"Often we judge societies on how they treat their children but what we should do is base it on how they treat their women, as they are the care givers of the societies future."
Eric Frazier (My husband)I will warn that there may be a lot of speaking from my soap box in this post. My tidal wave of emotion has been building for a few days or maybe for a few years but I feel calm enough this morning to put into words some of the thoughts and emotions that have plagued me.
A few days ago I watched a documentary called "Sex Slaves" about poverty stricken Eastern European women being kidnapped and trafficked across Europe and North America as sex slaves. The women had no choice in these situations. They often went to other countries after being promised legitimate jobs in hotels or restaurants only to find out that they had been sold to a pimp and that their life was now not their own to control.
The women were raped, beaten, mortally threatened, and treated with the same care and contempt as a cow at a slaughter house. These poor unsuspecting women were forced into servicing up to 15 men per day and living in constant fear for their lives.
I wondered why they wouldn't run or fight for their lives and then I found out that they were never once left alone, but were shuttled from a barred hotel room to the room of the next John and then back to their hotel room jail. Many had children back home and large families who the pimps would threaten to kill if the girls tried to escape or didn't comply. The lucky ones would be sent home when they were too old or used to earn their captors more money. They returned home beaten, broken, and in many cases dying of HIV or other untreated sexually transmitted diseases.
By the end I found my self crying and disgusted with human kind. Worst of all was knowing that one of the largest traffickers of these women was also a woman.
A couple of months ago I read the biography of Ayann Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman now living in the USA. She denounced her Muslim religion and has been estranged from her family since escaping to the Netherlands on her way to her arranged marriage to a man living in Canada. She spoke of the treatment of women in her culture and of the female circumcision that she and her sister endured as children. How her clitoris and vaginal lips were sliced from her body and how she was sewn closed with only a small hole left in her genitalia so that urine could drip through the opening.
After this she was considered "clean" and "pure" as if she had been born with some sort of demonic presence living in her vagina.
By the end I found my self crying and disgusted with human kind. Worst of all was knowing that it is often the older generations of women that carry on these barbaric rituals and beliefs.
Two years ago I saw the movie "Water" that is the story of a young Indian girl,who, at the age of seven, ends up in a house of widows because the husband she had been married to had died, he was old and sick. Widows in India live in poverty begging on the streets and being looked at as cursed due to the death of their husbands. They are now garbage unworthy of being re-married and often ended up having to sell their bodies to earn enough money to save themselves from starving to death.
By the end I found my self crying and disgusted with human kind. Worst of all was knowing that other women are often so fearful of being cursed by the same widows fate that they turn a blind eye and shun these women rather than reaching out to them with food and kindness.
These are only three stories out of thousands that tell of the hardships that women face around the world and how in many cases it is other women that are participating in the neglect, abuse and demoralization of their sisters.
Many of us are horrified the moment we hear of such a thing but then forget about it as we think of it as happening in far away countries not here in our middle class suburban paradise.
You are wrong. Atrocities towards women take place in all cultures and even the little things we do can impact the women in our lives.
You need to ask yourself how you betray your sisters on a daily basis:
How many times have you talked shit about a friend behind her back to gain favor with someone else or slept with another womans husband, thinking how stupid that woman must be not to be able to keep her man at home?
How many times have you stepped on a woman in your career so that you may get ahead and felt proud that you can make it in this "mans world"?
How many times have you looked down your nose at the woman in the shelter trying to house her child while working all hours God gave her and still not making ends meet?
How many times have you felt sickened by the sight of a whore on the street or the junkie in the alley....only wishing someone would "clean up" the area so that you didn't have to see it while drinking your latte and driving in your car.
We've all done it at times. We have played the part of the catty, back-stabbing woman, the self righteous bitch who thinks she is better than the woman next to her, and the girl who is left feeling lonely and ashamed that she isn't as good as her "friend", her neighbor, her coworker.
Somehow as women we have fallen into the trap of blaming other women for our misfortune or our circumstance and then passed on the torture to another women somehow cleansing our selves of our own experience. WE (women) have perpetuated the myths about women not being as capable as men and WE (women) have supported the media in their campaign that women are never thin enough, young enough, or beautiful enough. It has to stop. Women have to unite together and support one another in our own countries so that we may stand united to combat the atrocities being inflicted on the women in other parts of the world.
What kind of lesson are we teaching our daughters when they witness our indifference to the plight of women around the world? And what do we teach them by pining over air brushed photos in magazines? What do you think your daughter will learn by hearing you gossip about another woman you saw at the park? Or what she will take to heart when given a doll that looks like a 6 year old hooker with a belly shirt and sparkling eye make up?
We have a responsibility to our sisters, our mothers , our daughters, and our friends. It is time that women come together to change the way that women are treated in our country and all over the world. You can start by changing the little things you do and by finding a way to educate your self to the circumstances of women everywhere.
The time is now!The abuse must stop!
