assume she’s good intentioned and wants to bring about true reform, but I feel she copped out… She took the easy route of citing a few studies about the prevalence of female discrimination issues, made an outrageous claim out of it, published it in a high profile paper and thus has “sparked the debate.” I don’t see the solutions to the real issues she raises coming out of circus like debates and half-baked research.”

  3. Lesley Hazleton says:
    February 27, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    And here’s my Facebook reply to Tarek:
    “Thanks (I think — I posted a 47-minute video, and you responded with a five-and-half-hour one!). But the Deen Institute conference looks excellent, and I will watch it — just give me time.
    “Meanwhile, does Mona Eltahawy generalize? Yes. Is she angry? Of course — and she says so. Is she being deliberately provocative? Again, yes. Has she sparked the debate? As she herself acknowledges, citing the work of writers such as Leila Ahmed and Fatima Mernissi, the debate has been going on for some time and has still a long way to go. What then?
    “I think what Eltahawy has done is bring the debate far more into the open. By publishing in Foreign Policy magazine, she’s demanding that both men and women, liberal and conservative, pay attention. And by bringing her well-known energy and passion to bear, she’s helping reframe it not as a ‘Muslim issue,’ nor even (despite the title) as an Arab one, but as a human- and civil-rights issue.
    “My main criticism: that she didn’t widen her argument to what is happening with women in many countries in central Africa, where rape (most notoriously and viciously in Congo) has become a weapon of war.”

  4. Madhav says:
    March 2, 2014 at 12:22 pm

    I do believe that religion in misused by people who seek power and would do by any means to do so. Oppression is the key word.

    Women oppression :- 50 % of the population sorted out… Ticked off.

    Caste system: Another 75% (assuming 4 Castes) of the left over 50% done… Ticked off…

    That leaves just 12.5% of the population to sort out…..

    Then go on to Say above so and so age….. That would cuts say another 50% of the 12.5%… Ticked off……

    That now leaves only 6.5% of the original population to dominate…

    Financial Oppression: Eliminate about 5 numbers… That leaves only .5% against domination……

    It is a Legal system that is needed to prevent Oppression……

    I am indeed lucky to be in a part of the world that represents a much better future for mankind. The UAE.

  5. Hande Harmanci says:
    March 3, 2014 at 3:56 am

    Dear Leslie, thank you for introducing me to Mona. We need more women like her. I will be following her from now on.

  6. Ross says:
    March 5, 2014 at 8:06 am

    I do agree with those perceiving a generalised approach from Ms Eltawahy, but worry about her opening the door to dyed in the wool bigots. For instance I would hesitate to post a link to her lecture on Twitter for fear of the vitriol that I’m sure would ensue.

    Anecdotally, what I see of interpersonal relationships among Muslim men and women in Australia, where they are a minority, is that “generally” speaking they are loving and respectful, which I suspect to be the case in US.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 5, 2014 at 9:12 am

      Ross — Most of the response to this has come on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/lesley.hazleton), where I re-posted this on the same date. Maybe because people feel Facebook is more of a communal venture, instead of something ‘mine.’ If you go there, you’ll find not only a remarkable lack of vitriol, but an in-depth discussion both for and against. I realize this is partly a reflection of whose friend requests I respond to, but I also think that it’s possible to be overly cautious, anticipating negative feedback that doesn’t necessarily happen. Perhaps this is a conversation that the vast majority of Muslim men and women are ready to have.

  7. Niloufer Gupta says:
    March 14, 2014 at 6:27 am

    I watched the debate ,mehdi hassan and mona elthawy- as i listened ,my mind went to the country that is mine- india.her anger is well placed and i feel that ,we in india ,need what she is aspiring for- a n equality in reality and not in abstract- that equality in reality needs grass roots education ,in every way.

  8. Lesley Hazleton says:
    April 17, 2014 at 2:43 pm

    A month later, here’s “Pro-Feminists and Metrosexuals: the New Arab Men of the Millennial Generation,” a counter-argument from Khaleb Diab:
    http://www.juancole.com/2014/04/metrosexuals-millennial-generation.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

  9. Lesley Hazleton says:
    April 18, 2014 at 8:32 am

    And also a month later, Ziad Asali on how men must play their part in the struggle for women’s rights in Arab countries: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ziad-j-asali-md/men-must-play-their-part_b_5172728.html
    Looks like Mona Eltahawy has done what she aimed to do: start a real conversation.

  10. Omer says:
    May 12, 2014 at 5:41 am

    I recommend readers see the website of Professor Asma Barlas.

    Of course much of the discrimination against the female gender has nothing to do with Islam but is of Middle Eastern culture and history.

    Afterall, during Prophet Muhammad’s time, there were some crazy contemporaries who would bury their baby girls alive! So evil to kill innocent babies and moreover in such a painfully cruel way.

    But there is still some discrimination against the female gender that is supported by clerics…usually the subset of clerics that is less educated clerics whose smarter older siblings were sent by their parents to be physicians and engineers but told them to be clerics since they did not do as well in their exams.

    Even with the issue of the clerics which is to some extent across most of the clerics, please see the excellent talks and papers by Professor Barlas…. she shows that it is paternalistic biased reading of Islamic texts that leads to such issues and not a correct reading of the Qur’an itself.

    http://www.asmabarlas.com/talks.html

  11. سالم says:
    July 22, 2014 at 10:56 pm

    “Do Americans Men Hate Women?”
    Every minute American women get murder and rape in the U.S..
    Most killer in the U.S. are choosing women.
    American women are treated like sex objects.

  12. sam says:
    May 20, 2015 at 11:24 pm

    Do arabs hate women ? no, and we don’t care what you think ? and if we do….be it, let’s see what are you gonna do about it

Yes Woman, Yes Drive

Posted October 29th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Can comedy do what common sense can’t?

In case you somehow missed it, this video mildly satirizing the Saudi regime’s absurd ban on women driving has gone totally viral since it was posted on Saturday:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/aZMbTFNp4wI]

That thing about ovaries?  The Sauds seem to imagine that driving can make a woman infertile.  I kid you not.  Being a back-seat passenger has no such effect, it seems.

Could this possibly have anything to do with the idea of control?

(In case you’re amazed at how uniquely backward the Sauds are with respect to women, by the way, you might consider this ironic detail:  exactly the same argument was used in Israel for decades to stop women from flying planes.  Again, being a passenger was held to have no such effect — just being at the controls.  As a result, the first group of female Israeli air-force pilots graduated not in the ’70s or the ’80s or the ’90s, but all of two years ago, in 2011.)

So who is the guy in the No-Woman-No-Drive video?  He’s Hisham Fageeh, he’s a Riyadh-based stand-up comic who’s studied religion, and thanks to Mother Jones magazine, there’s more on him here.  And if you need a sense of what the dozens of women who defied the ban this past weekend were risking, here’s a TED talk by the wonderful Manal al-Sharif, who went to jail for doing it.

Meanwhile, I’m taking to the road (and the air) through mid-November, with Bob Marley on my playlist. But will I ever be able to listen to ‘No Woman, No Cry’ the same way again?

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File under: absurd, Middle East, women | Tagged: Tags: ban on women driving, Bob Marley, comedy, Hisham Fageeh, Israel, Manal al-Sharif, No Woman No Drive, pilots, Saudi Arabia, viral video | 4 Comments
  1. Reaching Out says:
    October 29, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    Reblogged this on Reaching Out and commented:
    Brilliant! Love this! 😀

  2. Jerry M says:
    October 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm

    We see a lot of ads for ‘low t’, which is a non disease that a lot of drugs are being marketed for. One wonders if steering wheels or brake pedals now contain that medication?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 31, 2013 at 5:43 am

      Love it!

  3. Nasir. says:
    October 30, 2013 at 5:57 am

    Agreed Lesley. Old traditiond however unrealistic die hard. Pakistan is a moderate Islamic state and we too have many women air force jet pilots, paratroopers, mountain (Everest) climbers, sports women and ofcourse car drivers by the thosands as also wonmen Prime Minister, Speaker National Assembley, legislators, court judges…the list is long
    -and last but not the least, Malala Yousufzai! The Prophet’s wifes lady Khadijah was an accomplished business woman and Ayesha too had a public life including leading an army once. The Saudis are a cloistered people like many Orthodox Jews and share a semitic brotherhood.

Adoring ‘Darling’

Posted October 13th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Here’s my review of Richard Rodriguez’ “Persian carpet of a book” in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Yes, it’s a rave.

No, I’ve never met him.

Yes, I’d love to:

'darling'On rare occasion, a writer makes a reviewer’s life hard. Richard Rodriguez’s Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography has to be celebrated as one of those occasions.

The deep pleasures of such a book defy the usual capsule account. Instead you want to read sentences and whole passages aloud as I’ve been doing over cafe and dinner tables the past few weeks – “Listen to this!” You want to press “Darling” on others as a gift of friendship, judiciously picking whom to share it with lest you expose Rodriguez to pedants who can’t fathom the way his mind works.

“I did not intend to write a spiritual autobiography,” he writes in the foreword, and I’m glad to say that despite the subtitle (an editorial addition, I suspect), he hasn’t. This is something infinitely more supple – a rich tapestry, a Persian carpet of a book. True, it’s framed as an exploration of his own Catholicism post-9/11, when he realized that “Christianity, like Judaism, like Islam, is a desert religion, an oriental religion, a Semitic religion, born of sinus-clearing glottal consonants, spit, dust, blinding light,” and began to wonder how he and the “cockpit terrorists” could worship the same Abrahamic God.

But Rodriguez’s faith is light-years away from the deadening dogma of “mitered, bearded, fringed holy men.” As he investigates “the ecologies of the holy desert” – specifically the Judean desert – what he creates instead is more like an ecology of the soul. And unlike the desert, it teems with life.

St. Francis, Elvis, Muhammad Ali, Pope John Paul II, Cesar Chavez, Keats, William Randolph Hearst, Moses, Warhol, Herbert Hoover, Dorothy Day, Shelley – a short list of the roster of personalities jostling shoulders as they wander in and out of the virtual salon of Rodriguez’s mind, where San Francisco is “the mystical, witty, sourdough city,” Las Vegas is “disarmingly innocent,” and Jerusalem’s multiple archaeological layers are “vertiginously sunken – resentments and miracles parfaited.”

His writing is suffused with such little epiphanies, words and images springing to fresh life: His Mexican mother’s ojalá, “God willing,” as a Spanish borrowing from the Muslim inshallah; yellow tulips “closed and as thumpable as drumsticks” outside a Vegas hotel as a friend dies of AIDS in a nearby hospice; Picasso’s division of the female face “into competing arrondissements – one tearful, one tyrannical – like the faces of playing-card Queens.”

But at the heart of this book are women. Rodriguez – gay, Catholic Rodriguez – loves women. Not the way many men say they do, with a sexual twinkle in their eye, but deeply and gratefully. The stand-alone masterpiece of the title chapter starts with that “voluble endearment exchanged between lovers on stage and screen” (Noël Coward‘s “sequined grace notes flying up” like “starlings in a summer sky”), touches among other things on the use of habeebee among Arab men (“In a region of mind without coed irony, where women are draped like Ash Wednesday statues … men, among themselves, have achieved an elegant ease of confraternity and sentimentality”), and builds to the central take on how much the three “desert religions” need women to survive (“Somewhere in its canny old mind, the Church knows this. Every bishop has a mother.”).

Rodriguez depends on women “to protect the Church from its impulse to cleanse itself of me.” It was women who stood against the arid maleness he sensed as a child: “Outside the Rodriguez home, God made covenants with men. Covenants were cut out of the male organ. A miasma of psychological fear – fear of smite, fear of flinty tools, fear of lightning – crackled in God’s wake. Scripture began to smell of anger – a civet smell. Scripture began to smell of blood – of iron, of salt.”

He writes movingly of his schoolteachers, the Sisters of Mercy – movingly, yet with a wry, clear eye. A single sentence evokes a whole Irish immigrant world: “Most of the women who swelled the ranks of missionary orders had left peat-fumed, sour-stomached, skinny-cat childhoods behind.” That wry eye notes their “burqa-like habits” – perfect! – which “lent them protection in the roustabout world, also a bit of romance.” These women in teaching and hospital orders, he writes, were the forerunners of feminism, “the least sequestered women imaginable.”

The specific “darling” here is a newly divorced friend, and the whole chapter is in a way a conversation with her – an extended love letter, really – leading up to this stunning conclusion: “I cannot imagine my freedom as a homosexual man without women in veils. Women in red Chanel. Women in flannel nightgowns. Women in their mirrors. Women saying, Honey-bunny. Women saying, We’ll see. Women saying, If you lay one hand on that child, I swear to God I will kill you. Women in curlers. Women in high heels. Younger sisters, older sisters; women and girls. Without women. Without you.”

Even the most flinty-hearted reviewer could only melt at that.

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File under: agnosticism, Christianity, ecology, existence, Islam, Judaism, light, Middle East, women | Tagged: Tags: 'Darling', Catholic, gay, literature, Mexican-American, review, Richard Rodriguez, San Francisco Chronicle, Sisters of Mercy, spiritual autobiography | Be the First to leave a comment

What Courage Looks Like

Posted October 10th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

As Nick Kristof put it, “Malala is defined not by what the Taliban did to her, but by the power of her response.”

This week, she left even Jon Stewart speechless:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/f506lCk6Tos]

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File under: light, women | Tagged: Tags: Jon Stewart, Malala, Taliban | 8 Comments
  1. iobserveall says:
    October 10, 2013 at 2:06 pm

    Malala is an exceptional person who will make a huge difference to the world.

  2. AJ says:
    October 10, 2013 at 11:58 pm

    Lets look at other side of story.
    I don’t mean I necessarily agree with the story but Dawn.com is reliable source, worth reading.
    http://learningpk.com/malala-the-real-story-with-evidence/

    • iobserveall says:
      October 11, 2013 at 12:13 am

      The article you mention was written by Nadeem Paracha. This is not an article with evidence. His blogs often ridicule the news and people in it. I have read many of his blogs and the majority of them are like this.

      It is obvious from the photo of earwax (particularly the mention of one with bits of pizza in it) and the ISI man wearing little more than a Spiderman mask. I am sorry to say that you have been duped. This is Nadeem’s speciality and he appears to be very good at it judging by your response.

      The women and girls in Pakistan are not the downtrodden people many believe. I have Pakistani friends and I have visited Pakistan and I have found that the opposite is true. So Malala can be believed to be a real Pakistani. She is an extraordinary girl but she is definitely Pakistani.

      I read the Dawn online regularly too, it was recommended to me as the best by my friend in Pakistan.

      • AJ says:
        October 11, 2013 at 3:26 am

        Lesley thanks for ur input.
        Actually I was not duped that why I did not own the story.
        few terms used in article were reason for my skepticism…like..
        1)archaeology division of the Taliban
        2)Taliban’s division of quantum physics.”
        3)Collecting earwax samples of Saudi Royal family.
        1 n 2 are typical Taliban mainstream supporters in Pakistan who want to give them credence by use of such state deptt. run by legit state.
        3 is very confusing…why a doc from remote under develop area servicing corrupt and insidious Saudi Royal family….I suspect Prince Bandar involvement

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          October 11, 2013 at 7:26 am

          Ear wax? Oh please. Is there no end to conspiracy theories?

          • AJ says:
            October 11, 2013 at 3:08 pm

            And what Taliban had to do with archeology.

  3. Lynn Rosen says:
    October 11, 2013 at 12:25 am

    An old soul in a young body. Malala will definitely make a dent on this world.

    • iobserveall says:
      October 11, 2013 at 12:27 am

      I definitely agree. She is one of the best prospects for the future. That is why she is a danger to the militants.

Seeing Women

Posted August 19th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

These two portraits are of the same woman.  Her name was Helen Brooke Taussig, and she was a famed cardiologist who did ground-breaking work in pediatric cardiac surgery.  So which one do you think has never been shown in public?

wyeth-not

The one of the left is of someone I’d like to meet.  It’s by Jamie Wyeth, and was commissioned by Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she was head of the children’s cardiology clinic, in 1963.  But it was never hung alongside all the portraits of male doctors on the hospital walls.  It was called “witchy.”  And “evil.”  Taussig was seen as “scowling.”  This was not how a doctor should be portrayed.  Especially not a female doctor.

Fast forward to 1975, when Johns Hopkins tried again, with the portrait on the right — someone I have no interest in meeting.  It’s an utterly standard institutional portrait, down to the single-strand pearl necklace, the tightly reassuring smile to go with the tightly curled hair, and of course the white coat.  This was apparently how a woman doctor “should” look.  Conventional, bland, and “reassuring.”  Taussig herself is absent, replaced by a totally uninteresting cipher.  Yet even this piece of artistic pap didn’t make it onto the Hopkins wall of fame.

It only took fifty years, but now the Wyeth portrait of her is finally to be publicly shown — not, to what should be its shame, at Johns Hopkins, but at a retrospective of Jamie Wyeth’s work next year at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

I’ve never been a particular fan of Wyeth’s, but this portrait is powerful.  It’s a portrayal of an intense, determined woman deeply committed to her work.  Slightly disheveled, because who has time for perfect grooming when there’s important work to be done?  Serious, because her work is serious.  And per the New York Times, “steely-eyed.”

But I don’t see steely eyes.  I see a directness, an openness that I admire.  I see a woman deeply committed to the seriousness of life.  I see someone unafraid to be her own intelligent, determined, vulnerable self.  And I appreciate both Wyeth’s effort to reach out and see Taussig on her own terms, and her allowing him to do that.  For both of them, that took courage — exactly the kind of courage that’s necessary to do ground-breaking work, in any field.

And so I think about how we portray women, still, today.  The constant “Smile!” demands of photographers — demands never made of men.  The emphasis on make-up and clothes.  The obsessive focus on how we “look” — not how we look at the camera or the painter, but on how we look to others, how we will be judged by the court of appearances and surfaces.  Do we look “attractive”?  Do we look “feminine”?  Do we look as we “should” look?

It’s our choice.  We can surrender to all these demands and end up as blandly uninteresting as the right-hand portrait of Dr Taussig.  Or, as she did with Wyeth, we can find the courage to be ourselves — to look into the eyes of others with integrity and self-respect and say, “This is me.  Here I am.”

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File under: art, existence, women | Tagged: Tags: Boston Museum of Fine Arts, cardiology, Helen Brooke Taussig, Jamie Wyeth, Johns Hopkins, portrait | 15 Comments
  1. Hugh McCauley says:
    August 19, 2013 at 12:00 pm

    I have to agree.
    The hair perfectly done by some pro, and the lab coat to match the same color. It’s all so 1950s.

  2. Rachelcowan says:
    August 19, 2013 at 12:11 pm

    Can I share this on FB?

    Sent from my iPhone

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 19, 2013 at 12:31 pm

      Of course, Rachel! Just use the FB button below.

  3. yeshua21 says:
    August 19, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    Perhaps I am mistaken, but I rather think the picture in her Wikipedia entry does her more justice than either of these:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_B._Taussig

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 19, 2013 at 12:54 pm

      I think you may be right, but I also suspect you wouldn’t see as much in that photograph if you hadn’t seen Wyeth’s portrait of her first. Thanks much for the link, though — I should have included it in the post, and will add it now. Always good to have good readers as editors!

  4. Grada Schadee says:
    August 19, 2013 at 2:01 pm

    It is funny how on the weakened down picture her eyes are still questioning the looker on, at least to me; her eyes in the Wyeth painting are visionary, way beyond the watcher; in the flattened down pic they are the cool eyes of the diagnostician. I think overall she was a not comfortable woman to be with just for a chat.. but one to go to when you were in trouble adn needed to think.
    Thanks for letting me know about her.

  5. lola ruiz says:
    August 20, 2013 at 3:19 am

    I like a lot this; “…to look into the eyes of others with integrity and self-respect and say “This is me. Here i am”. Men and women, but, speccially women, we all could learn her honest way of being.

    I like yours too after watching your TED conference. That’s why i subscribed your blog. Women with your courage teach us there are other ways, other options, such as to be honest with oneself and others

  6. Nancy McClelland says:
    August 20, 2013 at 11:23 am

    I do happen to be a fan of Wyeth in the first place, but your points go far beyond the specifics of this artwork and into the more general concept of how one defines a sense of “self”. Reminds me of the book “Writing a Woman’s Life” by Heilbrun (which the blog author gifted me some years ago, I might add). Great post.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 20, 2013 at 2:32 pm

      Thanks for making the connection, Nancy!
      It’s clearly time for me to read the book again. Just checked the link for Amazon (below) and noted the description:
      “In this modern classic, Carolyn G. Heilbrun builds an eloquent argument demonstrating that writers conform all too often to society’s expectations of what women should be like at the expense of the truth of the female experience. Drawing on the careers of celebrated authors including Virginia Woolf, George Sand, and Dorothy Sayers, Heilbrun illustrates the struggle these writers undertook in both work and life to break away from traditional “male” scripts for women’s roles.”
      http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Womans-Life-Carolyn-Heilbrun/dp/0393331644/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377034116&sr=1-1&keywords=writing+a+woman%27s+life

  7. Jamie says:
    August 21, 2013 at 8:34 pm

    I can’t believe this but I never for a moment thought about the fact that women are expected to smile in a photograph and men aren’t? What, we must look nice, kind and pleasant all the time while men can be serious and thoughtful? oh no!

  8. Jerry M says:
    August 23, 2013 at 11:24 am

    I am hardly the greatest fan of Jamie Wyeth but this is a great example of how a work by a real artist is so much better than the hack job. (The second portrait takes away any character from the woman.)

  9. Jerry M says:
    September 25, 2013 at 10:28 am

    will post 2 quotes from John Singer Sargent about portraits;
    “A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.” (I once saws this quote written as ‘pawtrait’)

    “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 25, 2013 at 4:02 pm

      ‘Pawtrait’ works for me!

  10. rafika says:
    October 4, 2013 at 8:14 pm

    Loving this entry, I feel this one does justice for me since I’m 18 and still try to stay away from make-up, it’s just a problem I have, I feel its a false facade
    Please check out this youtube video,Katie Makkal is spot-on on how I feel
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 5, 2013 at 8:15 am

      Dynamite! Thanks — L.

Beyond Tarzan and Jane

Posted June 28th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

I just came across these four short clips from an interview I gave a few months ago — so impromptu and off the cuff that I’d forgotten I did it. Tarzan and Jane come up in the first one, when I’m asked about interfaith gatherings, which I generally find kind of stilted. “We tend to get together as me-Tarzan-you-Jane-we-friends,” I said. “That is, me-Jew-you-Muslim-we-friends. We need to get beyond that. We need to see each other first as people…. talk about anything but religion… eat together, two or three or four at a time, over our own dining tables…”

On the other hand, swinging around on those vines could be fun.

It seems I also had a thing or two to say about responding to Islamophobia, and about women in Islam:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC0TEgv8wJg&feature=share&list=PL2GledsAJtlnCZQD1DTLSadb395gWqnDz]

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File under: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, women | Tagged: Tags: eating together, humor, interfaith, interview, Islamophobia, Jew, Muslim, Muslims for Peace, women imams | 9 Comments
  1. sarabressler says:
    June 28, 2013 at 5:01 pm

    That’s a beautiful sentiment. I strive to have a way with words as you certainly do.

  2. Gary Rizzo says:
    June 28, 2013 at 7:58 pm

    Lesley…..is not faith the meaning of your life ?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 28, 2013 at 8:17 pm

      Repeat: agnostic. I have no idea what “the meaning of my life” may be. Or indeed if there is any. I do my best to live it, that’s all.

  3. Reaching Out says:
    June 28, 2013 at 9:34 pm

    I love your mind… I love work, and by extension, love the person behind the work. May Allah bless you! 🙂

    • Reaching Out says:
      June 28, 2013 at 9:35 pm

      Correction: love your work

  4. Robert Corbett says:
    June 29, 2013 at 7:19 pm

    I think it got taken down, Lesley. At least the link is not showing up.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 30, 2013 at 9:04 am

      Just tried it on both my computer and my iPad, and it seems okay. Your glitch or mine, Roberto? Anyone else having trouble?

  5. Robert Corbett says:
    June 30, 2013 at 1:14 pm

    It’s back. Maybe it was a gremlin in my computer.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 30, 2013 at 2:19 pm

      A djinn!

Zero Bland Thirty

Posted December 23rd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

After a mind-numbing two and a half  hours of Zero Dark Thirty last night, I came away with a single piece of information:  Jessica Chastain has amazing hair.

chastainThat red mane stays toss-worthily silky even in the deserts of Afghanistan.  The dust clouds raised by helicopters landing right in front of her can’t dull her plastic glossiness.  Nor can the sight and sounds of torture alter the uncanny blandness of her expression.

The movie’s much-talked-about scenes of torture are peculiarly sanitized:  shown, but not shown.  There is no real sense of agony or degradation.  The chief torturer’s lines are a bunch of clichés straight out of the Hollywood B-movie playbook.  And the effect of torture on both victim and perpetrator?  So far as this movie is concerned, non-existent.

And this is what’s being touted as some kind of breakthrough for women?  It’s hardly news that there are women CIA analysts, or women movie directors.  And after seeing the infamous photos of Private Lynddie England at Abu Ghraib in 2004, do you really want to join the chorus of “Wow, look, a woman torturer!”

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie with zero point of view.  It has no engagement with any of the political and ethical issues it indicates but never explores.  Despite its subject matter, it is, in the end, a movie as bland as its star.  Its “reality-TV” lens on the slow accretion of intelligence work is merely confusing.  And I suspect director Kathryn Bigelow knew this, interspersing moments of ham-fisted emoting to keep her audience from nodding off.

All of which raises the question of why this movie was made at all.  A question whose answer apparently lies in the swell of orchestral music toward the end, signaling American triumphalism.

But my reaction was more of a shrug.

“We” killed bin-Laden, true.  And…?

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File under: ugliness, US politics, war, women | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, Bin Laden, CIA, Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow, torture, Zero Dark Thirty | 2 Comments
  1. tamam Kahn says:
    December 25, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    One more thing, Lesley. The identification for the raid reportedly came from faking polio vaccines, and by doing so, obtained info on ObL. That allowed for the raid. The horrible consequence is that polio workers are being gunned down and many more people will get this disease in the Pakistani/Afgan area! The director had an opportunity to include this but did not mention it, I understand. What a lost opportunity! What a sad thing! Tamam

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 25, 2012 at 4:17 pm

      There was one very brief scene — a few seconds — of a medical worker calling at the Islamabad house, and a voice-over from a CIA discussion saying, as best I can remember, “we tried using medical personnel, but that didn’t work.” (i.e., though the script didn’t make it clear, they didn’t manage to get DNA.) That last phrase — “that didn’t work” — certainly jarred like hell.

Mary: No Illusions

Posted November 25th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

First, ignore the cover, which makes it look as though Colm Tóibín’s new novel is the usual sentimental rehash of the familiar Virgin Mary story.  I have no idea how Scribner’s could have gone with this cover.  Or why Tóibín allowed them to do so.  Because The Testament of Mary is quite the opposite.  It’s bitter, it’s angry, and it’s profoundly moving.

What Tóibín has done is what I would have loved to be able to do in my book Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography.  In fact when I finished that book, I did play with the idea of writing a gospel of Mary.  I’m glad Tóibín’s done it instead.  Far better a writer than I, he has made her so achingly human that even as you read, mesmerized, his clear, cold-eyed prose makes you want to weep.  I have no idea how he does this, but I’m glad he does.

He writes in the voice of Mary as she looks back, her own death nearing. You could say it’s the voice of a disillusioned Mary, but this woman has never had any illusions. Instead, she’s transcendently clear-eyed.

Among many other things, this short, almost terrifyingly lucid novel is a brilliant commentary on how “history” is constructed.  Mary watches in dismay as the disciples set about creating their own version of her son’s life and death.  They “interview” her as a matter of obligation, but can’t hide their frustration when she refuses to endorse their manufactured memories.  She sees them as almost threatening presences, enforcers of their constructed view of things.  She feels “the enormity of their ambition and the innocence of their belief,” along with “their efforts to make simple sense of things that are not simple.”

But what carries this novel above all is the sheer beauty of the writing — the extraordinary voice, the lambent clarity of it.  You find that you want to read it as slowly as possible.  You start marking passage after passage.  Like this on the first page:

I cannot say more than I can say.  And I know how deeply this disturbs them and it would make me smile, this earnest need for foolish anecdotes or sharp, simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all, except that I have forgotten how to smile.  I have no further need of smiling.  Just as I had no further need for tears.

or this, which is kind of perfect for this time of year, at least in the northern hemisphere:

Now that the days are shorter and the nights are cold, when I look out of the windows I have begun to notice something that surprises me and holds me.  There is a richness in the light.  It is as if, in becoming scarce, in knowing that it has less time to spread its gold over where we are, it lets loose something more intense, something that is filled with a shivering clarity.  And then when it begins to fade, it seems to leave raked shadows on everything.  And during that hour, the hour of ambiguous light, I feel safe to slip out and breathe the dense air when the colors are fading and the sky seems to be pulling them in, calling them home, until gradually nothing stands out in the landscape.

Like that light, this novel is extraordinary.  It has a luminous quality that I can’t quite explain.  But if the sentimentalization of faith sometimes makes you ache for the disillusionment of atheism, read this book.

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File under: art, Christianity, women | Tagged: Tags: Colm Toibin, gospels, history, Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography, sentimentality, The Testament of Mary | 1 Comment
  1. Nancy McClelland says:
    November 30, 2012 at 10:52 am

    I absolutely loved this book review, and the excerpts have me all heartachy today. Thank you so much for posting.

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