Griping about the ‘One Billion Rising’ video

I have tears in my eyes after watching the One Billion Rising video by Eve Ensler and Tony Stroebel. Like most women, I am viscerally aware of the physical violence that girls and women are subjected to worldwide.

Yet this video rubs me the wrong way.

Why is the black woman being raped, the olive-skinned woman being beaten bloody, the Middle Eastern woman a victim of an acid attack while the White woman suffers a gentle caress from a White colleague/boss in the workplace?

This is wrong on so many levels: European and American women are being beaten, raped, and killed, mostly by significant others. To erase the violence in White people’s lives while playing up the Scary Black/Brown/Asian Man image is irresponsible.

We have come too far in our analytical awareness of the power of images to be clueless about this construction. I would expect better of Eve Ensler.

For a more fundamental critique of Ensler’s approach, see this. And this is Rafia Zakaria’s critique of “happy feminism.”

Working mom

This weekend, after some conversations with my daughter’s schoolteachers, I felt the need to sit her down and tell her that she was the most important thing in my life. She looked at me earnestly, a little surprised. “Even more than work?”

Those four words have me reeling. My 6-year old girl believes that I am more attached to my work than to her. Meantime, in the academic recession more than ever, higher education is under the impression that it should be in full possession of its employees’ lives, and that to be a scholar is to be naught else.

As a still-untenured faculty member, I find myself struggling with the promise I have just made to my daughter: “I promise I will try harder to spend more time with you” (note the lengthy sentence construction). I find myself planning ahead, contemplating the international teaching trip in the summer, scheming for new publications once the book is finished, and filling up boxes in my planner.

Those are the boxes which also say, “Sorry, honey, I have to finish this;” “honey, please can you go and play in your room?” and “Raihana, I need to focus.”

 

Interfaith marriages are here, but.

As I pointed out some time ago, interfaith marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men are definitely here to stay in the Muslim diaspora. While Muslim religious leaders have not generally come out endorsing interfaith marriages, a small trickle of leaders have begun supporting and counseling interfaith couples (and no, supporting and counseling doesn’t always mean converting the non-Muslim spouses). The fact is, it’s time to accept interfaith marriages, both for Muslim men and women. Sociologically, there is no alternative.

This is not to say that interfaith marriages are a simple matter, both theologically and socially, as Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl points out, or that general rules may be applied to all. Each individual must consider her individual circumstances in such decisions. For example, she must consider the question: how important is my faith to me? How ecumenical is my disposition? How much do I care about transmitting my faith to my offspring? How likely is a prospective spouse to be generous in the socialization of offspring? A few years into interfaith marriages, when children start elementary school, a spouse/s often experiences religious change, so that all bets are off. This, of course, can easily happen to a couple that professes the same faith, but I would bet that the chances of conflict on matters of raising children religiously are statistically higher for interfaith couples. In other words, individuals entering upon such a marriage ought to consider every possibility, including the possibility that the beloved will, a few years hence, become an intransigent opponent of his spouse’s faith. What then? Is the resulting compromise acceptable to her?

Consider this: according to Dr. Abou El Fadl, the rationale for the juristic consensus against Muslim women is based on potential religious coercion by the husband and on fact that traditionally, offspring inherit the father’s religion and last name. Today, while Western nations are patriarchal without a doubt, as are Muslim societies, what if such patriarchal lineage were to be disrupted? What if father and mother had equal power to socialize their offspring and pass on their respective faiths? Within such contexts, would the juristic consensus be different? For such individuals, even those within patriarchal societies, could a juristic alternative be imagined?

By and large Muslims do not seem overly concerned about Muslim men marrying non-Muslim women. In Western societies, where legal frameworks favor women in some cases, ought this juristic consensus (in favor of Muslim men marrying non-Muslim women) to be revoked?

For those who approach the debate in a de-contextualized fashion, a rule is a rule is a rule, no matter where it is being applied, and social realities are irrelevant. Islamic law does not function in this way. Still, scholarly consensus can be a useful tool for gendered fears and identity insecurities in non-Muslim majority societies.

Between American drones and Taliban guns

I should have predicted it, but it was a surprise to me. I was not quite done being overwhelmed by my emotional reaction to the shooting by Taliban of the 15-year old activist for girls’ education Malala Yousufzai.

And then I found a meme circulating on Facebook that pitted Malala against the victims of US drone attacks. The argument ran thus: Why is there such a unanimous outcry against the shooting of this one girl, when numerous girls have been crippled and killed by American drones in Afghanistan? Why are the lives of drone victims so cheap, but the life of Malala so significant?

As the argument progressed, I heard such phrases as “the BBC blogger,” which portrayed Malala Yousufzai as something of a Western plant. If she was fighting for girls’ education against Taliban (who were against the US military presence), surely she was in favor of the US/West. The images of little Afghan girls in wheelchairs (victims of US drones) and the radiant face of Malala Yousufzai swiftly became pitted against each other in a nauseating battle of pawns.

The meme reads: “Do you know this girl? Have you seen her story on CNN or the BBC? Have you seen any breaking news about her on Geo, Dunya and Express? Have you updated your Facebook status to mention her? Have you seen any tweets about her? Have you ever heard that she was transported to hospital in an army helicopter? No, right? Yes, never – because she was wounded in a drone attack.”

I understand the reaction, on some level. In a college classroom, while discussing the injustice of the French headscarf ban, I heard someone challenge my focus on Western secularism by reminding me of the Taliban attack on Malala. I had been heartbroken over the attack, but suddenly, I found that I was being asked to perform my outrage, to prove that I wasn’t just opposed to secular, Western oppression of young girls but that I was similarly (or more) angered by sexist Muslims opposed to the education of girls.

It is true, of course, that there are plentiful spaces in Western discourse for anti-Muslim fundamentalist outrage. There is reason for suspicion of the ideological machinery that constantly attacks Muslims as sexist and opposed to girls’ education. The Western imperialist project continues to use girls and women as pawns against the Islamic threat.It is likewise true that the victims of drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan are invisible, treated as collateral damage, yet embarrassing enough to be brushed under the carpet. Now we have virtual memes that actually shrug off such cases as that of Malala and challenge the so-called obsession of pro-Western discourse with gender equality.

Of course there are ideological spaces where such groups as the Pakistani Taliban proclaim their opposition to Malala and the “secularism” and “enlightened moderation” that she allegedly preaches. If she blogs against the Taliban role, the argument runs, she is (quite successfully!) whipping up people’s emotions against the mujahideen, so she is against Shariah and a legitimate target for said mujahideen. Apparently, in this argument, Taliban=mujahideen=Shariah=Islam.

In such a climate of constant ideological tussle, the task of upholding equality and opposing oppression becomes charged with unintended meanings. American military and political agendas infect the framing of all postcolonial struggles and debates. And within postcolonial contexts, anti-imperialist agendas constantly hijack the struggles of girls, women, minorities, and the poor. If you are outraged about the treatment of Christians in Pakistan, you must be pro-American; if you are suspicious of gender activism, you must be pro-fundamentalist. Activism for girls’ education or anti-imperialist political activism? Which memes will you post at your Facebook page? Which will you choose?

Meantime, people in Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan struggle to make lives of meaning and dignity. Between American drones and Taliban guns, forced to choose sides, they find themselves to be mere pawns – mere objects, mere jpegs in a Facebook meme.

Gender equity isn’t vacuum-sealed

Gender equity, as I pointed out rather incoherently in my last post, does not occur in a vacuum. The conditioning of boys and men as caregivers and as domestic engineers is an integral part of this endeavor. But the domestic sphere is seamlessly connected with the workplace and with public policy. The conditioning of men and women occurs within the context of legal, political and cultural climates.

If men can’t get paternity leave, for instance, women who are mothers will rarely make it to the corridors of power. In that case, a man’s willingness to care for his baby full-time is moot. So if the possibilities of domesticity and full(er)-time parenting are closed to men, or are accompanied by financial risks and a workplace inhospitable to men more involved in parenting, then bringing women within sight of the boardroom, or tenure, or a sports career, or even the Kroger checkout counter, is pointless.

While men and women bear responsibility for the construction of egalitarian and whole lives, te responsibility is shared by politicians, the designers and implementers of public policy, intellectual workers,  social analysts and critics, cultural agents such as people in the media, and by those who wield the power of Big Money.

But gender equity is also an integral part of human wholeness and integrity. We seek equity that human beings may be whole, that they may not feel like they are being drawn and quartered to fit the demands of their lives.

This also means that the freezing up of professional roles must give way to a fluidity that permits shifts, so that individuals may respond to life-changes and seek wholeness in their intellectual and work lives, without risking their livelihood and the integrity of work profiles. A professor or physician should be able to work in the Congo without losing currency; she should be able to care for aging parents without losing her livelihood; she should be able to bear and raise children while she is of child-bearing age without appearing to be “not competitive.” None of this is new. Yet this remains a dream, and in our worsening economic climate, it seems more out of reach than it has been recently.

So have we made it to gender equity? Ask the family

Until we raise boys and men who want to and know how to be full-time caregivers and parents – rather than mere aides and assistants – gender equity at home/work remains both a dream and a joke – in the form of women doing double duty.

By and large, while women parade their professional careers in the day-time, they remain full-time parents, and by and large, fathers remain relatively part-time parents. For childcare: women are organizers, researchers, supervisors and employers of any child-care arrangement that they can find. For most social classes, such childcare is poor to mediocre in the US if you happen to be one of the unfortunate multitudes who do not have grandparents, relatives, stay-at-home fathers/mothers, etc. that you can rely on. It entails the time-consuming labor that ensures such childcare is effective and nurturing (as a parent who used a few daycares, I know of what I speak). It entails, too, the edge-of-your-seat manuevers that are necessitated by sudden babysitter emergencies – the slack for which is usually picked up by mothers (women still make less money than men, overall, so it costs the family less when women lose wages or jobs.) By and large, the default parent in charge is still the mother. By and large, the individual who takes it for the team is still the mother. By and large, it is the mother who ensures that the home is clean and livable, that the children’s education is supervised, that laundry and dishes are done, and that children’s emotional needs are met.

This is why I say again: Until we raise boys and men who want to and know how to be full-time caregivers and parents – rather than mere aides and assistants – gender equity at home/work remains both a dream and a joke – in the form of women doing double duty.

Women do not need ‘help’ in the kitchen and with the children. Women need mature co-parents and domestic co-workers who can work unsupervised to ensure quality of life for the family. Women’s caregiving remains time-consuming in comparison to men’s. Women do not need someone who can microwave mac-and-cheese if she is not there: they need someone who can prepare healthy dinners, check if a bath is needed and administer that bath, while ensuring that homework is completed and garbage taken out.

Are you raising a boy to be that parent/husband? Or are you raising a part-time family member who is incapable of being centered around care for others? I do not say, one who can love. Wild animals can love and provide for their offspring. Caregiving is not love + paying bills. Caregiving is not buying gifts on amazon.com. Caregiving is time-consuming, sometimes draining, often boring.

Caregiving is a full-time job. Which brings us around to the capitalist economy which seeks to own the individual, whether parent or son/daughter, who has personal needs and relationships that work threatens more than ever to attack from their central positions. The American workplace as it is now threatens equity of any form (including gender), personal centeredness, and connectedness with others. There is an urgent need to contemplate the basis of our economy, and to reflect on the competitive urge that seeks to be bigger yet the expansion of the economy fails to benefit (I’ll say it) the 99%.

Where people in general are dehumanized to mere workers and spenders/buyers, happiness and harmony remain out of reach – for men AND women. And until men and women can all learn to nurture, give, and transcend the self, men and women remain in a tug-of-war that cannot conclude. You can bring the woman into the boardroom, but until you can bring the man into the diaper-changing bathroom – and the diaper-changing setup into the men’s bathroom – you will not truly succeed in achieving gender equity.

PS: This post refers to the majority of American families, not to exceptions for which anyone may provide anecdotal evidence.

Check one: super-mother OR super-professional

Today I was super-mother. At least by my standards; probably not yours. I thoroughly tidied the entire house – of course, you need ONE remaining room, don’t you, to shove all the bits and bobs in? I picked up every bit of paper from the carpets: Raihana is learning to write, draw and cut, and this means the entire carpet looks like confetti. And then there were the various odds and ends that are the greatest nightmare of all. Now, bits of trash are easy: pick up, crumple, toss. But odd screws, purple pencils, binder clips, … those are things that need to be individually placed in specific locales. Dozens of items.

All this, for a playdate for Raihana. Yes, I know it’s just another 5-year old but I don’t want Raihana’s friends’ parents wondering if their child should be wading knee-deep in confetti-covered carpets. She and her friend danced around each other happily, pulling ugly faces and giggling nonstop. The success of the arrangement was most satisfying.

Then I took Raihana to the grocery store, and hauled a ton of eggplant, plums, cherries, honeydew, zucchini, eggs … and so on. No delicious cheese puffs and no candy. In horrific 108 degree heat – horrific because it’s been going on and on for weeks – we headed back home.

Immediately I got to work getting Raihana her meal. I gave her 3 healthy meals today. I cut no corners. No shortcuts. No french fries, no unsavoury wet slaps of deli meats, no crackers, no hot dogs, even. Green beans, broccoli, rice, tilapia, and such like. I timed everything just right. I knew she would be hungry when we were grocery shopping, but I avoided the Burger King nearby, and instead offered her deli bread from the grocery cart. I worked to get her hungry, and waited in the corner to pounce with my healthful meal. It was very successful.

Then I gave her a happy bubble bath, and got her dressed within a few minutes of a home visit by a teacher. I allowed her a little bit of television so I could get dinner together – and that was a fun video on biology. I warmed the spinach-and-chicken curry I’d made the day before, cooked rice, made a salad for Svend – herb mix sprinkled with strawberries, grape tomatoes, sesame seed oil and sunflower seeds – he’d had a long week of fasting and commuting. Then I started work on a zucchini-goatcheese-spinach quiche. (No, this kind of volume is extremely unlike me. This is why this level of self-congratulation and self-satisfaction is unlike me, mostly). At 10 the quiche was ready to be sampled, and to be put away for the next day.

I thought to myself, Lord, I’ve had a good day. Raihana’s had fun. Svend’s had a hearty meal. They’ve both had healthy meals. I’ve cooked and cleaned my butt off. I’ve had a good meal too. And I mean, how much more productive can you get?

And then, as from several incarnations away, a dim thought crossed my mind like a dark cloud floating before the sun.

I didn’t get a lick of work on my writing done today.

****************

When Raihana was at summer school, my schedule was: get R ready, drop her off, get my coffee, and write, write, write, until pick-up time. Frozen fish and fries. Steamed broccoli and boiled eggs. Laundry when necessary. In June, I felt satisfied when I surveyed my steady progress on the manuscript.

But with the 2-week break before the fall, this schedule came apart. I had to rediscover togetherness with my 5-year old. All day. All day, day after day. And it is sweet. Inexpressibly sweet.

Except when that thought crosses my mind.

Now, I mostly prowl around the edges of the day and night, watching hungrily for scraps of time, in 15-30 minute increments, where I can clean up Chapter 2, or prune the Conclusion. I take Raihana to Panera, and while she watches a cartoon on my laptop, I read the manuscript and make notes. I bring her home and stick a DVD in for her to watch, while I get some work done: soon, she will come to join me, rehearsing the show, adapting it to her own imagination, forcing me to engage with her, while I gaze longingly back at the raw text on the screen. Days like today are rare. I can almost never allow myself to immerse myself in my home, its order, food, an organic daily rhythm, Raihana’s needs and her imagination.

That’s when I am reminded of the inescapable dilemma of today’s woman. The precarious balancing act where each end of the balancing pole is an entire life in itself – a full time job. On the one hand, cooking, cleaning, maintaining a household, laughing and playing and reading with the child/ren, observing good bedtime hours, and so on. On the other side, writing a book while simultaneously working on a book review, preparing syllabi, teaching, advising, serving on committees, serving students, networking, conferencing, research, grants, oh and yes, reading books and articles to stay on top of the multitude of disciplines that are all my areas. Both of these must be done at the same time, and in perfect balance. And to have any sense of joy about it, they must be done WELL. If they are not, well, in this economy and this market, you know there is a throng at the gate waiting to devour the scraps that were initially thrown to you.

Of course, to be able to achieve this balance in any degree and with any quality at all, you have to have a perfect constitution: a continually productive mind; a congenial work environment; a strong and fit body; a merely moderate need for food and sleep (there’s not enough time in the day for much, and it’s better if you function like a camel for food and like a bear for sleep: wait till you get the chance.) And we all know that you must also have an audience for your efforts which is inclined to see the good you do, and disinclined to focus on your flaws. Merit is relative. And vested interests are ever present.

I am not the only one who bears the burden of such balancing. I am, in fact, a fortunate one among so many. Svend pitches in whenever he can. But the workplace for men is perhaps even less permissive when it comes to domestic responsibilities (“why? Where’s his wife? Can’t she pick up/care for/drop off the child?”) The matrix, the world of possibility that I am positioned within, is a crippling one.

I hope that one day, Raihana will grow up to not bear the burden of all of this in so inequitable a fashion as women bear today.

I hope that the worker of today, man or woman, becomes whole tomorrow – not divided, torn, and ripped apart at all times. I hope that the worker of today becomes a human being tomorrow – that the domestic, the caregiving, the parenting – these do not become the random bits and bobs of not-quite-trash that we brush under the carpet so that our professional colleagues think well of us. I hope that the worker is permitted real life, family, flaws, hiccups, less than perfect productivity – I pray that labor becomes joy, and I pray that our non-laboring lives regain their forbidden joys some day.

The Gay Damascus Girl Blog-Hoax

In the good old days, charlatans had to perfect a performance. The routine had to be complete with artifacts and props, ointments and sheep-heads. Frauds had to learn how to face their challengers, and respond to them. You would have to look in the eyes of your dupes and earn their conviction.

No longer. Today, frauds and charlatans only need a computer and internet access. Or just a trip to the library to use their computers. Voila. You have a persona. A whole new life. A political cause. You can BE a beloved political and personal cause. Have your face splashed on placards and flyers, your words in the hearts of your supporters – except their your lies. The expense of fraud has gone down so terribly that the miracle today is that there are still plenty of people in the world who tell the truth. People who are true to themselves – somewhat.

The case study of Tom McMaster the Syrian Lesbian demonstrates any number of issues: try the Western fascination with Muslim women’s victimhood; or the gullible eagerness to buy into Middle Eastern brutality and human rights violations; perhaps the ease of easing into new personae; the nature of human connection in this era, the fragile hold on reality – the revision of the very nature of ‘reality.’ I’m supposed to be working on a book manuscript, so I’ll let you continue to develop the list of issues that the Gay Damascus Girl blog-hoax generates.

And you may either continue to reflect on that hoax in the virtual corridor, or you may go back to your own job, family, or online shopping. Enjoy.

Details on the “Syrian Lesbian” here, here and here, thanks to Fatemeh Fakhraie.

Bewilderment is sometimes religious: the horrors of child abuse

28-year old Melissa Huckaby kidnapped 8-year old Sandra Cantu, raped her with a foreign object, and murdered her. Sandra’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase, in an irrigation pond. When all the amazement over a woman (and a mother) being a rapist and a murderer was done, we are left with the tragedy, the terror and the brutalization that Sandra underwent.

Every day, all over the world, children are raped. Children are brutalized and beaten. Children are exploited for sex. Children are used for labor. Children are forced to beg – many of those are maimed so that they may bring in greater earnings. Children are sold into slavery and prostitution. And while we may prefer to treat this as a problem of poor brown folks, the problem is here too.   Children are starved to death, powerless, with food just feet away from them. Children are deprived of normalcy, innocence, happiness.

As a parent, as a religious person, as a human being, in witnessing such crimes against innocence, I cannot escape that horror that shakes me to the core. Having been raised in the “developing world” – as it is optimistically described, despite the tentacles that continue to probe its insides, I know how much worse the fate is that awaits victims of brutalization.

It is difficult, often, in the face of such agony, to face the world that contains such horrors. It is difficult to make sense of anything at all.

Many times a day, when I look upon my 4-year old daughter playing with bubbles in the bathtub, the intense and horrific images of Shaniya Davis’s fate pass before my eyes.  As I hold her to comfort her grief over a lost stuffed toy, I see the bizarre image of pimps kidnapping children, orphaned in the Pakistani earthquake. I cannot stop thinking about parents selling their daughter Sumayya (7) so they could build a new house.

I do not understand. I cannot bear to have my daughter shiver in the snow. Her fear of a “How to Train Your Dragon” battle scene cuts me to the quick. But there are mothers who force their daughters into beauty pageants. There are mothers who abuse, neglect, beat, starve and sell their children. But most mothers would lay down their lives for their children. A mother’s heart breaking for her child’s pain, fear, suffering, hunger, cannot understand – a mother’s heart breaking for any child because all children must must must have innocence, peace, happiness, play, food, sunshine, and free air. And too, too many children do not. I do not understand a world where children suffer, are brutalized, are beaten, are raped, and die terrible deaths.

As a religious person, this I find to be a mystery I cannot fathom.

Suffering can cultivate strength in some people. In the Surah of the Cave, we read of how Khidr teaches Moses lessons about the ultimate wisdom of Fate, teaches him how suffering and death may serve a higher purpose and may bring about ease in the future.

Rape and abuse, as far as we know, do not have salutary effects upon a child’s future.

With the scale and degree of suffering, misery, victimization that we see today among children, this is a hidden blessing in no shape or form. This is a grotesque, satanic, evil inversion of the very nature of humanity.

The revulsion that you and I feel when we hear of Shaniya Davis’s rape, or the little orphan Aisha being sold into prostitution is, I think, entirely religious. The horror at sharing species with a being who would use physical power over a child to force her into sex is not a “secular” or anti-religious impulse. It is an instinct that attacks, from the very gut, behavior that is unnatural, behavior that is the total inversion of what it should be – protective of childhood innocence. The philosophical incomprehension is spiritual, at some level. There are other ways of religiously processing such horrors and surviving their impact, but this is one.

But it is hard to not understand. The intense physicality of child abuse is of a nature that does not allow us to retreat from it. It’s not like famine due to natural causes, or like the destruction wrought by a tsunami. It is ugly. If we do not understand its occurrence in the same world that we occupy, how can we accept the world in which we live? How can we accept or trust or face fellow members of the human race, who would use small children in kiddy porn to make dollars? How can we understand?

As a mother, I have gradually come to the conclusion that it is not for us to understand.

It is not decent for us to indulge, to luxuriate in the ultimately patrician pastime of making sense of these horrors. A God’s eye view is not for us. The only option that remains for us is to fight these crimes, comprehending or not. Whether we can sociologically process root causes, whether success ensues or not, whether we can prevent one Huckaby from victimizing one more Sandra Cantu, we should not waste time pondering the damned shame of such lives and such deaths. Reflecting upon such things overlong, and comforting ourselves with explanations or fine chocolates, this is effort that should be spent upon fighting abuse, kiddy porn, war, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, lawlessness, any of the potential factors involved in human misery.

This, I think, is the only truly religious response to such things.

A walking headscarf and murder in broad daylight

My latest blog post at Religion Dispatches mourns the murder of Marwa Sherbini and the attack on humanity, justice, law and security.

Martyr of the Hijab: Marwa Sherbini, a Walking Veil?