 |
Stringer/Reuters/Landov
An Egyptian army soldier stomps on the chest of a female protester after she was beaten at Tahrir Square in Cairo on Dec. 17, 2011. |
It's International Women's Day.
A year ago, on this day, Egyptian women in Tahrir Square were sexually and physically assaulted as they demonstrated for representation in their government after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, a U.S.-supported dictator.
In December, during mass demonstrations over the military council's resistance to relinquish power and hold elections, women were again out on the streets with their male counterparts. Many were chased by the military and brutally beaten – largely unseen and unheard for the rest of the world, as are so many atrocities.
This time, however, an amateur video of the brutal treatment of two women, one stripped to her a blue bra and the second in a red jacket, went viral and brought international outrage. Egyptian activists started a Twitter feed, the #bluebra, which drew hundreds demanding an end to military rule.
Though what happened to the Blue Bra Girl is still unknown, a heartbreaking CNN video of the woman in the red jacket surfaced of her from her the hospital bed still wanting speak out to the media. She is a daughter of a general, and eventually recovered from her injuries.
Several journalists expressed my thoughts and concerns about violence toward women in the global movements over economic and social injustice:
- On my blog that day, I wrote: "
- NPR's Kainaz Amaria on the Girl in the Blue Bra:
Canada's National Post reported Egyptian blogger Fatenn Mostafa tweeting, "The blue bra is unforgettable and we all become 'the blue bra' girl one way or another."
- As Anushay Hossain in Ms. Magazine writes: "There is a reason why Time magazine picked The Protester as its Person of the Year–and there is a reason why the protester on that Time cover is a woman. Throughout the Arab Spring, from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, women have been on the frontlines of the protests, demanding more rights, as well as behind the scenes, shaping their countries’ revolutions."
- The Independent/UK's Laurie Penny who writes, "That's Enough Politeness: Time to Rise Up in Anger":
"A huge cultural change is taking place all over the world right now. Over the past year, from the Arab Spring uprisings to the global anti-corporate occupations, young people and workers have realised that they were flogged a false dream of prosperity in return for quiet obedience, exhausting, precarious jobs and perpetual debt – most of it shouldered by women, whose low-status, low-paid and unpaid work has driven the expansion of exploitative markets across the world. Equality, like prosperity, was supposed to trickle down, but not a lot can trickle down through a glass ceiling."
- Syndicated columnist Connie Schultz in a column on equal rights for women:
"The recent wave of anti-choice legislation in my state and across the country has made me keenly aware of attacks on women in America. Perhaps that is why I was so drawn to the Times’ stunning chronicle of women’s lives. I still can be astonished by how regularly the target of masculine rage is women."
Now I hear from Democratic Party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman that there are some 450 birth control and anti-abortion bills in state legislatures across the country.
Some colleagues have pointed out that such "culture wars" over reproductive rights in the U.S. are a distracting sideshow to the real troubles, such as the threat of another war that will further bankrupt our nation.
But I beg to differ. These events emanate from one and the same. Schultz noted women are often the targets of masculine rage. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Egypt's female protesters also faced "virginity" tests at the hands of the military, a military backed by the U.S.
It's the same masculine rage that wants to control women's bodies, and that beats the drums to war in the Middle East. This rage is keeping our country locked in a war economy, as the world's largest exporter of weapons and a military budget that is nearly equal to the rest of the world's.
This masculine rage protected and controlled access to territory and resources for millennia with ever-increasing armies and weapons of mass destruction. This rage required homicidal energy, ingenuity and power – a psychosis if you will – to defeat its competitors and provide for its own offspring. It was an enduring responsibility that grew ever more complex over the centuries, as tribes became nation-states and those nation-states in turn formed alliances with ever more superior weapons of mass destruction and nuclear and biochemical technology.
Cultural norms and religious ideologies supplemented those violent and overt means of control – after all, whose progeny would have access to those hard-won "scarce resources:"? The easiest way to control populations before birth control was developed was to control the minds and bodies of their counterparts – the "weaker sex".
Without a doubt, this masculine rage over the millennia eventually resulted in a collective standard of living our ancestors never had.
But it left behind unresolved turmoil and trauma.
And now in a 21st century where technology is rapidly replacing human labor as a means to gain access to the basic necessities of life, this rage is imbalanced, still in hyperdrive.
It's manifesting in over-competitiveness, driving these leaders to the brink: from excessive executive pay and bonuses on Wall Street to the latest absurdities erupting out of the GOP presidential primaries. For instance, enormous amounts of money by a donor who's pledged up to $100 million to his candidate, Newt Gingrich, who has stated he wants to put a 51st state on the moon (rather than use those resources to create a more sustainable global economy). Or, the potential running mate who would've proudly signed a transvaginal ultrasound mandate into law (rather than fund birth control, sex education or abortion).
But there are other issues that fall under the radar and should not be forgotten, such as the deficit reduction standoff favoring austerity cuts to social services and public sector employees ... this in a time where average working people are trying to recover from a global economic crash caused by excessive greed. Underlying all that is the unspoken "race to the bottom" where technology and outsourcing is replacing human labor while the cost of living never decreases.
Women in developed nations have thought they spent the last century struggling to win major victories of independence, such as voting, equality in the workplace and reproductive rights.
Yet, in the wake of a global economic crisis, there are now millions of American and European women leading the same quiet lives of desperation as their counterparts in less developed nations struggling to meet their basic needs for clean water, food, and shelter.
The feminine principles of nurturing and compassion allow cooler heads to prevail. Remember who taught us diplomacy and cooperation when we were kids first learning how to play with others? To stop fighting and learn how to share? Remember who was there when we were hungry or sick?
This is the 21st century. Men in power can learn to stop wars by learning to control their fear and aggression.
It's time to recalibrate and rebalance.
It's time for women to get busy.
We've had enough of hunger and insecurity in the world.
The Blue Bra Girl is still alive in all of us – men, women and children of the future.
She must not be silenced.
She must not be forgotten.
