Rape in War

“War provides men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent to their contempt for women. The maleness of the military—the brute power of weaponry exclusive to their hands, the spiritual bonding of men at arms, the manly discipline of orders given and orders obeyed, the simple logic of the hierarchical command—confirms for men what they long suspect—that women are peripheral to the world that counts.” –Susan Brownmiller

“There can be no security, without women’s security. Rape is not a lesser evil in the hierarchy of wartime horrors, it is not a crime that the world can dismiss as collateral damage, or as cultural, or inevitable.” -Margot Wallstrom

Throughout history, rape has been the least condemned and most silenced war crime. Sexual violence increases during times of war, it is often dismissed as being an inevitable part of conflict.

Gloria Steinem answered to some questions about rape in war. I just could not resist to republish the interview.

Q: What are some of the reasons rape is so prevalent in war?

A: First, it’s important to note that rape and war didn’t always go together. For instance, European colonists wrote astonished letters home about how “even these savages”—by which they meant the residents of this continent they were invading—didn’t rape, not even their women prisoners. But those were wars of self-defense. If you’re going to get groups of men to risk their humanity, health, and lives in wars of offense, the traditional way is not to pay them a lot, but to addict them to the “cult of masculinity.” You have to convince them they’re not “real men” unless they kill and conquer. And, at its most basic, “masculine” means not being “feminine.” On a continuum, it means controlling women, conquering women, raping women, even with objects: bottles and broom handles in “peacetime” here, and gun barrels and knives in Bosnia or Congo. There’s a reason why it’s a truism that rape is not sex, it’s violence.

Nanking 1937

It’s also true that men may rape in groups out of social pressure to prove their “masculinity”—in peacetime, too—but gang mentality is a way of life in war. Military officers sometimes order men to rape as proof of loyalty and shared culpability. Some men express regret and say they wouldn’t have raped without group pressure. Also the group hatred war requires means humiliating enemies by raping “their” women, implanting sperm, taking over their means of reproduction, wiping out the enemy race or ethnicity. Cultures that put all “honor” in the purity of “their” women—and keep women weak—are actually setting them up as targets.

Even in peacetime, the “cult of masculinity” is so powerful that men commit crimes in which they have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose: “senseless” killings like those in schools and post offices, serial murders, domestic violence, stalking, killing their wives and children and then killing themselves. They’re not hate crimes because they don’t hate the people they kill—but those people symbolize their lack of control, and so are killing the “masculinity” on which their whole sense of self depends. In interviews, such men often describe themselves as victims because they believe they should have been allowed to have control. I think we should call such crimes “supremacy crimes.”


Vietnam 1968

Q: What do you say to people who assert that sexualized violence is a “natural” part of conflict?

A: I try to think of something from the past that was also thought to be “natural,” and wasn’t. For instance, violence was once a “natural” part of childrearing, as in, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” It was also “natural” in marriage, as in, “Wives and bells must be struck regularly.” It was “natural” in religion, as in flagellating and starving the flesh to free the spirit.


Bangladesh 1971
Or I quote Olof Palme, the great former prime minister of Sweden, who said that gender roles are the deepest cause of violence on earth, and it’s up to governments to humanize them. Gender roles may give us our first idea that it’s okay for one group to eat and the other to cook, one to talk and the other to listen, one to order and the other to obey, one to be subject and one as object. The most shared characteristic of original societies in which violence was only for self-defense, not armies—and of the most egalitarian societies now—is that gender roles are fluid and not polarized.

So you might say it’s the reverse. Conflict is not the only or even the primary normalizer of the extremes of “masculine” and “feminine.” Those roles at home are the normalizers of conflict.


Bosnia 1993

Q: Why use the term “sexualized” violence?

A: Because there’s nothing sexual about violence. Sex is about pleasure. Violence is about pain. Nature tells us what’s good for us by making it pleasurable, and what’s bad for us by making it painful. To get those things mixed up usually requires a childhood in which people we loved and depended on inflicted pain, and we came to believe we couldn’t get one without the other.

It also works the other way around. People, especially men addicted to “masculinity,” may think that inflicting pain is the only way they can get sexual pleasure. For instance, I didn’t learn there was a mammoth concentration camp only for women—it was called Ravensbrück—until the end of the 1970s when my friend Konnilyn Feig included it in her book called, Hitler’s Death Camps. Nazi doctors there performed a higher proportion of so-called medical experiments there — they simulated battle wounds and amputations, practiced surgeries and forms of sterilization; endless horrors — and their subjects were mainly young, beautiful women. The other women in the camp called them “rabbits” because they were used as lab animals. They tried to protect them. This was the slow sexualized violence known as sadism.


Rwanda 1994

Q: Sexualized violence is frequently underreported. Why do you think this is?

A: Yes, I do. To say otherwise would be to excuse them as human nature. We know there have been societies in which such crimes were rare or absent; they are not human nature. And even if they were, the most significant characteristic of humans—the one that allows our species to survive—is that we’re adaptable. Violence in the home normalizes violence in the street and in foreign policy. Because we genderize the study of childrearing as “feminine” and the study of conflict and foreign policy as “masculine,” we rarely see that the first causes the second. Of course, the goal is to stop war altogether. If we raised even one generation of children without violence and shaming, we have no idea what might be possible. But at least we can limit war to those who want to fight it.


Afghanistan 1995

Q: Do we need both men and women involved to stop these atrocities?

A: Yes, we do. There is more responsibility where there’s more power. Though women have a responsibility to speak up for ourselves — to reverse the Golden Rule and treat ourselves as well as we treat others — men have more power and so are responsible not only for their own behavior, but for creating an atmosphere in which men are penalized for violence toward women and rewarded for treating women as equals. It’s parallel to the fact that I, as a white person, have more responsibility for white racism than do the people of color who suffer from it.

Men also can show each other the rewards of full humanity. It’s been said that the woman a man most fears is the woman within himself. Men are punished by being cut off from human qualities denied to them as “feminine.” I think one element in men’s punishing and killing of women is an effort to do away with what they fear within themselves.


Congo 1998

Q: Do you think it’s ever possible to bring these atrocities to an end or at least significantly curb them?

A:Yes, I do. To say otherwise would be to excuse them as human nature. We know there have been societies in which such crimes were rare or absent; they are not human nature. And even if they were, the most significant characteristic of humans — the one that allows our species to survive — is that we’re adaptable. Violence in the home normalizes violence in the street and in foreign policy. Because we genderize the study of childrearing as “feminine” and the study of conflict and foreign policy as “masculine,” we rarely see that the first causes the second. Of course, the goal is to stop war altogether. If we raised even one generation of children without violence and shaming, we have no idea what might be possible. But at least we can limit war to those who want to fight it.

Q: What do you say to people who believe that this happens far from home, in societies beyond repair? In other words, that there’s nothing we can do.

A: I say, Open your eyes, watch the news, talk to the women in your families and neighborhoods, listen to our women soldiers who were raped by their own comrades. The difference is only one of degree. No society is beyond reproach or beyond repair.

This project is not trying to create a competition of tears. It’s wrong whether men or women are suffering. It’s just that the suffering has to be visible and not called inevitable or blamed on the victim before we can stop it.

Women should say NO to unpaid work

Today I want to apologize to my mother for saying all those years when she was alive that ‘she does not work, she is a housewife’. She was given in marriage when she was a 10-year-old child. Since then she woke up at dawn, worked all day to make breakfast for everyone, and then lunch for everyone and then dinner for everyone, she served everyone food,she cleaned everyone’s dishes, she cleaned the house, the courtyard and the garden, she washed everyone’s clothes, she cleaned up everyone’s messes and she made everyone’s beds but she did not get time to go to her bed even at midnight.

My mother often told me that she could earn some money if she worked as a maid in some people’s houses. I laughed at my mother. I could not imagine my mother as other’s housemaid. My father was a renowned physician. He earned a decent amount of money. But the money he earned was HIS money, not my mother’s money. My mother had to beg my father for money. My mother had no rights and no freedom only because she did not have her own money. She could not buy anything she wanted to buy. She could not go anywhere she wanted to go. My father gave her money only when he wanted to give her money. My mother had to do what she was instructed to do with HIS money.

We know they don’t count women’s work but they count on women’s work. We know that the unpaid work done by women is worth $11 trillion. There is a conspiracy to glorify women’s unpaid housework. They have given housework a nice sweet name, it is now ‘homemaking’. They now call housewives ‘homemakers’. But nice names can’t make penniless women happy and satisfied.

Women must have their own money and their own house, so that they do not have to beg anyone for money, so that nobody can ever say to any woman, ‘get out of my house’.

Housework must be shared by all family members. No single person can or should be responsible for all of the household chores and childcare. Women should work for money, HER money.

Don’t say ‘Vagina’. Vagina is a bad word, Vagina is a nasty thing! Say ‘non-penis’.

Women Reps in Michigan barred from speaking, one for “vagina” mention.

Two women serving in the state House have been barred from participating in floor debates for one day. The sanction is a punishment for things they said during a debate on anti-abortion legislation.

State Representatives Lisa Brown and Barb Byrum are both Democrats. Brown made a reference to her vagina in a floor statement.

“I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina,” she said, “but ‘no’ means ‘no.’”

Byrum shouted at the presiding officer after she was not recognized to speak.

Ari Adler is the spokesman for the House Republican leadership.

“It is the responsibility of every member who serves in the House of Representatives to maintain decorum on the House floor and when they do not do that, there can be actions because of that. And the action today is to not recognize either representative to speak on the House floor,” he said.

Brown was speaking during a debate on anti-abortion bills, and has no apologies for what she said.

“I used an anatomically correct word. I said ‘vagina,'” she said. “Can I not say ‘elbow?’ I don’t see what the difference is.”

This is the first time in memory that lawmakers have been formally barred from participating in floor debates.

And then

Two Democratic lawmakers say they have been barred from speaking during House debates.

The House Republican leadership confirms that state Representative Lisa Brown will not be recognized during debates as a sanction for mentioning her vagina during a debate on anti-abortion legislation.

State Representative Barb Byrum also says she has been barred from speaking in the future because of an outburst after she was not called on during the abortion debate.

It is so unbelievable!
Is it America? Or is it Saudi Arabia? It is a nasty war on women’s health. It is a war on women by nasty men.

Be brave. Fight it out.

Sometimes I feel that men who are against abortion, against choice, against women’s reproductive health, are exactly like those men who used to beat women up on the streets because they demanded voting rights for women.


‘Several times constables and plain-clothes men who were in the crowds passed their arms round me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public a manner as possible, and men in the crowd followed their example. I was also pummeled in the chest […] my skirt was lifted up as high as possible and the constable attempted to lift me off the ground by raising his knee. This he could not do, so he threw me into the crowd and incited the men to treat me as they wished. 18 NOVEMBER 1910.’

Time has passed So much has changed. But the hatred against women has remained the same.

Rape is outdated and old-fashioned. Gangrape is the new trend.

Gang rape occurs when a group of people participate in the rape of a single victim. Gang rape occurs all over the world.

Gang rape 1

Gang rape 2

Gang rape 3

Gang rape 4

Gang rape 5

Gang rape 6

Gang rape 7

Gang rape 8

Gang rape 9

Gang rape 10


Things that encourage men to gangrape women:


1.Cultural misogyny.

2.Advertisement.

Calvin Klein ad.

Dolce & Gabbana ad.

3.Gang bang pornography.

A gang bang pornographic film is a type of film in which a woman get fucked by many men in front of cameras, for money. The woman has to suck constantly some penises while her body gets invaded by some other penises, they penetrate her vagina, her anus however they like, sometimes they prefer single penetration, sometimes double. Even though double penetration is extremely painful, the woman has to repeatedly say ‘yes, yes’ to tell her audience that she is getting pleasure from the torture. It is part of the deal. She is aware of the risks of her anal and vaginal rupture but she has limited options. She has to accept everything or almost everything she is asked for and she has to smile and fake orgasm for money.

6 to 12 men used to fuck a woman in gang bang films made in the 1980s. But in The World’s Biggest Gangbang (1995) a woman was fucked by 300 men. Since then many films were made to show that a woman can be fucked by an infinite number of men.

And many more…

If men could breastfeed and women could not, it would be alright not to breastfeed or to breastfeed in public or in uniform

If men could breastfeed and women could not, it would be alright not to breastfeed.

Nobody would hate non-breastfeeding men. Nobody would say, ‘they are bad fathers, they choose not to breastfeed.’

Nobody would say, ‘they do not breastfeed, because they worry more for the shape of their breasts than the health of their babies. They do not want saggy breasts, that’s all.’

Everybody would say, ‘they are very sincere and responsible persons. They are working hard so that they can help their children to get higher education. Men are determined to build a better future for children. They do not have much time for breastfeeding. Formula is just as perfect as breast milk.’

No man would feel guilty for not breastfeeding.

If men could breastfeed and women couldn’t, it would be alright to breastfeed in public and in uniform.

There would be no debate on this issue, no one would ask, ‘breast-feeding in public and in uniform: is it courageous or shameless?’

Everybody would say, ‘breastfeeding is so manly! Men look so handsome and muscular, so proud and confident while they breastfeed!’

There would be no small breastfeeding zone here and there, men’s breastfeeding would be celebrated in all public places. Men would breastfeed whenever they like, wherever they like, in whatever uniform they like.

Everybody would say, ‘men are so sincere and responsible. They are so perfect fathers!’

Stela’s Story.

Stella Marr was a prostitute in New York City for almost ten years. Then a London-based Oxford professor gave her a grand piano, a beautiful condominium across from Lincoln Center, and kept her for nearly two years. She sold the condo, using the money to finish her BA at Barnard College, Columbia University where she studied extensively with Kenneth Koch. She graduated with distinction, majoring in writing. She’s deep into a memoir about these experiences.

‘

Stella’s Story

An Ex-Hooker’s letter to her Younger Self

Dear twenty-year old Stella,

Work hard on learning to ask for help. It’s the only way you’ll ever break free. No one ever does anything alone. You don’t have to.

You’ll learn how to make the men happy. The happier they are the nicer they treat you. You’ll get very good at being a hooker. But when the Johns say “baby you were born for this” that doesn’t mean its true.

Now when most men come near you feel a stabbing at your eyes, your throat, and your gut that you know isn’t real. You don’t want to admit it but you’re terrified. You start, you tremble. Your hands shake. Think about it, you’re being stabbed a lot these days. This is a quite reasonable reaction to being used by man after man, day after day, in this prison of a brothel. It doesn’t mean you are so miserably flawed that you can’t do anything but be a hooker.

Being a hooker doesn’t make you subhuman. It’s not OK for your (white) pimps to smack you and tell you they’ll kill you.

You have to work up the nerve to pay a cashier for a soda. You’re too scared to ask that guy behind the deli counter to make you a sandwich. This isn’t weakness, it’s biology. Trauma changes your brain. Your hippocampus, where you form narrative memory in the brain, shrinks. This is a symptom of PTSD – a neurophysiologic response to repetitive trauma –not evidence that you deserve to be in prostitution.

In the middle of the winter in the middle of the night when that guy in the Double tree suite invites you to sit while he pours you a seltzer trust your gut and back out of there before the five guys you can’t see who are waiting in the bedroom have a chance to get between you and the door.

Being vulnerable means you’re alive. There’s no shame in it. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person. You don’t have to apologize for doing what you must to survive.

When Samantha tries to stop working for your pimp Johnny. make her get out of the city. Otherwise two weeks later Nicole, the madam who works with Johnny, will show you Samantha’s diamond initial ring and tell you Johnny murdered her. Though you’ll always hope she was lying, you doubt it.

You’ve lost all sense of the linear — time disappeared and you felt it leave. Now you’re living in the immediate and eternity. It’s scary and bewildering, but you need this — you need each moment to stretch infinitely so that you can be acutely aware of each man’s tiny movements and shifts in expression, which can reveal a threat before it happens. This hyperawareness will save your life. One day you’ll see this being untethered from time as a kind of grace.

When that shiny classical pianist you meet at Au Bon Pain says he wants to know everything about you don’t believe him.

A lot of what’s happening doesn’t make sense now but it will later. That habit you have of writing poems in your mind to the beloved you haven’t met yet as you’re riding in cabs to calls? There’s something to it.

Your ability to perceive beauty is part of your resilience and survival. When a man is on top of you watch the wind-swirled leaves out his window. Seize the gusty joy you feel as you run three blocks to a bodega to buy condoms between calls at 3 AM. When you think for a minute you see that friend, who’s death you never got over, standing in the brassy light under a weeping linden, be grateful. All this has a purpose.

Being a hooker can seem to mean you’ve lost everything you hoped to be, but that’s not true. You’ve splintered into a million pieces, but you’re still you. You’re alive. It’s in the spaces between those pieces where you learn to feel how other people are feeling. It hurts so much you’re sure it’ll kill you, but it won’t. Later when you’re out of the life it’ll be so easy to be happy. The mundane will buoy you.

When your madam sends you to the Parker Meridien at 3 AM and you meet a British professor who says he wants to help you, believe him. He will set you up in a beautiful condominium across from Lincoln Center that he deeds in your name. Of course you’ll have everything to do with this — you are so “good” at being a hooker, so “good” at fucking that you can make a guy want to buy you a condo. Shame is a hollow stone in the throat.

During the two years that this voracious man ‘keeps’ you as his private prostitute the condo will come to feel like a platinum trap. But it’s still your chance to get out and heal. Take it.

After you’ve sold the condominium and are living in a graduate dorm at Columbia University, a man with eyes like blue shattered glass will sit beside you in the cafeteria. When he begins to speak you know he’s the unmet beloved you’ve been writing poems to all these years. You’ll try to run away, but he won’t let you. Fourteen years later the two of you will be hiking through pink granite outcroppings with your Labrador retriever. You’ll feel like the freest woman in the world.

One afternoon when you’re twenty-one you’ll be at the Museum of Metropolitan of Art with your best friend Gabriel, who’s a hustler, a male prostitute. When he says you ‘remind him of his death’, don’t lash back. Even though he told you the doctor said he didn’t have that rare new virus named AIDS, it would behoove you to realize he’s still coughing.

Stop thinking about your own hurt. Don’t lash back with that vicious phrase your mother’s said to you so many times –” I hope you die a slow death.” Don’t tell Gabriel you never want to see him again and storm out of the sculpture gallery. Or it will be the last time you see him. Gabriel will die of AIDS five months later. When he said you reminded him of ‘his own death’ he was trying to tell you he was dying. You’ll regret what you said for the rest of your life. But even more you’ll regret running away from his friendship.

Say forgive me.

Say I love you.

Stay connected.

Love,

Stella

Stella’s opinion on legal brothels.

Well-meaning people who’ve never been commercially sexually exploited often think that legal brothels will protect the women in prostitution from pimps and violent johns. They are mistaken.

In the 10 years I worked in New York City’s sex industry, where the pimps were part of organized crime and could follow through on any threat, I met many women who’d experienced Nevada’s legal brothels. They all preferred the New York sex industry.

If we legalize brothel and escort service pimping we’ll only be giving these predators more power, while we help them protect their cash.

Women who worked in Nevada’s legal brothels said they were like prisons where you have to turn tricks. Rimmed with high-security fencing and an electronic gate, they can look like a detention camp. The women live in lockdown conditions and can’t leave the premises unless they’re accompanied by a male pimp. Living and working in cramped, dark rooms, they’re on call 24 hours a day. This is what happens when the law protects people who profit from commercial sexual exploitation. It’s the ideal business model. It’s the best way to get a woman to turn as many tricks as possible.

Most of the women I knew in the brothels and escort services, had a history of trauma and abuse. I was homeless at the time I entered the life and, had multiple sclerosis. That vulnerability makes them even more easily victimized by pimps. And pimps don’t stop being pimps when you legalize what they do. If we legalize brothels we’ll only be giving these predators more power, while we help them protect their cash.

As the prostitution survivor and activist Natasha Falle has said, “Where there’s high-track prostitutes, escorts, strippers and masseuses; there’s pimp violence.”

Stella says, ‘Never again will I be silenced. They tore out my tongue but I learned to regrow it. Now I will always speak.’

Bravo Stella!

The male dominated world was against women’s education


Kalighat Painting, “Woman Striking Man With Broom,” Calcutta, India, 1875


Kalighat Painting, Role changed. Man is nursing his wife. Calcutta, India. 1875

These are famous Kalighat paintings.

Once upon a time women did not have the right to get an education. Male-dominated world prevented women from becoming educated.

Women in Bengal got the right to education in the nineteenth century. Most men were scared, stressed and unhappy. Newspapers and magazines started publishing satirical cartoons against women’s education. Almost everybody feared that after getting an education women would not accept men as their masters. Social norms will be ridiculously upside down. Instead of a husband beating his wife, a wife will start beating her husband. Wives will go to schools, colleges, and offices, husbands will stay at home and take care of their wives. The social roles of men and women will be reversed forever.

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Violence against women by male intimate partners

”Each culture has its sayings and songs about the importance of home, and the comfort and security to be found there. Yet for many women, home is a place of pain and humiliation.”

‘Violence against women is both a consequence and a cause of gender inequality.’

NCADV says, ‘Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior perpetrated by an intimate partner against another. It is an epidemic affecting individuals in every community, regardless of age, economic status, race, religion, nationality or educational background. Violence against women is often accompanied by emotionally abusive and controlling behavior, and thus is part of a systematic pattern of dominance and control. Domestic violence results in physical injury, psychological trauma, and sometimes death. The consequences of domestic violence can cross generations and truly last a lifetime.’

WHO says ‘Violence against women has a far deeper impact than the immediate harm caused. It has devastating consequences for the women who experience it, and a traumatic effect on those who witness it, particularly children. It shames states that fail to prevent it and societies that tolerate it. Violence against women is a violation of basic human rights that must be eliminated through political will, and by legal and civil action in all sectors of society.’

1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their lifetimes.

Different research organizations’ reports: ‘In the USA, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend threatened violence if presented with a breakup.Every 9 seconds in the USA a woman is assaulted or beaten. Everyday in the USA, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.

In the USA, 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. 85% of domestic violence victims are women. Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew. Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.’

‘In the USA, Almost one-third of female homicide victims that are reported in police records are killed by an intimate partner. 70-80% of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder. Less than one-fifth of victims reporting an injury from intimate partner violence sought medical treatment following the injury. Intimate partner violence results in more than 18.5 million mental health care visits each year.

The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.Victims of intimate partner violence lost almost 8 million days of paid work because of the violence perpetrated against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends and dates. This loss is the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity as a result of violence. There are 16,800 homicides and $2.2 million (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence annually, which costs $37 billion. Domestic violence is one of the most chronically underreported crimes. Only approximately one-quarter of all physical assaults, one-fifth of all rapes, and one-half of all stalkings perpetuated against females by intimate partners are reported to the police.’

‘Partner violence accounts for a high proportion of homicides of women internationally: between 40% – 70% of female murder victims (depending on the country) were killed by their partners/former partners.Domestic violence is internationally acknowledged to be one of the health inequalities affecting women particularly, and forms a significant obstacle to their receiving effective health care. Violence against women has serious consequences for their physical and mental health, and women who have experienced abuse from her partner may suffer from or chronic health problems of various kinds. Abused women are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety,psychosomatic systems, eating problems and sexual dysfunction. Violence may also affect their reproductive health. Violence has indirect effects on the society. It represents a drain on the economically productive workforce and generates a climate of fear and insecurity.’

Now the question is how can violence against women by male intimate partners be stopped?
There are two solutions.1.simple. 2.non-simple.
Non-simple
1.Educate men, empower women.
2.Seek support from family, friends, doctors and community legal centers. Seek protection from the police and the legal system.
3. Women should have access to housing, jobs, and economic supports for their families.These benefits and supports will remove barriers that keep many women trapped in abusive relationships.
3.Leave the abusive relationship NOW. etc.

Simple
Men decide to stop violence against women and they stop violence against women.

I prefer the simple one.

Shame on women!

Even educated women still practice various customs, cultures and traditions that are anti-women.

Mangalsutra
A woman wears Mangalsutra, a black beads necklace, for her husband’s health and well-being. Would a man wear a Mangalsutra for his wife’s health and well-being? Hell no!

Sindoor

Married women wear vermilion or Sindoor on the forehead and along the hair parting line. The Sindoor symbolizes the deep respect, devotion and dedication of a Hindu woman to her husband. Would a married man wear Sindoor on his forehead for the same purpose? Hell no!

Sankha Pola Loha

Married women wear bangles: Sankha, Pola and Loha for husband’s health. Did a man ever wear Sankha, Pola, or Loha for his wife’s health? Hell no!

Bhai Phota

‘Bhai Phota’ is performed by women. They fast and put an auspicious mark with sandal wood paste on their brothers’ foreheads, feed them sweets, give them gifts and pray for their health, happiness and prosperity. Is there a system that a man also fast and put an auspicious mark on his sister’s forehead and pray for her health, happiness and prosperity? Hell no!


Karwa Chauth

People still believe that abstaining from meals, or fasting, can prolong the life of a loved one. Women fast for 24 hours to ensure that their husbands live long lives. Do men do the same for their wives? Hell no!

Touching husband’s feet

A woman bows her head, touches her husband’s feet, takes the dust from the feet and put them on her head on her wedding day to show her submission to her husband. Would a man ever do this? Hell no!

Jamai Sasthi or Son-in-law Day

Jamai Sasthi ritual is celebrated for health and well-being of son-in-law. The son-in-law is invited to a grand celebration in the house of his in-laws. He is served delicious food. Is it possible to have a similar celebration for health and well-being of daughter-in-law? Hell no!

There are hundreds of anti-women rituals that Hindu women perform without questioning. It is alarming that women still perform these rituals in the 21st century. Throughout history sane people have made many misogynistic cultures go extinct. But in some countries, patriarchal traditions are celebrated more ceremoniously than ever. You may say only illiterate women do it, women’s education will solve all the problems. But the truth is, educated women perform anti-women patriarchal rituals more perfectly than illiterate women, because educated women have better learning capacity. They learn every small details of patriarchy that illiterate women can not learn.

Who will fight misogynistic tradition if modern women remain busy practicing it? A few reformist men in the 19th century fought for abolishing Suttee (widow burning), for women’s education, and for widows’ remarriage. In the 21st century, a new set of enlightened revolutionary men is probably needed to save women from the darkness.

Is Female Genital Mutilation only practiced in Africa? No.

There are more than 130 million victims of Female Genital Mutilation in the world! Do we need more?

Not only in Africa, Female Genital Mutilation is practiced in Asia too. A large number of Bohra Muslim women in India and Pakistan are being genitally mutilated in secrecy.

World Health Organization says:

Female genital mutilation has no known health benefits. On the contrary, it is known to be harmful to girls and women in many ways. First and foremost, it is painful and traumatic. The removal of or damage to healthy, normal genital tissue interferes with the natural functioning of the body and causes several immediate and long-term health consequences. For example, babies born to women who have undergone female genital mutilation suffer a higher rate of neonatal death compared with babies born to women who have not undergone the procedure. end in stillbirth or spontaneous abortion, and in a further 25% the newborn has a low birth weight or serious infection, both of which are associated with an increased risk of perinatal death.

Communities that practice female genital mutilation report a variety of social and religious reasons for continuing with it. Seen from a human rights perspective, the practice reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. Female genital mutilation is nearly always carried out on minors and is therefore a violation of the rights of the child. The practice also violates the rights to health, security and physical integrity of the person, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.

Female genital mutilation comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. There are different types of FGM.

Type I — Partial or total removal of the clitoris and/or the prepuce (clitoridectomy).

When it is important to distinguish between the major variations of Type I mutilation, the following subdivisions are proposed: Type Ia, removal of the clitoral hood or prepuce only; Type Ib, removal of the clitoris with the prepuce.

Type II — Partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (excision).

When it is important to distinguish between the major variations that have been documented, the following subdivisions are proposed: Type IIa, removal of the labia minora only; Type IIb, partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora; Type IIc, partial or total removal of the clitoris, the labia minora and the labia majora.
Note also that, in French, the term ‘excision’ is often used as a general term covering all types of female genital mutilation.

Type III — Narrowing of the vaginal orifice with creation of a covering seal by cutting and appositioning the labia minora and/or the labia majora, with or without excision of the clitoris (infibulation).

Type IIIa, removal and apposition of the labia minora; Type IIIb, removal and apposition of the labia majora.

Type IV — All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example: pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.

FGM in Africa. Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria..

Mass mutilation.

Children’s blood

In Asia, the countries where female genital mutilation is practiced are Malaysia, Indonesia, southern parts of the Arab Peninsula, along the Persian Gulf, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, South Yemen and among some sects in India, Pakistan and Russia.

Bohra Muslims in India and Pakistan are mostly wealthy and educated. But they secretly mutilate their little girls. 70 percent or more among Bohra Muslims follow the practice of FGM. Dawoodi Bohra is a sub-sect of Ismāʿīlī Shīʿa Islām. They were persecuted in Yemen by both Shi’a and Sunni Muslims. They had to leave Yemen and took refuge in India. It is believed that they brought FGM culture from Yemen to India centuries ago.
A Bohra Muslim girl tells her story

Some Indian Bohra women started protesting against Female Genital Mutilation. Please sign the petition to ban FGM. Don’t forget it’s not a Bohra issue, It’s not a Muslim issue, it’s a Human Rights issue.


FGM in Indonesia.

FGM in Kurdistan

FGM for Muslim girls in UK

A reporter based in UK says, ‘UK fails to halt female genital mutilation. Parents used to take their daughters back to their country of origin for FGM during school holidays. Now-a-days ‘cutters’ are flown in from abroad to perform the illegal procedure in UK. Hundreds of British schoolgirls are facing the terrifying prospect of female genital mutilation (FGM) over Christmas holidays as experts warn the practice continues to flourish across the country.70,000 women living in the UK have undergone FGM, and 20,000 girls remain at risk. It is generally considered to be an essential rite of passage to suppress sexual pleasure, preserve girls’ purity and cleanliness, and is necessary for marriage in many communities even now. It has no religious significance.’

Summer holiday circumcision: Girls bodies at risk. Watch the video.

FGM should be banned all over the world, Now. We should not forget about the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Article 19 – 1. States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.
Article 24 – 3. States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.
Article 37 – States Parties shall ensure that: a) No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment…

Many countries banned FGM. But people continue practicing it. Many times, it is women unaware of their rights, commit the heinous crimes against women. Women are forced to prevent the misogynistic patriarchal system from becoming extinct. I wish they could just say, ‘We have enough! We’re not going to live in anti-women system anymore’! If women’s non-cooperation movement really starts, misogynist monsters will definitely be scared. We are half the world’s population. Aren’t we?