I think most people reading this blog will agree with Obama that the law is “abhorrent”. As my mother would add, “abhorrent, period.” End of story. Get the law off the books. And don’t give me any of that wishy washy relativism that we feminists coming of age in the 80s were saddled with. My values may be Western and theirs may be based on Sharia, but we’re all human beings, and this law is contrary to universal human rights.
Why is it that when it comes to rights for the female half of the population, people comment that “it’s not our affair”, or “It’s cultural, we can’t possibly understand it, so we should stay out of it”? Do we say that when Congolese soldiers chop off the hands of thousands? Or when armies draft child soldiers? Or when skinheads attack Jews and Blacks? Or when governments engage in torture? If we say those horrors are “cultural”, it’s to say “wow, that’s a pretty f’d up part of the culture” – and then we call our leaders or march in the streets or at least express our disdain at cocktail parties to show how much we know about world affairs. But we don’t say, “It’s none of our business.” We did that with the Tutsis and the Serbs for a while, but we started to learn our lesson with those debacles – hundreds of thousands die when we say “it’s cultural”.
But we’re still saying it when it comes to women around the world. Ok, it’s gotten better. Aid packages from Western nations usually have strings attached indicating human rights for women have to be observed by the recipient countries. Western presidents are expressing outrage about this Afghan law. But then you get comments like this in response to a news story about the Afghan law:
“Their laws are none of our afair. We may totally disagree with the way they understand and enforce their laws but its non of our business. Not minding our own business is how we get into these messes in the first place. The Afgan affair is just another holly was in "wolves clothing"! Submitted by ef at 11:37 AM Sunday, April 12 2009
All those mistakes, spelling and otherwise, indicate this writer isn’t the tastiest pea in the pod. But isn’t that what our world is made up of? That, and the below:
“Rape in definition is "to use force". If a woman signs this marriage contract than she is agreeing to ready herself every four days. If she agrees to the contract than she is not being forced to have sex. If she is forced to get married/to sign the contract, that is a problem that should be dealt with. Educate your women and treat them equally. BUT all women should have sex with their husbands! It's not that big of a deal if they are not sick, menstruating or recovering from childbirth. If they love the person they chose to marry than they SHOULD ready themselves at least every four days. Not for religious reasons but for his sanity!” Submitted by mel1976 at 11:02 AM Sunday, April 12 2009
These comments came from readers of the Toronto Star. Westerners, for all intents and purposes. And although their arguments are different in content, I say they are part and parcel of the same cowardice: an unwillingness to defend women’s human rights because to do so would entail a property loss to men.
Now, I haven’t sounded off like this – on how men view women as property – for a long time. I’ve gone off that shtick. It’s too ideological. Doesn’t get at the complexity of human motivation and interaction.
But I will call a spade a spade. The oppression of women is tied in with culture, but that is no excuse or justification. There are universal ethics. Cultures, including religious aspects, must change in order for universal ethics to be upheld. And one of the aspects of ALL cultures – not just those under the sway of Sharia, but our own beloved Western cultures – that must change is the notion that what men do to women is what men do to their property, and is therefore private, and none of our business.
Clearly, the Afghan law treats women as the property of their husbands. Don’t say it’s their business, and then claim you simply respect the cultural integrity of Afghani Shiites. What you really respect is the right of men to certain behaviors on the part of women. If you don’t believe Nazi skinheads have the right to attack Jews and Blacks on the streets; if you don’t believe soldiers have the right to draft children into military service – you can’t believe Afghani Shiite men have the right to pass a law forcing their wives to have sex. If you do believe the latter, then, well – it’s as I said: you are defending the right of men to hold women as property.
The progress toward greater human rights in the last two centuries has been about one thing, in essence: a refutation of the idea that humans can hold property rights in other humans. It started with the abolition of serfdom (property rights by virtue of class, title, and economic circumstance), continued with the abolition of slavery (property rights by virtue of nationality or ethnic group), progressed to the regulation of employment conditions (rights of employers by virtue of owning property – a business) and other civil issues (entertainment and eating establishments, schools, landlords – their right to dictate who gets to use their property). The world has progressed in its thinking about what rights one person can have over another. We have progressed in our thinking about how men can control women.
But we have a long ways to go. And it’s not just in Afghanistan that we see how men view women as property. It’s right here, right now, in our own homes and social circles and political arenas. One indication is how we still hear “it’s none of our business”, “it’s cultural”, and “it’s private”, where relations between men and women are concerned. There are myriad other indications from our everyday lives, often very subtle indications, and women often bind themselves as much as they let men do the binding. But that’s for another blog entry.
For now, can we just have a resounding, “WTF is Karzai doing, thinking he can get away with signing that horrendous law!?”, and make sure he doesn’t, in fact, get away with it?
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