Wearing his turban of power among his cheering male supporters, today in Iran the Ayatollah as highest Islamic leader spoke out against the people demonstrating for greater freedom. Why would Iran as icon of political Islam try to keep shrouding and silencing women? [photo credit of Turban Guy, AP online; all social commentary, Jude Dude]
Shrouded and silenced women are less likely to have a chance for action or a voice in gaining their freedom. Shrouded and silenced women cannot show or tell their physical and emotional bruises (and worse) at men’s hands.
Iran’s religious base does not keep women safe from male violence any more than women are subjected to violence all over the world in the longest war. Not that all females are pacifist. However, reputable statistics on serious degrees of violence confirm what we know from personal experience and headlines — men in general (not all men, but mainly men) are the seriously violent gender.
Despite what we all know from living on this planet, the issue of male violence continues to be silenced, repressed and “spun” to such a degree that the obviously higher rate of male (compared to female) acts of serious violence still get debated online as if language about the topic can override the real-world actions of men. In reality, FBI Supplementary homicide reports (1976-2005) showed this about murder in the U.S.: Male offenders for all homicides are 88.8%. Women: 11.2%.
Where one intimate partner murders another, males commit 65.5% of these homicides, females: 29.2% (percentages apparently off 100% where no clear perpetrator found). When children are victims, men murdered them 61.8% of the time, women: 38.2%. When elderly victims are killed, men commit 93.5% of these crimes, women: 6.5%. In cases of serial killing men are the offenders 93.5% of the time, women: 6.5%. In instances where two or more offenders work together to commit a homicide men are the offenders 91.6% of the time, women: 8.4%.
Beyond the daily acts of male violence, if we attribute to men (overwhelmingly the world’s leadership class) responsibility for international and intra-national (civil) wars, the sum of violence skyrockets (about 50 million deaths in World War II alone). The male leadership of North Korea bandies nukes about in 2009, other global male leaders have access to pushing the nuclear button, the male leadership of Iran uses brute force to buttress an election it stole, the male leadership everywhere implicates the citizenry in declared and undeclared wars of violence. As subtext for all the warring behavior — men as a global gender class keep women in a subordinate gender class.
As a guy, and parent of a daughter, I see it. How can anybody without an anti-woman discriminatory agenda claim it’s not so?
If say, dogs, began hurting men at the rate that men hurt women, be assured there would be a global outcry by men for the elimination of dogs. I’m just saying, not recommending. Because I’m a guy, I know there would be a global outcry by men to get rid of the dogs. Forgiveness was invented as something men want from women, not something men in practice extend to those who hurt men. (The hypocrisy of lip service by men about forgiveness, particularly when women are in the audience? Merely another tool of man-made manipulation against the inherent good natures of women.)
When women are shrouded and silenced by men, then women cannot research and cannot report the truth about male violence as Rachel Jewkes, Clare Nullis and Maria Jose Alcala have done today. (See excerpts from AP’s report below; note the names of the unshrouded and unsilenced women who have done the good work to speak out about male violence.)
By CLARE NULLIS, Associated Press Writer Clare Nullis, Associated Press Writer –
Fri Jun 19, 3:27 pm ET
CAPE TOWN, South Africa – A leading South African research group said one in four male South Africans it surveyed admitted to committing rape — a finding that cast a harsh light on a culture of sexual violence that victims groups say is deeply embedded in society. … Chief researcher Rachel Jewkes said Friday that the findings were “shocking” but “not unexpected.” Opposition political parties said they were horrified, but victim support groups said they were not surprised. … The research council survey said that nearly 20 percent of those [men] who admitted sexual abuse had the AIDS virus — only slightly higher than the 18 percent infection rate among men not involved in rape. It said that 17 percent of the men surveyed admitted to attempted rape, and 9 percent said they had taken part in gang rapes. In all, 42 percent of men surveyed said they had been physically violent to an intimate partner (current or ex-girlfriend or wife), including 14 percent in the past year. … Many victim support groups complain that rape cases are repeatedly postponed and little is done to protect the woman from the trauma of facing her tormentor. Most cases don’t even reach court. … “Rape is one of the most brutal human rights violations in the world,” said Maria Jose Alcala, who heads the U.N. development fund’s effort to curtail violence against women. “It is a stark manifestation of just how little value our societies place on the lives and dignity of women and girls.”
But back to political Islam, which is where this post started. Before you buy the misguided multi-culti notion that who wears what on her or his head is merely about “culture” and not rooted in political Islam’s misogyny, remember a fallen hero, a woman who was in fact silenced by a man murdering her for her “sin” of not wearing the correct shroud.
“[February 20, 2007] Female Pakistani minister shot dead for ‘breaking Islamic dress code’ [Reported by Devika Bhat and Zahid Hussain in Islamabad, timesonline.co.uk; photo credit (Rahat Dar/EPA)]”
Zilla Huma Usman was an ally of President Pervez Musharraf and promoted rights for women in Pakistan — an Islamic man murdered her because of her clothing and his interpretation of her “sin.” She had been the minister for social welfare in Punjab province, Pakistan — where another dangerous, male-led government has nukes and might try to kill us all.
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