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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.

The Antidote to 9/11?

Posted February 16th, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

There’s been a ton of punditry about what the Tunisia and Egypt revolutions mean for America, and you can bet there’ll be several tons more.  But I suspect its biggest effect is yet to register, and that is psychological.  Because these two revolutions – achieved through determinedly non-violent action – constitute a radical, positive challenge to the politically manipulated atmosphere of fear and paranoia about Islam.   In fact, as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen put it, 2/11 may be the perfect antidote to 9/11.

Too optimistic?  I think not.  There’s a very good chance that we’re due for a major paradigm shift here in the United States — one that seemed unimaginable just a few weeks ago (and one even a congressman like Peter King, head of the HUAC-like committee due to start ‘examining’ the supposed radicalization of American Muslims (“are you now or have you ever been an American Muslim?”), might have to take into account).

What’s happening all over the Middle East challenges the crude stereotypes of “Arabs = riots.”  Of “Islam = terrorism.”  And above all, of Islam as somehow fundamentally anti-democratic.

These stereotypes run deep.  Think of the scenes shown in the American media from the first week of the Egypt uprising.   A close-up of 200 people prostrated in prayer, excluding the tens of thousands who stood behind them, not praying.   A protestor holding a poster of Mubarak with horns and a Star of David drawn on his forehead – the only one of its kind, it turned out, in the whole square.  Or a few days later,  the replay after replay of Molotov cocktails – “flames lead” being the mantra of TV news – reinforcing the image of rioting Muslims out of control, “the Arab street.”  It was exactly the image Mubarak was aiming for.

Thus the pumping up of the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat by both the Mubarak regime and conservative western pundits, as though the Egyptian protesters were extraordinarily dumb and naïve.  As though they were not highly aware of  how the 1979 Iran revolution was hijacked and perverted.  As though they couldn’t see the fundamentalist regime in Saudi Arabia or the Hamas regime in Gaza.   As though the Brotherhood itself were unanimously stuck in the 1950s mindset of ideologue Sayyid Qutb.  As though the only way to be Muslim was to be a radical fundamentalist.

Thus the surprise in the west at the sophistication of the Tahriris, when “the Arab street” turned out to include doctors and lawyers and women and IT executives (you could practically hear the astonishment:  “you mean there’s Muslim Google executives?”).

Thus the continually stated fear, stoked by the regime and by conservative pundits, that the protestors would shift from nonviolence to violence – that the nonviolence was merely a cover for some assumed innate propensity to violence.

Thus the slowness to realize that the old anti-West sloganism had been superseded, and that this wasn’t about resentment of the west;  in fact that it was about the very things President Obama had talked about in his speech right there in Cairo in June 2009 – about democracy and freedom.

In short, what we heard and saw in those first few days was the modern version of Orientalism:   The idea that the ‘Orient’ – that is, the Middle East (it should come as no surprise here that the geography is as weird as the idea itself) — is an inherently violent, primitive, medieval kind of place.  Or as right-wing Israeli politicians have been endlessly repeating for decades, “a bad neighborhood.”   And that the responsibility of ‘enlightened’ westerners and despotic leaders alike was to keep these benighted people under control.

But as the uprising went on into the second week, something began to change. Nobody at the blog of Seattle’s alternative newspaper The Stranger, for example, which one would have thought the first to support any kind of uprising, even bothered to comment on it at first.  When they began to, it was with their usual weary stance of pseudo-sophisticated cynicism.   But by the day after Mubarak unleashed his goons in Tahrir Square, when the protestors’ response was to turn out in larger numbers than ever, even The Stranger gave in to excited support.   How not, when millions of people stood up to repression and dictatorship in the full knowledge of what they faced if they failed – arrest, torture, and death?   Would you have such courage?  Such determination?

So here’s what I saw here in the States:   more and more Americans abandoning their unconscious Orientalism in favor of stunned admiration.

And that’s the beginning of something new, the very thing Obama declared twenty months ago in Cairo:  respect.

Finally.

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File under: Islam, Middle East | Tagged: Tags: Cairo, Egypt, Google, HUAC, Islamophobia, media images, Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Orientalism, Peter King, respect, Roger Cohen, Sayyid Qutb, The Stranger, Tunisia, Wael Ghonim | 10 Comments
  1. Sana says:
    February 16, 2011 at 8:07 pm

    There’s hope in the air…. Thanks Egypt!

  2. Lana says:
    February 17, 2011 at 1:42 am

    Thanks Lesley … i do wish there is hope …

  3. Mary Sherhart says:
    February 17, 2011 at 1:57 pm

    Hope is a rare commodity these days. Thank you Egyptian people!

  4. Adila says:
    February 18, 2011 at 6:27 pm

    Wonderfully written. Exciting times indeed.

  5. Shishir says:
    March 14, 2011 at 6:41 am

    I am sorry I don’t agree. The long term effects of these revolutions are still not known. It remains to be seen if Muslim Brotherhood will not form a parallel government or at least have extra constitutional authority. It remains to be seen if these countries will demonstrate same eagerness in throwing out religious fundamentalists. It also remains to be seen if a truly secular democratic country would arise out of Egypt.

    The evidence from the past suggests that secularism
    and Islam don’t gel. Even with the charter of Medina.
    I believe you are a scholar of Quran, or at least you’ve studied it, I’d suggest you also study the history of Islamic kingdoms and Islamic republics.
    Lets have a look at Iran and Pakistan, these are two
    countries which are “democracies”, but have you ever looked at their blasphemy laws or their constant
    persecution of religious minorities. I wouldn’t say that
    it doesn’t exist in India, and we claim India is a secular democracy (I laugh every time I say that). But at least we are not sponsors of international terrorists, may be because we are poor but yet. I also don’t understand how one can suggest that Islam is
    tolerant especially given that it doesn’t make any distinction between state and religion. If a believer
    and non-believer are not same in the eye of religion
    they can’t be same in the eyes of the state either, under such circumstances if the Islamic forces come to attain majority and it is indeed a distinct possibility in Egypt or Yemen or Bahrain etc do you think they’d
    transform these places into true secular democracies ? Do you think the support for Al-Queda or Hamas etc would reduce if pro-Islamic groups came to power?

    Yes, the revolution was by people oppressed, yes it was about respect but what will it end in? Russian revolution was not about socialism or Marxism it was
    about a set of people oppressed – where did it end up ..in Stalin and 50 years of cold war, countless lives lost in Vietnam, Afghanistan, India/Pakistan, Iran/Iraq.

    I am not an Islamophobe, I love what Islam and Islamic culture has done for my country for the world. I just think that time has come for all of us to reexamine these religions (hiduism/islam/christianity/judaism) and their tenets and if required throw them out.

    • hossam says:
      March 19, 2011 at 11:08 am

      @Shishir

      you are right the long the term effects of the egyptian revolution is not yet known, and whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood will “take over” like many people are afraid (noting that they are not running for presidency) but what does that have to do with Islam itself?

      The point is not to judge a religion by what people do;
      Islam is not what Muslim people do
      Judaism is not what Jewish people do
      Christianity is not what Christian people do

      do not judge Islam by what fundamentals or extremist or terrorists do
      do not judge Judaism by what the IDF does and what Israel does
      do not judge Christianity by what George bush did

      Even though i would prefer a secular egyptian state, who’s to say that secularism is a test of a religion?

      there are many states with christianity as a state religion (e.g. Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland) and there are also secular, muslim majority states (e.g. Azerbaijan, Gambia, Kosovo, Mali, Senegal, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan)

      can you let me know what evidence suggests that islam and secularism do not “gel”?

      as for blasphemy laws, they are always controversial, they are still being debated even in highly democratic european countries, some of which do have laws against blasphemy, of course the penalty there is not as tough as in pakistan, but again are we judging a religion based on what is the penalty on blasphemy? i don’t think you can post a cartoon in a german or danish newspaper with of a big nosed man with a star of david on his forehead and his armed wrapped around the world. so where is the freedom then?

      • Shishir says:
        March 24, 2011 at 3:27 pm

        I beg to differ.

        Would you disassociate communism from what Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc did you would not? If you read Marx, and he makes a very interesting read, you’d realize that his communism differs a great deal from what was actually practiced but do you make the difference?

        Religion is what majority of religious people do, nothing more nothing less. Because if you take away that and get down to essential core of it you’d find almost all religions are essentially the same.

        I think secularism is a test of a religion because it tells me whether or not this religion shows signs of growth (not in number of people of that faith but in true growth) in its philosophy via debate via exchange of ideas. I would say my definition of secularism is a secularism of ideas with absolutely no space for public god/religion.

        Why do I say Islam and secularism don’t gel? Well simply because it makes no distinction between borders of state and religion in public/private sphere. If you are going to quote me the charter of medina, I’m going to point to you that Mohammed created it only to ensure he had sufficient force and followers. It was a political treaty, and as such had nothing to do with religion of Islam. You realize it almost immediately when you look at the subsequent 10 years.

        As to your point about blasphemy laws, I don’t think in European country someone is going to issue a fatwa against you if you drew anything ..but in an islamic republic..??

  6. Shishir says:
    March 14, 2011 at 9:05 am

    Ms. Hazleton, I am not sure I said anything in my comment which could be construed as offensive, but my comment seems to have been censored/deleted.

    I’ve no issues with that really, I just wish to know what
    is the commenting policy.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 14, 2011 at 10:57 am

      First-time commenters need to be approved by me, and I’m deliberately not online 24/7, thus the delay. Re commenting policy: I’m fine with all points of view, no matter if they directly oppose my own, so long as they do not denigrate others. If that happens, I will ask the commenter to stop doing this. If they then do not stop, I will, however unwillingly, deny access.

  7. The Antidote to 9/11? | IslamiCity says:
    September 26, 2012 at 6:39 am

    […] The Accidental Theologist – Lesley […]

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