Etkallemo

I'm writing this post in support of the unofficial campaign started by Malik after the incidents of sexual herrasements...

WE ARE A SICK COMMUNITY...

Yes, we are absolutely a sick community. And we have been one for quite a long time now, well, as far as I remember I started to read at least. We would make a very interesting case study for an interested psychological researcher with all our hidden truths and feelings and double standards and yet we, on the political level, ask others to be fair and just with us while we are unfair and unjust to ourselves and to everyone around us.

We are all hypocrates. We all want something or promote for something and do the complete opposite. We all pretend to have a certain standard but as soon as we are alone we do all types of wrong doings. The sexual herrasement event that took place is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger issue which is the woman in our society and all of this also fits in the larger picture that we are all living in a sick hypocratic community.

I remember when I was a kid and I was reading kids magazines, there was a feature where the magazines answers questions that kids ask them. One particular quesiton that came up almost every week was always from a girl who has a brother and she's asking why is he allowed more freedoms than she does and the answer would be that since she's getting a lot of more precious stuff in the form of jewelery, it is justified that he should also get some more previlages since he's not getting any jewelry!!! Even as a little kid I didn't buy it, and I still don't. Thinking about it now, maybe if you made the boys stay in as much as girls or abide by the same curfew maybe, just maybe, we could've trusted our daughters going on the streets alone... or is the concept of eliminating the cause not familiar with all of us?

To tell you the truth, I nver understood the extreme importance we give to virginity and how if a girl loses it the whole world crumbles over not only her, but on her whole family. I immediately get the all well-known image of a mother crying over the lost virginity of her daughter and asking herself "7awaddi weshi men el nas feen" and the father getting in deep trauma and depression and is just not able to talk to anybody and loses all will for living and this whole aurora of shame the falls on the family and then the girl falls in the abyss of sin!!! And it doesn't matter how did the girl lose her viriginity, if it was by accident or if she was abused or raped or if she committed it by her own will, no matter what the circumstances are the reaction is the same. And especially in the case of rape, and this is what really grinded my gears, is when a rape accident is "solved" by the rapist accepting to marry the girl that he raped... does anybody see anything wrong here? What about the girl? the rape victim? what about her being scarred for life by a sick soul that she's then forced to live with for the rest of her life? what is going to happen to her? where is her right to live a normal life after being victimized?

Again, maybe if we treated the guys the same way for losing their virginity too we wouldn't have these problems! If we eliminate them from the society and treat them like outcasts too any guy will thing twice before committing this sin which in Islam has the same weight and requires the same penalty! And we call ourselves a muslim community, excuse my french, but you could all kiss my ass.

This might make most of you laugh but maybe its because I never had a sister. But I don't think thats the reason... or maybe, I really don't know.

The other dilemma I have is the issue of divorce. It just amazes me how much crap a woman can bare from an abusive husband just because she doesn't get divorced and the whole scene from the loss of virginity. I think that being raised outside Egypt and only visiting it on vacations and trying in this little space to catch up with whats happening and immersing myself in the magazines and newspapers and then spending the rest of the year outside made me an "outside observer" who has a different views of our society.

Now, back to the issue which I beleive is not the public abuse and herrasement but the issue is how we look to the woman in our society and how women also look at themselves. I know we as a "masculine" society bare most of the fault but women too acting week and vulnerable and being unable to support themselves financially and emotionally are committing the same crime against themselves. I don't know who said it on TV, I think Nawa Al-Sa'dawi, yeah I beleive it was her who said that a woman who's being abused by her husband deserves to be abused! Thats completely true, you choose weather you're a victim or not. But again, I have to admit that it takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of a whole community that looks at a woman as property and if she loses her virginity, for any reason, she's broken goods that anybody can go abuse and use just because!!!

Unfortunately most girls coast through life waiting for "the one", the dream person who well make them feel special and treat them righteously instead of fighting and demanding their own rights for themselves. I've been talking once with a girl who's a medicine student and she was getting engaged and I asked her what she's going to do after getting married and she told me that she's going to be a stay at home mom. I have nothing against any girl wanting to stay at home and take care of her kids and actually beleive that its the right of the kids to have their mom looking after them, if she chooses so that is. But I was shocked because this girl worked so hard studying through school and went to study medicine and put herself under this whole pressure just to be a stay-at-home mom at the end. I mean, she might as well have stayed at home right after school waiting for the "right" person to come along. Again, I'm not against the education of women but I'm against the notion in our society that the ultimate goal of any girl is to get married and produce offspring, immediately! Why is it that any couple who gets married have this obligation of producing children as soon as possible and why is it if they fail to do so or just simply choose to wait a little that they are criticized by the whole community as if if she fails to get pregnant then she's useless. And then there's this whole egyptian movie again where the guys mother criticizes the girl very harshly and treats her like excess luggage and wants her boy to divorce this girl and marry another "fertile" one?

To be honest with you, I'm yet to see the perfect son. I've seen too many examples of bad parenting that resulted in weird specimens of people that I'm wondering why is anybody thinking that they could do a better job bringing up their own sons? And I could go on and on on the weird stuff that we take as givens in our society.

Nawal Al-Sa'dawi, aside from all the debat going on about her and her controversial statements and position, which are only controversial because they contradict with our sick mentality, is one of my heros. She wasn't afraid of divorcing her husband and defied the rule of the community and preferred to make people respect her for who she is not for the state of her hymen membrane. She alone had the courage to defy the way over-due taboos of an unjust community and didn't feel any shame in getting divorce. I just wish all girls had the same courage. I wish that girls have the courage that Hend El-Hennawi had going public with her pregnancy and forcing "ebn el fishawi" as I like to call him to accept the "nasab" of his daughter. Did anybody really ask himself why did everybody attack this girl? Did anybody think that maybe its the right of this little girl to have a father and save her some misery in the future that we all know she's going to suffer from as soon as she begins to understand what people are talking about?

I have talked too much here and I know that most people reading this post will not come so far but if you did, thank you. I'm only righting this just to record my despise of our society regarding the treatment of women. And girls, I have nothing more to say than "ekallemo"...