We Are All Sonali

Why is it so hard for some people to understand that women's bodies are their own?

This is what Eve Ensler calls a #ReasonToRise:

Today 27-year-old Sonali Mukherjee will have surgery to help reconstruct her face. It melted nine years ago, leaving a painful mask in its place, after three young men poured acid on her while she slept. This was their response to her fending off their relentless sexual advances as she made her way to school every morning. In India the ubiquitous harassment that women face is called, in a "family-friendly" euphemism, "eve baiting."

Today's surgery will be the first of many, involving eye operations and hair and ear transplants, that will take place over years at a hospital in New Dehli. What do we need to know about Sonali? That she was studying sociology? That she was a happy 17-year-old? What she was wearing when she slept? Or that's she's now petitioned her government to either help her find justice or give her the right to euthanasia?
For six of the past nine years, her assailants have been free. Sonali and her family, bankrupted paying for her care, had to move villages after they were threatened by the men when they returned. She has, over the years, persistently appealed to the Indian justice system for medical assistance and stricter penalties for assailants, and a fund has been established to help cover the enormous expense of her medical care. This woman, with whom I have been in touch through mutual friends, is, remarkably, a bright, brave, and determined and dignified person. To hear her petition (she is essentially asking for help raising roughly $30,000 or the right to die) watch this video, or join the Friends of Sonali Facebook page and send her a note to help buoy her spirits in the hospital.

Sonali is why GOP spokesman Jay Townsend's comment, "Let's hurl some acid at those female Democratic Senators," was not just inappropriate but inhumane.

She isn't alone, however. In Columbia, where there were at least 150 acid-throwing incidents last year, women like 51-year-old Consuela Cordoba wear masks every day of their lives. In England model Katie Piper was doused in acid after a rejected ex-boyfriend hired someone to attack her. In Afganistan schoolgirls are habitually subjected to acid throwing and poisoning. In Uganda 25-year-old Regina Nannono is one of an increasing number of women attacked by ex-spouses, romantic rivals, and competitors trying to change property inheritances; most of the victims are women. In Pakistan 10-year-old Zaib Aslam thought someone had lit her face on fire when men on motorcycles threw acid on her face as she waited with her mother at a bus stop. Many simply cannot go on living. In Rome last year, after 38 grueling surgeries, 33-year-old Fakhra Younasfinally committed suicide, 10 years after she was assaulted in this way. These are only a handful of readily available examples.

Not "our" problem? In that case, let's consider "our" version of acid throwing, say, lighting women on fire.
In Maryland Yvette Cade had gasoline poured on her and was lit on fire by her estranged husband. In Florida Naomie Breton was lit on fire at a gas station in what the newspaper termed a "dispute" with the father of her child. She was then charged astronomical towing fees, which she refused to pay (shocking!). In Cleveland Tiffany Lawson, 31, threw her 18-month-old son out of a second-story window into the arms of a stranger and then threw herself out behind him, after her boyfriend threw lighter fluid on her and lit her on fire. In Detroit 22-year-old LaTonya Bowman, three weeks short of delivering a baby, was kidnapped by the baby's father, lit on fire, and then, just for good measure, shot in the back. She survived and gave birth. In St. Louis last June, a man lit his 36-year-old girlfriend on fire. In Seattle an unnamed 17-year-old girl died -- her house was set on fire, so the man accused, a boyfriend, took a less direct route. Clearly all these women weren'tsubservient enough.

How can I say "we are all Sonali" when what she and these other girls and women have experienced are extreme and terrifying injustices? I can say it because women all over the world are not in possession of themselves. And we have the right to be.

There are people who agree, and those who do not. Some of them are U.S. legislators (some withclose ties to the mail-order bride business, for example).

What women experience as victims of abuse, or when they're seized and forced to undergo surgery against their wills, or even when they hear a vice-presidential candidate say publicly, without widespread and uniform condemnation, that rape is just another "method of conception," is someone else (or the state) claiming ownership of their bodies and existences. Usually that someone else is a man they know. The abuse and rape of women is oblivious to social status, education, race, nationality, ethnicity, or anything else. What Sonali asked for when she resisted her harassers every day, and what was denied to her when they attacked her, was the right to be female and in control of her own body. Men wanted to control her and wanted access to her body. Indeed, they felt that this access and control were their birthright. Her culture, the men and women in it, supporting the notion that her body was somehow public property, allowed this to happen. When she did not comply, they punished her severely. They invaded her privacy. They violated her bodily integrity. They ignored her autonomy, and they damaged her body horrifically. They denied her her agency. Does this sound familiar yet?

What do Sonali and these other women have to do with you or me, sitting at these computers, probably relatively safe and sound?

Well, maybe it depends on how aware you are of the prevalence of violence and its threat in the lives of women; whether you think we, collectively, should care about people other than ourselves; and what you think the role of government should be in seeking justice. Apparently, a lot of what I believe flies in the face of a longstanding frontier ethos of individual destiny and the making of the traditional, successful American man. This mentality hasn't gone so well for women in America -- or in the rest of the world. I think women's freedom -- bodily, reproductive, economic -- requires government intervention to offset pervasive, traditional biases that prop up and perpetuate corrupt structures, violence, and abuse.
When the right to privacy was extended to women, men whose authority this undermined switched their focus to "family privacy." Abortion was the nominal catalyst, but in reality it was just the proxy du jour. The family is often the place where incursions against women's rights have their strongest breeding ground. And the public sphere, we keep getting told, is just the private, family sphere writ large.
"The family's right to privacy" is a specific code for certain male heads-of-households' exercise of traditionally held privileges of male domination that allow the violation of the human rights of the women and girls they are intimate with. It doesn't matter where in the world the girls and women are. This family, in which a man made his young children videotape 51 minutes of his verbal and physical abuse of his wife, had a right to privacy. It's a family privacy that many women suffer for in similar ways. Our inability to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, because of the right'shomophobia, sexism, and racism, is a national shame with international consequences.

I know that many will say that these egregious examples do not represent all men. That's certainly true. I also know that it's irrelevant given the reality that one third of the world's women are subjected to violence of this sort, more than 1 billion women. In addition, there are those, especially in this country, who question these numbers. Their claims are regularly debunked. Besides, 1 billion is an awful lot of lying women.

If you doubt what I am arguing, particularly as it pertains to the United States, consider this map of 34 states (the number is now 31) that have failed to pass laws that deny rapists the right to visitation and custody, against their rape victims' will, to children born as a result of the rape that caused the pregnancy. By not passing these laws two thirds of our states effectively ensure paternal rapists' rights. Who gives rapists rights, even by default? This is an illustration of the degree to which we live unconsciously with state-sanctioned support of the rights of men, especially fathers, over those of women. By any measure of justice this map should not exist. This is as Handmaiden's Tale as you get. If there has ever been a map of male domination and the legislative subjugation of women, this is it. Just ask Shauna Prewitt what having the man who raped and inseminated you against your will gain legal access to your child feels like. She became a lawyer, and her recent CNN appearance caused a firestorm because of it. Conversations like Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comment, Tom Smith's likening rape babies to "out-of-wedlock babies," Paul Ryan's reference to rape as just another "method of conception," and other similar fantasies all reflect a fundamental denial of women's bodily autonomy and rights.

Women also have the right to have the state protect their rights rather than perpetuate the privilege that results in the denial of their rights. That means changes conserve-atives don't like.

For men, the ability to be successful and pursue their individual destinies in traditional ways might require the government to be small and go away. This tenacious idea has meant that women's rights were subsumed. For individual women, in order to offset systematized sexism, misogyny, and violence (most of which takes place at the hands of individual men in a domestic context), it may mean that government has to intercede in new and different ways. That's why patriarchy hates real democracy, because equality for women gets in the way of individual men's exercise of long-held power and privilege. All these things come together, as usual, over women's bodies, which, until relatively recently, were entirely subject to laws based entirely on male norms and male supremacy.

The state of India, in collusion with Sonali's assailants, has largely stood by and allowed multiple injustices to occur. It has failed to protect Sonali and other women like her and to adequately protect their rights under the law. In Sonali's case her bodily involvement in the stripping of her rights is clear. In the U.S. risks to women's bodily integrity are obscured and less obvious to most people, but similar situations occur to women all over the country.

Next time you are at a party, look around and remember:

More than half of school-age girls experience sexual harassment.

Sixty-nine percent of American women surveyed report that they do not look people in the eye when they walk in public streets, in order to avoid harassment.

Between 85 and 99 percent of all women experience varying degrees of street harassment.

One in four women in the U.S. experiences violence at the hands of a partner in her lifetime.

One in three in the world will.

One in five women is a survivor of sexual assault and rape.

This is why I can say "we are all Sonali."

"Violence against women crosses boundaries regardless of nationality, ethnicity, culture, class or economic status. With 1 in 3 women affected, it may well be the biggest human rights atrocity of the 21st century," explains Regina Yau, founder of The Pixel Project, and organization dedicated to raising awareness and fighting against violence against women worldwide, "If you can reduce gender-based violence by even 50 percent across the world, imagine the human potential that could be released: girls can have a fighting chance to be healthy and to go to school, and women can start their own businesses and earn money to feed their families and get out of poverty."

Clearly we both think we have an obligation to others. Many think we have none. This is a defining issue in the U.S. election in November. Individual rights and the limited role of government vs. societal good and the involvement of government. What is going on here in the United States is a social contract debate about women's bodies and who controls them. Just like the debate going on in India. And Columbia. And Afghanistan. And Pakistan. And Uganda. And England.

If we have slipped so far in our commitment to protect the rights of at least half of our population, how can we possible expect to lead the rest of the world in anything? Women's rights in the United States affect women everywhere.

Resources:

Eve Ensler started One Billion Rising to combat worldwide violence against women.

No More is dedicated to raising awareness and eliminating the shame associated with being a victim, male or female, of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Pixel Project is a global effort to raise awareness and end violence against women.

The Half the Sky Movement, based on the book and documentary of the same name, seeks to change oppression into opportunity for girls and women.

In the U.S. make sure you representatives support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act when it goes to the U.S. Senate later this year.

Acid Survivors Trust International
Men Against Violence Against Women
Bell Bajao
Men Stopping Violence
Say No Unite to end violence against women
Men Can Stop Rape
UN Women
RAINN Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network
Stop Street Harassment

By Soraya Chemaly

Link to Original Article

The Privatization of Women

Andrea Dworkin has stated that we, in this society, DO NOT perceive a husband (the one who fucks) and a wife (the one who is fucked) as a SOCIAL unit.  It is, in fact, a private unit.  It is not a social part of life.  The relationship between a man and his wife is not interpreted as SOCIAL.  This is what church, state, and institutional laws are built around.  Men build goddamn walls around women, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, and then call it their home.  In this home, or prison, we are beaten, manipulated, raped, annihilated.  Women are most likely to be beaten, raped, and killed in their own home than anywhere else.  

On top of this, we, literally, are given a script for how to interpret that PRIVATE unit.  It’s in the media, our movies, our TV shows, our literature, our institutions.  It’s everywhere.  The romance of the woman (or, what should be more appropriately called the rape of the woman) is the script we are given.  Pornography demonstrates this clearly: women are beaten with a smile on their faces, and it is a ejaculatory event for both this man and this woman.

More than 50% of women report that they were ATTACKED in their own home, most commonly by their “intimate” partner.  The meaning of the word “intimate” is defined as “very private; closely personal”.  Women are captives with no political rights to defend off their attacker, their abuser, the man they were socially conditioned to love NO MATTER WHAT.  She is his property through and through.  She still cannot claim that she has been raped in a court of law without being laughed away.  She, throughout history through the eyes of men, has seemed to have cried wolf.  She cannot claim dignity nor respect nor any self.  According to Wikipedia, the definition of captive is “the state of being confined to a space from which it is difficult or impossible to escape”.  A place where one finds it difficult to escape?  This is the function of marriage.  It is a literal capture.  Women are unable to leave their male partners for economic reasons, for legal reasons, for every male class law and institution in place.

Women, who only got the vote 92 years ago, haven’t been able to participate in the construction of their society.  Their voices have been drowned out, ignored, silenced. 

To demonstrate to you how sub-human women are, in 1990 it was reported that there were 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters.  How is this possible, when the evidence is so clear that women are beaten, tortured, killed on a daily basis?  This means there are 2.5 times more animal shelters than there are human shelters, which supposedly are supposed to function when someone is in a state of EMERGENCY.  Apparently, a man’s best friend is only his dog, not his wife.  A dog’s function is, after all, companionship, while the wife is still relegated to the function of producing the progeny of the male through contracted intercourse.

The husband is the human being in this “PRIVATE” relationship.  Not the women; it’s never the woman who is human in this gender classed world.  The woman is property, an object of possession, a fetishized sexual being that elevates the man’s prosperity.  The wife is his bling, like his car which functions to get him around.  She is, literally, a PART of him, like his pinky finger or his spleen.  (Eve, after all, is of Adam’s rib)  She is not human.  She is the one who breeds, who CARES for him.  During Colonial times, men literally BOUGHT women.  They were brought to the colonies as wives.  This is ONLY 200 years ago out of our 50,000 year history as humans.  This was how America began: bringing captives, white and black, as slaves to the WHITE MAN.  Both white women and blacks were sexual slaves.  The white woman bred the new generations of white men, while blacks were bred as slaves.  Black women were also used as the sexual property of the white man.  America was literally born through the system of concubinage.

Women are literally PRIVATE PROPERTY.  LITERALLY.  To this day, this is how the laws are set up.  It is "private matters".  It is "none of your business."  Literally, it is none of society’s BUSINESS.  It is personal, not to be discussed.  Law and State interprets it this way.  The church interprets it this way.  Our learned behavior has been conditioned this way… The relationship between a man and his wife is privatized.  Women are literally owned by the men they marry.  The laws make it so. She is owned inside out.  The slit between her legs is his property.  His sexual object, his possession, his fetishized obsession.  Remember, he signed a contract saying he is the owner of her slit.  That CONTRACT states that he has sexual access to her.  He can have sexual access to her whether she likes it or not, and he will get away with it.  Like the slaves, she is the white property of his estate, his castle.  He can intimidate her, insult her, degrade her, and get away with it.  He can beat her, hurt and rape her and get away with it, and on top of that she will be the one to blame.  It is her fault; she is crazy and has “personal issues”, the script says, society says.  I am here to say that her “personal” issues ARE NOT PERSONAL.  They ARE POLITICAL.  The only thing she is trying to do is keep herself alive, trying to keep her body, mind, and soul from being violated.  And the court says, “No, you are exaggerating, lying.”  And the psychologists say, “No, you are bipolar, crazy.”  And the intellectuals say, “No, you are not worth our time nor effort.”  And her family says, “No, you are his wife. Deal with it.”  He can kill her, like chattel, and get away with murder.  And she has died a trillion times throughout history.

This is why the statement, “The Personal is Political” is so important.  I’m glad a close professor has emphasized this phrase so much to me.  Women have been privatized.  This is why the personal lives of women are so important to listen to, not to be trivialized, not to be swept under the carpet.  Yet, this is what’s going on.  Women are being ignored; to take her seriously would cause great anger, great violence, great political conflict.  The Suffragettes knew it.  In their personal conversations with each other, they strategized NOT to talk about the personal lives they inhabited with men.  These women knew it would anger men to the point of losing the vote.  They strategized not to talk about it in order to get the vote.  This must end.  Our silence must END NOW.  We are no longer living under the same state of tyranny of the 1920s… that is to say, not as much... not much, after all, has changed.  The state has reconfigured and women have done that.  Now we must act in new ways; we must have the courage to not be afraid of what men will do to us when we speak up and institute new laws.  We must end the privatization of women, the privatization of marriage, and the privatization of masculine identity.  We must end our silence on issues of “private matters”.

Feminism’s war against their oppressors has always been about ridding the masculine identity from the face of the earth.  Women have done this through changing laws, obtaining the vote, creating women shelters and rape centers, through using their words. They have done this with their mutilated bodies up for grabs, putting their lives up for the violent backlash which pounds back 10 times harder. Feminism, I will tell you, have not raised up in arms as a collective force.  They have used merely their words, marching, protesting. 

But this is a war no matter how men try to define war; it is a war which violates the bodies of women.  Men use their propaganda, pornography, which is now so proliferate that even “women’s magazines” are filled with it, showing the bodies of hot young fuckable girls with a look of sexual seduction on their faces in stiletto heels.  Women, now more than ever, have internalized this masochistic language as the pornographic imagination has extended out past farther than even anyone imagined: into the public sphere of commercials, television, the media, the internet.

This war is no different from nations violating the human rights of other nations.  War is defined as a state of emergency, and so is the condition of women as they stand now, in 4 inch high heels.  Women are in a state of emergency, yet, when we speak up, go to the authorities, talk with our closest friends and family, we are trivialized and told we deserve it, need it.  Women need to fight back against the all holy masculine identity dependent on pillage and rape.  A precondition for joy for men is putting women in their place.  This is the function of marriage, of the dating system.  It is to put a woman in her place: as a sexual object to be bred and used for physical labor.  This must change.  Men need to find a way to break the systematic sadistic joy and literal erection they get from beating, raping, and ejaculating on women.  If they do not, we, women, will force them to; they will be forced to change, and if they do not, they will perish from this world because we will make this world into something they cannot thrive in.

I'd like to leave you with a speech given by Andrea Dworkin, who highly influenced this piece.

http://andreadworkin.com/audio/montrealdworkin.mp3

Andrea Dworkin's Testimony to the Attorney General On Pornography

Here is Andrea Dworkin's famous speech before the attorney general on the effects of pornography on women's civil rights... couldn't have been put any better.

Andrea Dworkin

This is a great documentary about Andrea's stance on pornography.  The documentary also includes interviews from those women who were exploited in porn and their experiences with it.  Very powerful.  If you want to listen to someone who has a very powerful and empathetic voice, look no further.

Patriarchy

Do our fathers, husbands, boyfriends, and sons 

know women can be more than two sexually 

dichotomized categories

of 

"pure of heart virgin"

&

"slut and bitch"?




STOP SELLING US:

Dirty Women

I dare all to look at a woman with respect and decency instead of looking at her with disdain, like a worthless object.

What do you see and feel when you LOOK at this woman? Do you feel disgusted? Do you feel revolt?  Do you feel dirty? Or do you see that loving woman who's your grandma who you only speak to now on Christmas?

 

What do you see when you look at this woman?  Is she that slut you've always wanted to fuck over?  Is she overcompensating?  Is she just that 'mistake' you never want to look at again?  I dare you to believe that and see where it takes you.  Karma is a bitch.  Be careful where you tread.  

What do you see here? Do you see a dirty animal beneath you, beneath decency and love?  Do you see a sexualized being only worth conquering?  Women in this world might as well be equated to commodities who are exchanged on the basis of looks. Look closely at the women around you, especially those who have raised you, who have been your friends, your confidants. Do you think they are truly happy with the psychotic system put in place to keep them disturbed, fearful, and stir-crazy? Women are bought and sold, traded.  Just like blacks, communists, gays, and other 'scums of the earth', women are wading through a world where they must rise just to your kneecaps just to get SOME respect and decency those others get like it's just a damn gift handed over to them at birth.  White, heterosexual, conservative dicks can't see how wretchedly hard it is for us to rise and be all we can be.  The oppressed of the world can't stand this dilemma.  The privileged, the ones born with a BIRTH RIGHT, have no idea how much we suffer under their legacy of humiliation, subjugation, and oppression.  Let us learn and move on.

My First Period - Spoken Word of Staceyann Chin

This is amazing.


Start at 10:10 for a shorter version that's more intense.

"Pregnant and I Know It" Music Video

This video is hilarious. It helps me a little with my anxiety of ever getting pregnant.  I'm deathly afraid of people thinking I'm fat.  What a terrific culture to be in... having to be afraid of pregnant bodies.

It's also nice to know that women are doing stuff like this in their downtime.  Making youtube videos is actually a very powerful thing... it helps change the discourse of the dominant male culture through humor and fun.

RAPE

"I'm not fighting for a world where 'radical' rape exists. I'm fighting for a world where the world is free of any rape what so ever."

 

The Body

 

This outright hatred of so called ‘fatness’ enables an all-out war on the body.

This relentless war demands the complete disconnection of the body and the soul.

At birth these two were one, but, acclimating within a body perfectionist culture forces the soul to vilify the body.

The body, once at peace with the soul, is turned into the enemy being fought.

 

Once the body is twisted into an object of disgust, the soul begins the attempt to control itself by fragmenting into shards.  

This splitting of the soul is unavoidable as control mandates the mind to divide into a ‘me’ that’s being controlled and an ‘I’ that’s doing the controlling.

This leaves the body disconnected from the soul and the soul fragmented in pieces.

We, as human beings, have been fragmented by our culture, left to feel nothing but abhorrence for the body, which merely becomes a vessel holding a ruptured soul of nothingness.

 

This body warfare will always end in devastating losses as it is an endless struggle in a culture that inherently contradicts itself.

Capitalism demands souls to accept a narrow definition of body perfection in order to make souls feel inept and buy more to perfect the body, but Capitalism also necessitates the ceaseless consumption of goods, including the great amount of goods we ingest into the body.

In this Capitalist World-System, the soldiers at war with their bodies 

Will. Never. Stop. Fighting. 

because peace commands a complete revolution of the system.

"Pretty" by Katie Makkai

Here is one amazing poetry slam where Katie Makkai talks about the impossibility for a woman to be pretty and the consumerist culture behind it.  VERY interesting.

Here is a transcript thanks to Diana.

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?” Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers' hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.

“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?” But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.

“How could this happen? You'll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That's why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine!

“Don't worry. We'll get it fixed!” She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.

But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.

Belly gorged on 2 pints of my blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, “What did you let them do to you!”

All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. “Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.”

And now, I have not seen my own face for 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.

This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven't a clue where to find fulfillment or how wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those 2 pretty syllables.

About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.

This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, “No! The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.

“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you, will never be merely 'pretty'.”

The Business of Being Born & Pregnant in America

Here are two wonderful, eye opening, and yet tragic documentaries which criticize the American health care system with an emphasis on drugs, costly interventions, and its view of childbirth as a medical emergency rather than a natural occurrence.  This is relevant to the feminist movement as women's bodies are commodified for profit which isn't necessarily done for their well-being, their child's, or for the society as a whole.

Here is the first part of The Business of Being Born: