For the benefit of men
NS April 17th, 2008
I recently finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is a book about two Afghani women both thrust into the world of arranged marriage to a brutal man three times their age. The way that their love and self-sacrifice sustain them, even in the face of such evil, is remarkable and what I admire about women like them. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who has not read it and plans to, but suffice it to say that it makes for tough, though ultimately inspirational, reading.
On Sunday, nearing the end of the book and soaking in the bath, I cried. I shuddered and I shook as I allowed the terror of their lives to wash over me. Not because I identified with them or knew how they felt but because I didn’t, and never would. Their experiences, while fiction in this instance, are the experiences of millions of women all over the world, in both more ‘traditional’ societies and the Western world, but I have been lucky enough to escape the worst of it. These women have known and will continue to know suffering like I could never imagine. Beaten by fathers and husbands, raped by uncles and soldiers, sold to colleagues and friends of relatives, killed before they are even born, prevented from getting a basic education or having basic human rights…I read dozens of these stories every day and can’t help but notice that so much of womankind’s misery is brought on them by the men in their lives or the ones running them in government.
Deciding their fate (or more like sealing it) from atop their thrones of control and privilege, thrones they have sat upon since the beginning of time, these men never see women as human beings deserving of the power to direct their own destinies. To these men, women are commodities. Like acquiring an asset, they go after women in a systematic ritual of purchase, control, utilization and then disregard when they are finished with their services, be that cleaning their houses, satisfying their sexual desires, bearing and raising their children, cooking their meals or taking care of them when they are old and infirm. Except unlike carefully-guarded assets, women do not appreciate over time. As lines become ingrained on our skin, our value goes down and we are easily tossed aside. No one is so vulnerable as a female in a patriarchal society at either far end of the age spectrum. The very old, like the very young, being placed somewhere on par with the decrepit family pet whom no one has the heart to shoot and put out of its misery but is of no use to anyone on a practical level.
So as I lay in the bath and thought about these injustices and tragedies, played out daily the world over, I felt physically sick. Hot tears mingled with the steam rising from the water enveloping my swollen belly and I placed a hand over the space where my future child resides. And horror of horrors, I had a flash of sudden anger so severe that it overtook even my rational and maternal side. For a moment, as I thought of the little life I’m growing, I wondered what I would do if this child is a boy. Would I be contributing one more foot soldier in the war against women, one more bearer of oppression? Would my parental influence, love and guidance be enough to override what society will tell him is his birthright? Will I ever look into his eyes and see the indifference and hatred that fuels the perpetuation of inequality?
And then, at that moment and for the first time in this pregnancy, I felt a kick from deep inside that woke me from my biter reprieve and left me feeling simultaneously overjoyed and ashamed. There I was, blaming the world’s ills on an innocent being merely for the coincidence of what might be between its legs. Isn’t this how misogyny started in the first place? I thought about all the inklings I’ve had that I’m carrying a boy and how that, up until this fleeting thought, had always made me smile. I picture a little boy snuggled to my breast, tiny hand pressed palm-down over the rise and fall of my chest, looking at me in utter trust and adoration as I smooth the hair from his eyes. I imagine I will be the most important woman in the world to him and that the radiance of my love and the magnitude of my example will penetrate his heart and protect it from ever growing cold or being cruel.
While I will never stop feeling anger about these situations because anger is what gets me motivated and fuels me to help strive for change, I must remember that I (we) are fighting against an entire vast history, not individuals within it. Like a small boat that struggles to overcome a large wave, I must remember that the force of the water and the rise of the swell is the enemy, not the water itself or the creatures within. I have known numerous good men in my life and am truly blessed to count many amongst my friends and family.
I would be nothing short of grateful to experience the love of one more.
- Feminist Fury , Squish Squish , The Noble Fetus
- Comments(8)
you know, i read that book a few months ago. and while i think i was probably less moved by it than you (while i thought it was enjoyable, i found the plot a little predictable), the thing that i most remember was being more angry at the *women* in that story – the ones who were complicit in the subjugation, and the ones who prepared their daughters to follow the same.
i think that men who’ve never known oppression, cannot fully understand the damage they do. it doesn’t excuse it, by any means – but they lack the ability to truly empathise from a place of experience.
women under the thumb of men know better. and that angers me more.
I know where you’re coming from and I agree to a certain extent because some of the women in the story, and indeed in real life, are sometimes complicit in the abuses that they endure and even become part of the cycle. But I personally don’t find it feasible to blame them for becoming hardened and institutionalized into that cycle and perpetuating the very things that have broken them because, well…it broke them.
People who have been made to believe they are worthless, that this is the best in life they will ever deserve or get, can have a tendency to enforce their misery on others, much like abused children grow up to be abusERs, even though they try to fight it and hate what they have become. I’m not excusing anyone’s actions, even the women, but I do think it’s a little harsh to be angry with them for not having the power or the means to break out of a cycle that they were unwillingly thrust into in the first place.
I suppose we’ll have to disagree on this point – I’ve seen the cycle of abuse up close, and I know people who don’t believe they deserve to live. I still don’t think being a victim ever gives you a pass on your responsibility to do everything you possibly can to protect your children from the same. And the victims I know would say the same. Because they *were* those children – and the reason they’re victims today is because no one protected them.
It’s one thing to be someone who can’t fight the oppressor. It’s an entirely different thing to be someone who smooths the path for them.
I’ve read the book and was both terribly moved and angered by it. I think what is so immensely difficult for women in societies like the one described is that their abuse is systematised. How do you escape/change/free yourself or your daughter when you can’t walk down a street unaccompanied by a man? When society deprives you of the most basic human rights, even in your own home, how can you make a difference?
I remember reading that women in Afghanistan were most free under Russian rule: they were allowed to pursue education and considered themselves equals. Then came the hideous rule of the Taliban, which this book describes, and now things are very slowly changing.
Like you, I am angry about men who consider women their chattels. But I am hopeful because I have a chance to educate two daughters and one son that patriarchy and unfair privileging of one sex over another is wrong.
Jen, there are a couple of specific things from the book that I wanted to bring up to take this discussion further but since I don’t want to post any spoilers, I think it’s wise if I leave it there. We can always finish this conversation on Sunday over lunch!
Charlotte, I agree with your questioning of how women can protect their children and affect change when they don’t have even the most basic rights, like being able to go out in public unaccompanied, or have a bank account, or hold down a paying job. Again, there are examples from the book that I would say evidenced these women protecting their children as best they could but I won’t post spoilers so we’ll have to discuss it another time.
I read a pretty upsetting book recently along similar lines but it was a biography of a year in a family in Kabul. One of the women had fallen in love and wanted to be a teacher. She couldn’t be a teacher because the men in the family decided against it. They also decided against letting her marry the man she loved – who was keen on her too – by telling him she was dishonoured etc.
I was angry, frustrated and pissed off until I read something else. In 1847 chloroform was first used to alleviate the pain of child birth. This sparked off a debate, like the one we’re having about genetics, stemcell research etc now, about whether or not it should be used. One side arguing it was humane the other that becuase of Eve’s activities in the bible, women deserved to suffer as it was part of God’s punishment. This was in enlightened western victorian society. It gives me hope. Maybe in a hundred years or so, women will be worth something in other societies the way they are in this one. God knows why we are so scary that we have to be kept down so.
Anyway. There you go.
Cheers
BC
Hi BC! I see what you’re saying about women’s suffering but I don’t know if the chloroform thing is the best example as it wasn’t just because they felt that women should suffer through childbirth that people were against it. Chloroform knocks a person completely out most times or at least leaves them unable to move or remember what happened. It was called ‘twilight sleep’ and became very popular during Victorian times as a fashionable and forward-thinking thing to do. However, drugging women completely out of experiencing their children’s births and making them physically paralyzed isn’t exactly ideal. A woman needs to be awake to effectively push a baby out and the use of forceps skyrocketed during that time as the power of the contracting uterus alone wasn’t quite enough in many cases to get the baby out.
In order to use forceps without tearing the mother’s genitals to bits, obstetricians began performing routine episiotimies and soon, ‘getting the cut’ became routine as well. I don’t know about other women, but my ideal birth does not include laying lifeless on a table, drugged out of my gourd, having my vagina cut open and my baby extracted with metal claws. Yeeeooowch! Many would argue that actually giving women back the control in birthing their babies while awake and aware but with access to less debilitating pain relief if they need it is the most humane and woman-centered option and is at the heart of the natural childbirth movement.
Sorry to have gone off on such an off-topic ramble!
I think any son you raise will carry your compassion and sensitivity within him. Not yet having read the book, I can’t comment on it, but I think your your flash of fear is a very human, very honest thing to admit, and I find this post very brave and beautiful.