The Bible: “Stoning Girls to Death When They Fail To Bleed on Their Wedding Sheets.”
China: (From the New Dong Dynasty) “For A Woman to Starve To Death Is a Small Matter, But For her To Lose Her chastity is a calamity.”
The UN Population Fund has estimated that there are 5,000 honor killings a year, almost all in the Muslim World. (Pakistan uncovered 1,261 honor killings in 2003 alone)
(The paradox of honor killings is that societies with the most rigid moral codes end up sanctioning behavior that is supremely immoral: Murder.)
This Emphasis on Sexual honor is a major Reason for violence against women. And because female sexuality is so sacred, rape becomes a tool of war. Families fight each other with the “honor” of their daughters.
Behind the rapes and other abuse brought on women in much of the world, it’s hard not to see something more sinister, crueler than just libido, Sexism and Misogyny.
Why so many women are kidnapped and trafficked every day and not men? Why so many women are being raped and not men? Why so many women are being silenced and not men? Why do women hear name callings and men don’t? Why so many women are judged for their clothing and not men? Why so many women get their fingers cut for studying and not men? Why so many women are having fixed marriages at the age of 13 and not men? Why so many women are humiliated and not men? Why is a women what her body is and men aren’t? Why so many witches were burned than wizards? Why is acid thrown in women’s faces, and not in men’s? Why are women so much more likely to be sexually abused and not men?
I do believe in a society who treats a women as men’s equal, I do believe in a society that fights off oppression, I do believe in a society that empowers women, educates them.
I do not believe in a religion that marginalizes women and treats them as “sexual” machines, as reproduction factories, among many others; In a Religion that fights off the right to fight abuse, the right of to speak up, the right to seek defense.
Of all the things that people do in the name of God, killing a girl because she doesn’t bleed on her wedding night is among the cruelest. Yet, the hymen remains an object of worship among many religions around the world.
We shouldn’t thrive to change the regulation of social constraints, but to change the perception of the nature of women. Her Burden, is Her Body.
“La Femme Quelque Soit Sa Condition, n’est jamais inférieur a l’homme. » Gisele Halimi, La Cause Des Femmes.
Krystel 