Soraya Chemaly

A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You

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Dear Girls,

You are powerful beyond words, because you threaten to unravel the control of corrupt men who abuse their authority.

In the United States last week there were people who wouldn’t let boys play a baseball championship final because a girlwas on the opposing team. She’d already had to sit out two games because of their demands. Why? Did she, a competitive athlete and a member of her team, chose to? Was she being good and respectful when she acceded to their demands? Why were they not asked to forfeit their games? What messages were sent to her and her teammates? This is not complicated. It sent the wrong messages. Confusing messages. Incoherent messages. You need to know that she should have been allowed to play and not have had to sit out two games. These people, and others like them, all over the world, led exclusively by religious men, are scared of you and will not let you be. You worry them constantly.

…If you were not powerful, they would not take you so seriously and they take you very, very seriously. You should, too….

…Girls, these things happen because there are men with power who fear you and want to control you. I know that I have equated relatively benign baseball games with deadly, honor killings but, whereas one is a type of daily, seemingly harmless micro-aggression and the other is a lethal macro-aggression they share the same roots. The basis of both, and escalating actions in between, is the same: To teach you, and all girls subject to these men and their authority, a lesson: “Know your place.” I also know that there are places where girls are marginalized and hurt that are not religious. But all over the world these hypocritical, pious men, in their shamefully obvious wrongness, represent the sharp-edged tip of an iceberg, the visible surface of a deep and vast harm. They employ the full range of their earthly and divine influence to make sure, as early as possible, that you and the boys around you understand what they want your relative roles to be. Where there are patriarchal religions girls, in dramatically varying and extreme degrees, disproportionately suffer. Understand these men for what they are: bullies. Do not internalize what they would have you believe….

…Your very existence makes them anxious. And their anxiety is particularly high because you have something no generation of girls has had before — globally connected communities of men and women who support your equality and freedom. Like guns, germs and steel, this transformative technology, which enables me to write to you here, alters geography, changes societies and dismantles systems of control — it makes the world a smaller place and it creates, even if slowly in some places, positive change for girls like you. You see, until now, these men could count on, indeed they could ensure, that you and the women around you were house-bound and isolated. Many of you still are. But now, there are millions and millions and millions people who are thinking about you and challenging these men every single day. You have the speed of light on your side and unless someone permanently turns the lights out, those days are gone. So, although you might feel like you are alone, you are not.

How do you threaten them? A girl, alone? By being able, strong, confident and yes, shameless. You may not “naturally” be interested in domesticity, piety, purity and submission, and they rely on your commitment to those things to order their worlds. Their actions, from one end of the spectrum to the other, are designed to fill you with self-doubt and, ultimately, fear — either bodily or spiritual — because otherwise you, and the young boys around you, will be fully aware of your strength and potential…

…Because of this, they single-mindedly focus their attention on you, your body, your clothes, your hair, your abilities, your physical freedom. When their “manners” and “morals” are not universally applicable, but different for boys and girls, you can be sure that this is why. They seek to teach you, subtly, through small slights and gendered expectations, that you are “different,” weak, unworthy, incapable. The sadness is that, in their perception, if you are none of these things, then they are not strong, worthy and capable. This is not an excuse, but an explanation. It’s why they find infinite “benevolent” ways to undermine and disparage you, all in the name of “God’s word.” When that fails, they resort to violence. All over the world, their anxiety is manifest in a spectrum of actions ranging from mild paternalism, respectful of “proper boundaries,” to deadly enforcement of their rules…

…Even “beating the gay” out of children, especially boys who are “more like” you, is aimed at you. Because if boys are “more like girls,” something these men believe is fundamentally inferior, then you can be “more like boys.” That causes ambiguity and destroys their carefully defined hierarchies and that is intolerable to them.

Fear is why they insist there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Don’t believe them. Fear is why they want you to cover your body. There is nothing wrong with your body, and your body is not to blame. Whether you chose to expose your body or to cover it up, consider the degree to which either choice is defined by a reduction of your character to narrow sexuality by a culture that refuses to hold men accountable for their actions and requires you to either radically display ourself for men’s pleasure or withdraw from the world and be held in reserve. Either way, ask who is defining your worth and by what measure. Fear is why they tell you you are so different from boys. You, and the boys you know, understand that your bodies are different, but that you are far more alike than dissimilar. Threatened, insecure, adult men say otherwise. Don’t give in. Even if you’re quiet. The differences these religious authorities exaggerate are simply pillars of oppression used to teach boys and girls that women’s subjugation is “natural” and “divine.” Reject them and their ideas.

Safer to Give Birth in Bosnia and Kuwait than US

Every 90 seconds, somewhere in the world, a woman diesfrom a pregnancy-related complication. This isn’t just a “third world” problem. The United States currently ranks 50th in the world for maternal health. It is safer to give birth in Bosnia or Kuwait than in California. But what we do here ultimately affects women everywhere. This is a matter of inequality and political will.

When I was eight months pregnant with my first child, my cousin died in a San Francisco delivery room giving birth to her third. And while both of my pregnancies were high-risk and dangerous, I did not almost die like my sister during childbirth. She lost her baby after, with only the benefit of quickly administered topical anesthesia, she underwent an emergency Caesarian section to save her life. My best friend had to be raced, during labor, to a second hospital in critical care during her life-threatening delivery. Another close friend hemorrhaged so badly she required twelve liters of blood after delivering. I could easily continue this list with stories of people I know intimately.

Pregnancy can be difficult and complicated and giving birth often dangerous and sometimes life threatening. (Something legislators who fancy themselves doctors seem to be in complete ignorance of.) We don’t like to talk about these difficulties and dangers in a culture that idealizes and glorifies motherhood and holds women to manic and ridiculous standards for what is “good.” The examples I gave above took place in major hospitals where women had the best care available to them. Imagine what it is like for the literally billions of women with none of those resources. The risk of a woman in a developing country dying in these ways is 36 times what it is in a developed country. Me, my sister, my friends, you or a woman you know easily would have died giving birth in these countries. Many do here. Of the estimated 210 million women who become pregnant each year, 20 million will experience life-threatening complications.

For these women and their families, there is no Mother’s Day. That’s why this year, the maternal health advocacy organization Every Mother Counts is asking you, women and men, to act in solidarity on Mother’s Day to raise awareness and help change the lives of millions of women who will otherwise die becoming mothers.

The cornerstone of their newly launched campaign, “No Mother’s Day,” is the following Public Service Announcement, directed by her husband, actor and filmmaker Edward Burns:

According the the World Health Organization’s Trends in Maternal Mortality Report:

• Every 90 seconds a woman dies from a pregnancy related death, that’s 1,000 women a day
• 90 percent of these deaths are preventable
• 99 percent of maternal deaths that took place in 2008 (most recent data from 2010 study) occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (57 percent) and South Asia (30 percent)
• 50 percent of all maternal deaths take place during the first 48 hours after delivery.
• Seven million women a year suffer critical complications. For every woman that dies, another 20 experience debilitating and life threatening harm.

“Equal Enough” is Unacceptable

American women need to be recognized as full citizens. Yes, women in this country. It’s me again, sitting in my office, by myself, saying that “equal enough” is NOT. But, I am not alone.  Tomorrow, Saturday, April 28th, thousands of women and men will participate in 53 marches and rallies for women’s rights in 45 states and the District of Columbia. These events are part of UNITEWOMEN.ORG movement against the War on Women. 

Why should you march?

Because women’s and girls’ fundamental rights, to privacy, to life, to bodily integrity, to chose when to plan their reproduction are being violated.

Because women can’t afford to nor should be forced to live their lives according to rules that assume they are dependent on men.

Because women and girls should not be punished, denigrated and publicly humiliated for speaking civilly and intelligently in their own interest or making their own choices.

Because boys and girls should be taught what equality, not entitlement, means.

Without fail, when I talk to people about gender inequality in the United States, someone inevitably says some variation of this: “Compared to other women, women here are equal enough.” First of all, women arenot in competition with other women for safety from violence and freedom. Second, this type of comparison, with its echo of threat, is an unacceptable and irrelevant framework for considering citizenship and protection under the law. Women are citizens and should have the full rights and privileges of citizens.

We should. But we don’t.

If you are uncertain about what I am saying and think I am exaggerating the harm, consider the effect of one distillation of events: the degree to which the conservative “political” agenda requires that all women, regardless of color, faith, economic status or sexual preference, seek men’s review and approval before acting. (Those factors, race, economic status, sexual preference magnify the effect.) “Informed consent, ” “permission slips,” wage policies determined because “money may be more important to men,” “man-up finances,” women’s health care being determined by all-male religious leaders and congressional panels,refusal to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act because of homophobia (and racism). On and on and one: every time the baseline requirement for women to exercise their rights and live freely is the intervention and approval of men. This is not just unfair to girls and women, but imposes unreasonable responsibilities and pressures on boys and men.

Even the phrasing of hot button issues — “Mommy Wars” and “Slutgate” — are coded conversations that define women, their health, their choices and their incomes primarily in terms of their relationships to men. Those frameworks are unacceptable. These attempts to legislate the subordination of women are not just distasteful and embarrassing but designed ultimately to humiliate women and keep them in their place.

 Time and again, women and their rights are made marginal and secondary to almost everything else and debated away as a matter of expedience.

You should march because this is unacceptable.

You should march because women have yet to be recognized as full citizens, with agency in both the private and public spheres.