FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman

 I believe that David Brooks is a smart man. I also believe that deep within him lies a belief in Manichaeism, that is, that the world is divided into dark and light, good and evil, and each person must choose his or her side or thereby lose his soul.

More important for Brooks, each nation must choose its side, or lose its way. For Brooks:

If you were graduating from Princeton in the first part of the 20th century, you probably heard the university president, John Hibben, deliver one of his commencement addresses. Hibben’s running theme, which was common at that time, was that each person is part angel, part devil. Life is a struggle to push back against the evils of the world without succumbing to the passions of the beast lurking inside.

You, and others of your era, would have been aware that there is evil in the world, and if you weren’t aware, the presence of Hitler and Stalin would have confirmed it. You would have known it is necessary to fight that evil.

For Brooks, such a time in world history was defined by clear enemies: those who murdered the innocent, and those who came to their rescue (forgetting the so-called rescuers who turned the innocent away because they were undesirables). You’ll notice in his history that Stalin and Hitler are mentioned, but not Franco, for our response to Franco was shameful, and many good men and women died on our watch while we did nothing.

But, because we knew we were not perfect, Brooks says, we would have been aware.

At the same time, you would have had a lingering awareness of the sinfulness within yourself. As the cold war strategist George F. Kennan would put it: “The fact of the matter is that there is a little bit of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us.”

So as you act to combat evil, you wouldn’t want to get carried away by your own righteousness or be seduced by the belief that you are innocent. Even fighting evil can be corrupting.

As a matter of policy, you would have thought it wise to constrain your own power within institutions. America should fight the Soviet Union, but it should girdle its might within NATO. As Harry Truman said: “We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please.”

And you would have championed the spread of democracy, knowing that democracy is the only system that fits humanity’s noble yet sinful nature. As the midcentury theologian Reinhold Niebuhr declared: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

You would, in short, have been a cold war liberal.

I love this. A cold war liberal. Were these the fine folks that dragged us into the Korean War?  Were these the cold war liberals who failed to help the Hungarians in 1956? Were they the cold war liberals who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion? Did they invade the Dominican Republic?

Cold war liberalism had a fine run in the middle third of the 20th century, and it has lingered here and there since. Scoop Jackson kept the flame alive in the 1970s.

Was that before or after we murdered Allende and installed Pinochet? Helped the Argentinian Generals with their Dirty War? Supported the torturous regimes in Africa? And Reagan? What do we qualify him as?

Actually Reagan is missing from Brooks’ entire formulation. Shall we talk about the millions who starved while Reagan played war games? Or the regimes in Central America that butchered their people funded by our illegal arms deals with Iran?

But Brooks has a new champion. Someone he can, well, patronize, because he’s a “young thoughtful black man.”

Barack Obama never bought into these shifts. In the past few weeks, he has revived the Christian realism that undergirded cold war liberal thinking and tried to apply it to a different world.

Obama’s race probably played a role here. As a young thoughtful black man, he would have become familiar with prophetic Christianity and the human tendency toward corruption; familiar with the tragic sensibility of Lincoln’s second inaugural; familiar with the guarded pessimism of Niebuhr, who had such a profound influence on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Brooks wants us to believe that we can believe in Obama because he will take a Christian approach to fighting evil in the world. And while it might not be the Christianity of a King or a Bonhoeffer, we must be assured that it’s not the Christianity of Urban II, who began the First Crusade.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am a Pacifist, but I do believe that we cannot sit on our hands when evil is being done to others. I believe that, if there is a purpose to our lives, it is that we were put on this earth to help each other out. That means we feed people, we comfort them, we clothe them, and, if need be, we protect them from bullies.

My thoughts about this have been influenced by a wise woman I know from Pakistan, who reminds me that it is not the responsibility of Western women to rescue women persecuted by their religion, but rather to work with these women to empower them so that they may throw off their own shackles.

But reality tells me that sometimes, violence is involved. I’m not a Manichean. There is too much gray within me. But that gray still calls out for justice.

And, as I have stated before, I am not a Christian.

And so, I pull out the speech, the inspiration, that reminds me of my responsibility. It is a responsibility that reminds that a lot of evil has been done in the name of doing good. But it is a responsibility that comes from the artist’s heart, from the rebel’s heart, from a Nobel Laureate’s heart.

“That, I believe, is all I had to say. We are faced with evil. And, as
for me, I feel rather as Augustine did before becoming a Christian when
he said: “I tried to find the source of evil and I got nowhere.” But it
is also true that I, and a few others, know what must be done, if not
to reduce evil, at least not to add to it. Perhaps we cannot prevent
this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we
can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us,
who else in the world can help us do this?

Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great
unequal battle has begun. I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to
the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought, and I know
that certain men at least have resolved to do so. I merely fear they
will occasionally feel somewhat alone, that they are in fact alone, and
that after an interval of two thousand years we may see the sacrifice
of Socrates repeated several times. The program for the future is
either a permanent dialogue or the solemn and significant putting to
death of any who have experienced dialogue. After having contributed my reply, the question that I ask Christians is this: “Will Socrates still
be alone and is there nothing in him and in your doctrine that urges
you to join us?”

It may be, I am well aware, that Christianity will answer negatively.
Oh, not by your mouths, I am convinced. But it may be, and this is even
more probable, that Christianity will insist on maintaining a
compromise or else giving its condemnations the obscure form of the
encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the
virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago. In that
case Christians will live and Christianity will die. In that case the
others will in fact pay for the sacrifice. In any case such a future is
not within my province to decide, despite all the hope and anguish it
awakens in me. I can speak only of what I know. And what I know–which sometimes creates a deep longing in me–is that if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices–millions, I say–throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and for men.”
Albert Camus–”The Unbeliever and Christians” from Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

 It was Monday morning and I woke up to prepare my kids for school, when I noticed that Busi was still sleeping.  So I went outside to Bongiwe’s room to wake her up.  To my surprise and disgust, Busi had slept in the same room with Bongi- her boyfriend- and Lugelo, Bongi’s daughter.

The thing about Bongi’s boyfriend is that he is a convicted rapist.  He was just released from a 15 year jail sentence, for gang raping a girl from our neighbourhood years ago.  And I was against the affair, but also knew that I can’t tell her how to lead her life.  But, again I thought it was not fair that Lerato has to see the guy all over again.

I humbly asked my sister to go meet with her lover some place not at home, and we had a fight.  After sometime I asked her not to sleep in the same room with her daugther and the guy, and we had a fight again.  Then I decided to take a back seat.  After all it’s her life and her daughters.

Oh my god!  I really lost it when I walked in the room to find Busi and the boyfriend.  I couldn’t even control my anger.  We had a heated argument that turned physical.  Truly speaking, I hate the fact that I was born into this family.

My mom and gran believe that I am wrong and Bongi is right.  They think this guy learned his lesson and he won’t do it again.  But I say a leopard wont change it’s spot.  As for Bongi, what is she teaching her young sister?  How can she sleep in the same room with her boyfriend and Busi? As for my parents, why cant they separate wrong from right?  In our culture it’s wrong, immoral and disrespecting for a boy to sleep in a girl’s home.  I don’t understand how a woman can date a man who has no regard for another woman’s feelings.  A man who violated, humiliated another woman’s rights.  A man who took away something special and unique from this girl, something that he can’t take back.  Not even a jail sentence can erase that awful day.

How can my sister fall in love with this animal?  How does she really feel when she makes love to an ex-rapist?  How can she bring this man in our lives for god’s sake?  We also have baby girls.  Isn’t there a chance that one day the devil can start whispering to him?  I don’t want to be there when something like that happens.

Bitter? Moi?

Mais, non! I live in the greatest country in the world. Everything we touch turns to gold! Why, just look at all the great things we’ve accomplished in Afghanistan!

In today’s Guardian, we learn that Three Cups of Tea and The Kite Runner be damned, things are NOT better for women in Afghanistan.

Afghan women protest at the proposed new family law Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

(For more of my writing on this subject in the past, see When Will Women Matter; Faces; Will Women Pay for Peace in Afghanistan; and How Can I Bear It?.)

According to reporter Janine di Giovani:

Eight years later I returned, but the Afghanistan I found was far from jubilant. Despite the money poured into reconstruction and development, it is one of the five poorest countries in the world. There is 40% unemployment – nearly 80% in some parts of the country. A third of children under five are malnourished. Life expectancy is 43 – and it is one of only three countries in the world where women die earlier than men.

Did you read that statistic? LIFE EXPECTANCY IS 43 and women die earlier than men. 

You would think, given those miserable statistics, that perhaps the United States and the Afghan government would be looking at ways to improve the lives of its people, especially its women.

Yeah, right. When things aren’t going right in a society, what’s the first thing that gets blamed? Lax morality. And who is responsible for lax morality? Yep. Us. Those daughters of Eve.

I arrived to meet women before the presidential elections next month and to talk about a new law, which if brought in, could have drastic repercussions for women. The Shia Family Planning law was signed last March by President Hamid Karzai in an attempt, many believe, to appease powerful mullahs. The Afghan constitution allows Shias to have a separate family law from the Sunni majority based on traditional Shia jurisprudence, and some think the law is linked to the August elections and the Shia electorate who would have to abide by it (they could form up to 20% of the electorate).

The proposed law led to furious protests from women’s groups. It sanctioned marital rape and brought back Taliban-era restrictions on women by outlining when a woman could leave her house and the circumstances in which she has to have sex with her husband; Shia woman would be allowed to leave home alone “for a legitimate purpose” only which the law does not define, and could refuse sex with their husbands only when ill or menstruating.

You see? The best thing for a woman who is not going to live very long anyway is to just have sex with her husband whether she wants to or not; to stay in her house; and to keep her fucking pie-hole shut.

Following international outrage, Karzai backtracked and said the law would be reviewed. This month it was amended and re-signed by the president, but has not yet been ratified by parliament. Human rights groups say it is unclear how much the amendments have done to improve the law. And the law has already achieved its aim – instilling fear and insecurity among an already traumatised female population.

Soraya Sobhrang, a human rights activist I met in her Kabul office, says, “The law will affect all women if it goes through. It opens the door for other repressive laws to be passed, for Sunni Muslims as well as Shia.” A young doctor friend, Najeeb Shawal, says he is seeing more female patients who were depressed since news of the law emerged. “They have the kind of hopelessness that comes with knowing your life is incredibly repressed. And might become more so.”

Congratulations. The law is already working. We love it when women are depressed. That means we don’t need to worry about them going outside and making a ruckus. Instead, they’ll just stay inside, and, if we’re really lucky, they’ll stick their heads in gas ovens or set their burqas on fire. Everybody wins!

By the way. Karzai’s original excuse for signing the law? He didn’t read it before he signed it. 

There are bright spots in Afghanistan:

Bamiyan is the home of the Shia Hazara, the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. I am surprised by the “city’s” remoteness because there has been a huge outcry here from the women over the law: demonstrations, protests on the radio, grass roots organisations very quickly coming together. I meet one of the protest leaders in a small restaurant overlooking the holes in the mountain left when the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddha statues there in 2001. Batool Mohammadi is 27, black-robed, and heavily pregnant. “The law does not fit with humanitarian law,” she says. Batool, a Hazara, comes from the generation of Afghan women born after the Soviet invasion and raised during the Taliban era. She has only known war, conflict and repression. The small window of triumph after the fall of the Taliban – who brutally repressed the Hazaras – has given her a taste of freedom and she is not ready to give it up. “In an area as traditional as Bamiyan, one of the major problems with this law is that it will stop the trend towards modernisation.” As Batool leaves, she says that when her baby is born in June, she wants him or her to enter a world moving towards equality, not repression.

The governor, Habiba Sarabi, is the former Minister of Women and as a Shia will have to obey the law if it is passed. She meets us in her sparse office, a grim, Soviet-style building set on a windswept plain. There are plates of nuts and fruits and the governor, looking exhausted, nibbles dried apricot. At 53, Sarabi is no-nonsense. She is a chemist by trade and speaks good English. The daughter of an illiterate mother who encouraged her daughter to read and write, she tells me when she was young she was mocked as she walked to school alone. Having struggled so hard it was particularly hard to see her own daughter, now 24, denied education under the Taliban. The family escaped to Pakistan and Sarabi worked on human rights and women’s projects.

On the new law, she tries to be diplomatic, but I can tell she is concerned: “Fortunately, women raised their voice.” She is confident (perhaps overly so) that the law will not go through. But later, at her residence, when she curls her stockinged feet under her, she admits the wider crisis. Bamiyan is one of the few success stories in Afghanistan: it is poppy-free, the government functions well, and as she points out, “It is the safest place in Afghanistan. The rule of law is important here.” She has improved the education and health services (instigating midwife programmes, for example, in a province that has one major hospital). But can this last? If, following elections, Karzai succumbs to the mullahs (who exercise huge political power in Bamiyan and the rest of the country), for how long will it be safe for women? Even Sarabi finally admitted that if the law is ratified, it would affect her too.

But those women who have been unaffected by these new laws are rare. And a lot of women are frightened: who wouldn’t be?

Women who have managed to cross gender boundaries seem in a state of shock over the law. Jamila Barekzai is a police officer whose female colleague was killed by the Taliban last year in Kandahar for daring to do a mans’ job. When I go to meet her at the Central Afghan Police Headquarters on the edge of Kabul, next to one of the biggest Shia mosques in the city, she is wearing her olive uniform and heavy black eyeliner. She was transferred from Kandahar last year to Kabul when she thought she would be killed too. She takes out her mobile phone and plays a recording of an unnamed Taliban telling her to stop working, “or you will be taught the lesson we taught your friend”. She says she was mainly frightened for her children and touches the gun at her hip.

President Obama has committed more troops to Afghanistan, ostensibly for finding that guy (what was his name? the one who blew up the towers?) and gettting the increasing threat of terrorism from the Swot Valley in Pakistan under control.

But are women on President Obama’s radar? Are we going to be willing to trade stability in the area for the lives of millions of Afghani women who will once again be confined to their homes, illiterate, ill-considered, depressed, and basic sperm receptacles for their husbands? Is this the legacy that Obama wants to leave in Afghanistan?

Or can we start, right from the beginning, by saying to Karzai that yes, we know you have us by the gas hose right now because you have access to that pipeline we want, but hey, women are people, too.

Please, President Obama. If we are to go to war in Afghanistan, make it mean something. I do not want to have to write in five years that we have subdued the terrorists, but once again, we have paid for it with women’s lives.

President Obama, First Lady Obama, Secretary of State Clinton–anyone–everyone–who will listen: do not turn your backs on the women of Afghanistan. They are not collateral damage. We are not collateral damage of war. We are human beings. We have feelings. And bodies. And we hurt. And we ache. And we grieve. And if, once again, we are told that it is more important that we are treated like pieces of shit so that some problem may be solved, it may be that some of us may not be able to take that anymore.

So please.

I beg you.

On my knees.

For the women of Afghanistan.
Don’t. Forget. Us.

When I leave, someone tells me the Taliban spring offensive has begun, American troops are pouring in, and President Karzai is beginning his political campaign. I keep thinking of Batool, the pregnant activist in Bamiyan, and her baby, and her life in 20 years’ time. If the law does not pass and women continue rolling on, she has a chance. If not, she might still be wearing a burka and never learn how to drive.

—–

Governor David A. Paterson has directed that flags on New York State government buildings be flown at half-staff on Thursday,  July 16, 2009,  in honor of  a Fort Drum Soldier  killed in Afghanistan on July 9, 2009.
Spec. Joshua R. Farris of La Grange, Texas, died in Wardak Pronvince of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.  Spec. Farris was a member to the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of 10th Mountain Division.
” I speak for all New Yorkers when I say that we will forever honor the service this young soldier gave to our nation, ” said Governor Paterson.  “He was not a native New Yorker, but we consider all soldiers stationed at Fort Drum to be one of our own.  On behalf of the people of the State, I extend our deepest sympathy to the family, friends and fellow soldiers of Sepc. Farris.”
Governor Paterson has directed the flags on all State buildings to be lowered to half-staff in honor and tribute to our State’s service members who are killed in action.

And the beat goes on….

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

–Virginia Woolf

I was in the midst of printing out this article, on the poor mothers of Haiti, when I spotted the most recenty copy of The Week, a subscription I still don’t know how I got, and whose viewpoint and presentation of the week’s events, I generally disagree with. But they do run quotations down a little sidebar, and the Woolf quotation made me sit up and take notice, because, in fact, I had been preparing to try to blog about this important article in the SUMMER 2009  Virginia Quarterly Review

I was intending to do just what Woolf was talking about: to be the observant fellow pointing at the outskirts of an agony. But it gets stranger, for the the book I had bought today with the intention of re-reading is Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, which talks about the fact that we are constantly looking at how others suffer–on television, through photography, internet, etc., and what does that do to us?

And here’s the part that’s a little mind-blowing. The first line of Sontag’s book is In June 1938 Virginia Woolf published Three Guineas, her brave, unwelcomed reflections on the roots of war. Sontag argues that, as Woolf had done when confronted with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, many of us feel that if we simply show “you” or the reader or the outside world, what have you, that those photographs will move you to the same action that we want you to take. That you will feel the same thing.

And so when I show you the ravages of starvation and malnutrition on the faces of women and children in Port-au-Prince, that you will do  ….
What?

What is it that I want you to do?

And suddenly, my desire to blog about what’s going on in Haiti feels exploitative, or some feeding of some part of myself that really, really does want to point to suffering and to tell you to do something about it. If I had the money, I think, I would change the world, feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate the illiterate, stop conflict.

And I feel guilty.

As if I am doing something wrong. Why am I writing about these things?

Sontag writes (pg. 18)

Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience, the cumulative offering by more than a century and a half’s worth of those professional, specialized tourists known as journalists. Warns are now also living rooms sights and sounds. Information about what is happenening elsewhere, called “news,” features conflict and violence—”If it bleeds, it leads” runs the venerable guidelines of tabloids and twenty-four-hour headline news shows–to which the the response is compassion, or indignation, or titilation, or approval, as each misery heaves into view.

We are all surveyors of the violence, the misery, the suffering of the human condition. Some of us seem to have little trouble shutting it out, insisting, for example, that what the photos at Abu Ghraib show us are simply frat pranks gone amok. Whereas I not only see in them great cruelty toward other humans, it makes me so angry that I want to shake it in your face and ask you what are you going to do about it?

Sontag’s book is brilliant and dense and I find myself wanting to quote huge swathes of it so that we could discuss it. But she is arguing among a number of interconnected points: What does the constant exposure to images of suffering do to us? Does it  make us more compassionate or less so? Does it make evil more banal and everyday? Does it desensitize us, make us cynical, passive?

But what’s the alternative? Not to look?

To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell’s flames. Still, it seems a good in itself to acknowledge, to have enlarged, one’s sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others. Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflincting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties to other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.

I have grown tired of hearing people who should know better say things such as “Americans don’t torture.” Even confronted with the photographs, they put it down to one or two bad apples. They do not accept that inflicting suffering upon other human beings is part of human nature.

Some of us believe ourselves to be incapable of deliberately inflicting such pain on others, and I believe this of myself, but I have not been in the place of those whose wickedness was provoked or whose suffering was recorded.

I know that when I decide to blog about the women of the Congo, or about PTSD, or the plight of children here or of Mother Earth, it feels like it’s coming from a place of a hard-earned determination to try to see the world as it is. And what’s more, to try to persuade you to see the world my way, too.

I want you to get angry that there are 300,000 child slaves on the island of Haiti. I want us to do something about it. I want us to do something about the traumatized bodies of the women of the Bakavu.

Okay, I’m beginning to breathe now, and I see where I am going with this. This afternoon, listening to NPR, someone said something about our collective desire to put what happened during the last administration behind us. But I’m not part of that collective desire.

I want the administration that ordered the illegal tortures, the war crimes, those people–even though they are Americans, and thus I should somehow believe that we, as Americans,  are better than that which we did–I want them to be punished.

I want to be absolved of any complicity in the invasion of Iraq. I want to be absolved of any feelings of guilt I have about what my fellow countrymen and women have done to the peoples of other lands. I am not willing to accept that we are all guilty because we let ourselves be fooled into going off to war against Iraq.

I was not fooled. I was never fooled. And I shouted and shouted, along with a lot of other people, and in the end, what did our shouting get us? An illegal war. Atrocities committed in our name. Torture.

I have this terrible feeling that I am beginning to understand what it was like to be an “ordinary German.” I didn’t vote for Bush; I didn’t support his policies; I wrote as much as I could against what he and his minions were doing. But it wasn’t enough. They still did it. And because we want so much to move on from this, to put it in the past, to move on to issues of health insurance and the economy, they will most likely get away with it.

And what, ultimately, did I do to stop them? Wrote a few letters? Participated in a few protests? Wrote and wrote? Cried? Argued?

Was there something else that I should have done?

That’s the question that I’m sitting here with at this late hour of the night for me. My talents are writing and teaching. But if all I did during the Iraq War was to write against it and teach ethical values, and the war still went on, and I did nothing more: I didn’t stop paying my taxes, I didn’t move to another country, I didn’t get myself arrested. I didn’t stop one single, solitary moment of the horror of what my nation perpetuated.

That’s fine. I’m one person. To think I could have changed the situation is too narcissism in the extreme; but to not have changed the situation is painful to me.

How do I make amends for what my country has done?

What more could I have done?

And thus I return to the blog post I was going to write about the women in Haiti. I suppose I would have quoted from the article, pulled more photos from it, and then, suggested you make a donation to the charities that are keeping those women alive. But if that’s all I did, would it have been enough?

Is being the observer on the outskirts of a calamity and pointing, enough?

Anyone?

Image taken from The Art of Romance: Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs by Joanna Bowring and Margaret O’Brien

Am I more than my body?

As a woman, of late, I feel as if I have had to defend the boundaries of my body in order to prove and preserve my personhood.

Forces abound that seek to put me in my place–violently, if need be. (Paul Krugman’s column this morning is masterful. Please read it.)

I see at work in our culture. I have written before about laying claim to my own body and rejecting government control over what I do with it. I have written my own privacy manifesta, declaring that my privacy is sacrosanct, and not subject to invasion by either the government or the moral scolds in our culture. And, in the past, disgusted with the Democratic leadership over issues such as confirming John Roberts and Samuel Alito without so much as a peep of protest, I considered leaving the party.

You know what? I’m tired. I’m tired of continually having to defend my right to my body. I’m tired of having to say that I’m not your brood mare, that I decide what enters my body, what I carry within my body. I’m tired of this fight. But I have daughters, so I’ll continue this fight as long as I need to.

But I want to say something else. Even as I defend and protect the boundaries of my flesh,  I am more than my body. Women are more than their bodies. Sometimes, I don’t think that everyone thinks so. I’ve read some of the recent posts to OS, and quite frankly, I’ve been sickened. Some of the things that have been written about women make us into nothing but cunts and asses; reduce us to our parts. Our mouths become only good for blow jobs. Our cunts and asses are only good for penetration. Our bodies are broken, bent, spread-eagled, impregnated and harvested for pleasure.

You all know that I’m not anti-sex. I write erotica. Multiple orgasms are … well … you know. And you all know how much I love the man who is my partner.

So, I don’t hate sex or men.

****

I do feel as if we are going backwards as a culture. If, at one point, we were moving toward a sense that women could control their own fertility, women were entitled to equal rights, women’s minds were as fine as men’s and we could compete with them in all intellectual fields, these days, I feel as if we’re having to re-establish that a woman is more than her uterus.

The right wing spews hate against gynecologists who perform abortions, and then refuses to accept responsibility for inciting hate crimes. In fact, to hear some tell it, it’s the pro-choice insistence on a woman’s right to abortion that caused the murder of Dr. George Tiller, not the hateful shit spewed by the right-wing talking wingnuts.

A Latina woman is nominated for the Supreme Court, and suddenly, we have discussions about whether menstruation will affect her ability to make decisions (or whether the pronunciation of her last name is unAmerican, or whether her eating of spicy food is unAmerican, or whether “empathy” makes her unqualified). Never mind that she went to some of the finest universities in the country. She’s a woman, and her body will prevent her from being able to think “rationally.”

I could go on and on.

But I want to get back to the point that I am more than my body. This is not the 15th century, for fuck’s sake. We are not debating the four humors that make up the human body and how women cannot be as smart as men because she’s composed of the wrong essences. We shouldn’t be talking about “hysteria” or “wandering wombs.”

We should not be continuing the old canard, the oldest piece of bullshit, that male is normal and female is “other.”

We should be talking about who is the most qualified to be in the various positions that will help this country get out of the mess it’s in. We should be focusing on the contributions that both men and women can make to improving the world. We should be celebrating the fact that we all bring to the various tables different talents, and we should not immediately eschew one set of talents because the person who possesses them also happens to possess a vagina.

I really didn’t think that I would be 46 and having to argue that a woman can be as good as a man. I didn’t think I would be 46 and having to read defenses of being a misogynist asshole. I thought, mistakenly, that we were going to be past this. I thought that men, women–and the genders in-between–could treat each other with respect, could revel in each other’s brains and hearts, could celebrate difference, instead of either apologizing for it or denigrating it.

I guess I was wrong.

And so, here I am. It’s 2009, I’m 46 years old, and I have to say, I am more than my tits and ass and cunt. I have a brain and a spirit. I am a human being.

I am a human being.

Please don’t ask me to write a history of violence against doctors and clinics who provide reproductive medical care to women.

If you are at all aware, if you have read a newspaper in the past 25 years, you know. You just know.

The Wichita Eagle has a full page of reaction to Dr. George Tiller’s murder on its front page. Last night, mourners turned out to hold a vigil for Dr. Tiller. As usual, those who like to dance on others’ graves also turned out, with their hateful signs. These signs were similar to the hateful twitter messages that ChangeAgent has so masterfully documented over at her blog.

When President Obama said that he wanted to meet in the middle on the abortion issue a few weeks ago, I wrote then that I felt as if he had just thrown women under the bus. There is no middle with anti-abortion extremists. They are not interested in meeting in the middle. They are only interested in one thing: eradicating all abortion, all access to abortion. In many cases, they want to eliminate access to certain forms of birth control, (some–all forms of birth control), and, if they can’t get what they want by legal means, they practice terrorism.

Thus, yesterday was inevitable.

The anti-abortion violence of the 1980’s and 1990’s, when clinics and OB-GYNs were slaughtered–some in their own homes, as Dr. Slepian was, were horrible times. They have left us now, with the experience of going to Planned Parenthood and having to pass through metal detectors and bullet proof glass. If you are going into a clinic where abortions are performed, you have to pass by people who feel it is their job to judge you, no matter why you might be going to the clinic.

These people have no compassion. You may be having to go in for a D&C because your fetus has died inside you–you’re still a babykiller in their eyes. You may be the victim of rape. Babykiller. You may simply be too young, or too poor, or not able to care for a child–you’re a babykiller.

Funny, but I don’t see those same people outside urologists’ offices screaming at men that getting a vasectomy constitutes being a sperm-killer or a potential baby killer.

I wish I could write something eloquent, something full of compassion for those who oppose abortion so violently and ask, “can’t we all get along?”

But I don’t have that in me today.

I am mourning Dr. Tiller. I am mourning the women who decided today that they are too frightened to take care of their medical needs. I am mourning the areas of the country that will lose access to adequate medical care for women. I am mourning the messages that are being sent out–once again–to women that their bodies don’t matter. The only thing that counts about a woman’s body is that she can produce babies. And if she wants to not produce babies, well, if we can’t stop you legally, we’ll close the clinics, kill the doctors, tighten the noose so that you will have to travel thousands of miles to find help.

I grieve. Please don’t ask me to be rational or make sense.

I grieve. And I’m angry.

I grieve, but I will not hurt someone in return.

I grieve, but you will not silence me.

I will grieve, and then I will do whatever I can to fight for reproductive rights.

I repeat the pledge I made a few weeks ago: I will purchase Plan B contraception for any woman who needs it.

To the hate-mongers on television who equate abortion with murder: you condoned this, you encourage those who are unhinged to carry out your dirty work. You should be held accountable. I will not hurt you with violence. But I will write to your advertisers, and I will encourage those who advertise with you, to withdraw their advertising or ask them why they support terrorist sympathizers.

For this is what this is. Terrorism. Plain and Simple. Not done by “foreigners.” But by “Americans.”

There is no excuse for it. None.

And we will fight you. Peacefully. But relentlessly. We will not go back to the days of coat hangers and illegal abortions. We will not sneak around to maintain sovereignty OVER OUR OWN BODIES.

We are here. We are not going away. And you will not frighten us.

This post could simply comprise links to work I’ve done in the past three years, in which I’ve documented, over and over again, that women matter less than men in the world. Not just in “Third World” countries, where women die at extraordinary rates in childbirth or as victims of “rape as tactic of war” epidemics that wipe out swathes of women in a marauding army’s path.

Perhaps, I could talk, again, about what’s going on in Afghanistan, a nation that we swore we were going to help restore democracy to, but which, since Barack Obama has become president, we have seen the ceding of control of parts of Pakistan to the Taliban, and new laws in Afghanistan designed to soften up Talibani members so they’ll consider coming back to the Afghan government. Those laws, as you should all know by now, legalize rape in marriage. You should also know that girls attending school in Kandahar had acid thrown on their faces—for the simple crime of attending school. Or that Safia Amajan, an Afghan women’s rights advocate, was gunned down for advocating women’s rights.

Yesterday, on the OP-ED pages of the NY TIMES, Afghan women wrote the following:

That is why President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan policy speech last month and his administration’s related white paper are worrisome: both avoided any reference to democracy in Afghanistan, while pointedly pushing democratic reforms in Pakistan. The new policy represents critical shifts — such as a new emphasis on civilian work, and recognizing the regional nature of the problem and the inadequacy and abuse of resources. But a faltering commitment to the democratization of Afghanistan and ambiguous statements from Washington on an exit strategy have left us Afghans scratching our heads

…there is a temptation among some in Washington to believe that if the zeal for democratic reform or women’s and minority rights in Afghanistan were relaxed, Taliban insurgents would find “reconciliation” more attractive and the war would end more quickly.

This belief is encouraged by the radically conservative forces that have increased their influence since 2005 over the Kabul government, which has been backtracking on its commitment to rights like freedom of the press and equality under the law. This was exemplified by two events last month: the upholding of a 20-year jail sentence given to a young journalist for printing a controversial article from the Internet that was critical of the role traditionally assigned to women in Islam; and President Hamid Karzai’s signing of a law affecting the country’s Shiite minority that places restrictions on when a woman can leave her house and states the circumstances in which she is obliged to have sex with her husband. That law prompted the protests this week in Kabul.

Before anyone objects that the mistreatment of women is the “Afghan way” in which we must not interfere, let me further quote the article:

As for women’s rights, the troubles that brewed in Afghanistan during the 1990s — civil war, followed by the Taliban’s totalitarianism and harboring of Al Qaeda — were in great part the result of the female half of our population being deprived of social and political participation. Like everyone else, Afghans crave security, justice, accountability, educational and employment opportunities, and a promise of a future.

Democracy and progress are not products to be packaged and exported to Afghanistan. Afghans have to fight for them. Last month, the two of us helped organize “Afghanistan: Ensuring Success,” a conference led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born former United States ambassador to the United Nations. Speakers included Afghans from all walks of life and there was broad agreement that, in the words of President Obama, it was time to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off” and strive for genuine democratic progress and self-reliance.

But as we approach Afghanistan’s second democratic elections, in August, we cannot afford to have our allies falter — through rhetoric or policy — in supporting our nascent democratic forces. Those brave and burned young women of Kandahar did not give up. How could we?

I find myself wondering what would happen if, in our commitment to “human rights,” we were insistent that “women’s rights” were part of the word “human.”

Even in our own country, over and over again when the Democrats were struggling to come back to power, I found calls to soften our commitment to abortion rights, gay rights, women’s equality—the so-called “culture war” issues—in order to attract the “swing voter.”  I even watched as gay activists asked women to throw themselves under the bus in order to help gays get rid of a reprehensible U.S. Senator.  “As I wrote then, you could only ask women for so long to put their rights on the back burner before they would turn around and tell you to go piss up a rope.

So. Again. I ask. When, when will defending the rights of women be as important in foreign policy decisions as is considering strategic oil reserves, or the mistreatment of ethnic minorities, or the threat of “Communism” in certain Latin American countries? When will we cut off diplomatic relations with a country that stones its women for adultery or forces them to stay in their homes?

When will we stop with this idea that a woman’s right to control her own fertility, to choose what enters and lodges in her flesh, that her right to own her own body are “culture war” issues, and are instead, human rights issues. Basic issues? Non-negotiable demands that all humans are entitled to make?

Please tell me when women will matter. All women. Not just those who have risen to positions of authority in their country.  All women. Perhaps when we care as much about the schoolgirls in Kandahar as we do about the men of Cuba, I might finally believe that human rights matters to us.

My bona fides in writing about these issues:

http://open.salon.com/blog/fingerlakeswanderer/2009/03/31/will_women_pay_for_peace_in_afghanistan

http://open.salon.com/blog/fingerlakeswanderer/2008/11/25/faces–updated

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=24109

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=24084

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=14583

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=13396

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=13160

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=12387

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10976

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6879

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6705

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5340

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11981

I had been to South Africa many times for work and I often told people that, “I had fallen in love with the country”. But what I never explained is that I had also fallen in love with a South African man and perhaps that affected the way I saw the country. As the saying goes, “love is blind” - a phrase I hated when I was younger. But, as the years pass and experience accrues, I see it more and more as true. So when I fell out of love with my South African man, and all the beauty I had seen in him seemed to shrivel up and evaporate in the parched continent’s sun, it happened that on my seventh trip to that country I felt like I was suddenly arriving in a strange land.

Forgive me South Africa, because it is not your fault that my love for you died. In fact, you didn’t change at all. All along those three years I visited you, your terrain was rampant with adult rape, car jackings, robbery, murder and even something I had only learned about because of you - baby rape. Your skin was crawling with black against black violence, white against black violence, and black and against white violence. You had always been a dangerous place hidden behind a severe and blinding natural beauty. It’s just that one day the sun went down in my eyes and in the shadows I fell over the other South Africa, the “picked over skeleton with the skull locked in that horrible scream of death” South Africa.

Before this trip, I remember having a conversation with a woman who worked for an NGO – a non-governmental organization – in Johannesburg where I usually stayed for work. She was an extremely bright Indian woman dedicated to helping end poverty in South Africa. She was running a program that was creating alternative job training for the masses of jobless youth in the African population and she wanted to discuss with me the possibility of helping her create a film training program for teenagers. As we sat and had coffee in a quaint little bistro in an even quainter little town called Melville, where I was staying in a beautiful guesthouse with a pool and palm trees and a four-poster bed, she told me that there was 50% unemployment in South Africa that year. I remember my eyes popping out, yet a warm glow in my gut, thinking that this kind woman would be helping to eradicate that horror.

When I asked how long it would take to reduce unemployment, she looked at me blankly and said, “Oh no, there is no hope of reducing the unemployment rate in South Africa; there will never be enough jobs for the population. Everyone knows that.”

I stared at her with a kind of shock: “But then why do you want me to help create a film training program? Don’t you hope these kids will be able to get work afterwards?”

“No,” she said blithely. “There will never be more jobs in the film business here. We already have way too many applicants for the slots. We can only hope to keep these young people busy for a few weeks…”

I tried to fathom what she was saying as she asked for the check, but I promptly put her words beyond me. You see I was still in love — with the guy, with the dazzling sunshine, with the idea of democracy and a rainbow nation, with people’s ability to argue about politics (something Americans had lost until recently with our new elections.)

But on my last trip to the country, the guy was gone. And it was not a good break up. I suppose you can say I am still picking the shards of glass out of my weak flesh even now, years later. Back then I still didn’t know how much love would cost me, but that is another discussion. Now, I had returned to film a friend of mine Khosi, who lived in Soweto, for the FLYING series I was still in production on at the time. This would be me my last trip to the country for the project. I had filmed Khosi before and what I would record this time never made it into the film, but perhaps was more important than much of what did.

I am trying to explain how the terror rose in me that trip like a snake silently coiling its belly around your spine until it is facing you and looking in your eye. Why you never felt the snake in the first place and why you were standing in a place that had poisonous snakes slithering through the grass is another question that could be asked and should be. For the moment, suffice it to say, up until then I had been too stupid to be afraid.

When I arrived to my little guesthouse in my lovely little town of Melville that I always stayed at, I was still feeling fine; I still thought it was the same country I loved even though the guy was missing. I could do this, I thought to myself, nothing had really changed. But in the middle of the night I got a call from Khosi crying. I tried to ask her what was wrong but she wouldn’t say. She only said that she couldn’t see me the next day as we had planned for filming. I told her – no, begged her – to please let me see her any way, we didn’t have to film, but then the phone cut off. When I tried to call her back I understood she had run out of minutes on her cell phone, something that I had gotten used to happening in South Africa where many people couldn’t afford a permanent plan and bought their time sparingly.

I had no way to get to Soweto alone, so I had to wait until morning, when the driver I had used on many shoots could pick me up and we could head over to Khosi’s new home.  Before leaving, I texted her that I was on my way; she must have bought more minutes, because she texted back, “all right”.  I gave the driver the new address in a poor part of Soweto, which I am telling you because, unbeknownst to foreigners, there are wealthier, middle-class parts of Soweto too. All she had told me on the phone when I had spoken to her from America to set up the meeting was that her life had taken a different turn since I had seen her the last about two years previous. She had moved out of her grandmother’s house and was living with her new boyfriend.

We found the address on a dirt road lined with square one-room government-issued box houses that had been created during the apartheid system. She stood in front of this new house I had never seen before, much like I had left her before in front of her granny’s house. She was wearing a white halter top and jeans, as beautiful as always – and looking about 13 years old even though by now was 22 or so. It was only when I got out of the car that I saw what was wrong, one side of her face was black and blue. She was smiling as always and saying things like “don’t worry Jen” and “I am so sorry I called you last night” and “everything is fine really”. Then she took me by the hand and led me to her home, a one-room shack behind the house I had arrived at, which belonged to her boyfriend’s sister. As we passed, many neighbors came out of other shacks and homes to get a good look at Khosi’s white guest.

Once inside, we sat together on the bed that filled the room, which was neat and covered with a paisley comforter. There was also a wooden dresser and a plastic cooler for milk and food, filled with ice. Between us played Khosi’s new baby girl, now about nine months. She made me tea on a little portable stove in the corner of the room and sat down again.  Khosi explained that when she had become pregnant with her daughter, she had to leave her first child, the three-year-old boy that I knew, with her mother and grandmother because her new boyfriend felt jealous of having another man in the house. Her little girl had been born with a hole in her heart, and a cleft lip, but miraculously they had been able to give the girl open-heart surgery at three months and save her. However, she still wasn’t healthy and Khosi spent her life going back and forth to Baragwaneth Hospital, the only hospital in Soweto, which was a huge ordeal. Khosi didn’t know how long the child would live.

She told me how her Gram had kicked her out of the house when she got pregnant with her second child, calling her “slut” and “whore”, even though this boyfriend was only her second in her life. Her first boyfriend and father of her little boy was the first man she had slept with – and by him she immediately became pregnant. The first guy had beaten her terribly and often, but she had managed to escape. Now, this was her second boyfriend, who at least had a job in the South African army and therefore some money. He was ten years older than her – and she immediately got pregnant again. She swore to me that he rarely hit her and that he was a good man, but that they had gotten into a fight the night before at a party, where he accused her of flirting with another man. She had told him to “go fuck off’ and continued to talk to the same guy, but her boyfriend couldn’t stand it and he had immediately started to beat her. She wouldn’t back down, she said, and so she hit him back, but of course he was stronger than her.

Now she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to stay here, but she couldn’t go back to her grandmother’s after she was treated so badly. Her grandmother hated her and preferred her sister. Today, her boyfriend was back at the base, but would be home again in a few days. Anyway, how could she support her child if she left him? She wasn’t able to find a job no matter how hard she tried. Then she began to cry. And I started to cry too. We were hugging each other and crying. You see, we had known each other a long time, since my first trip to South Africa. We had made a film together about her best girlfriend who was HIV positive; we had been through a lot.

“How can I help, Khosi?” I asked softly.

“There’s nothing to do Jen….” She was wiping her tears now.

“Look, what if I can pay for some training…?” I said, wanting to be practical, “I mean if you could get a job, you wouldn’t have to live here…  Is there something you want to do…?”

She looked at me with sadness and shook her head. “I don’t know Jen….”

“Alright…” I said weakly. I was surprised; she had always wanted to go to school before. “Let’s just think together. I am here for you…”

There is nothing like being a stupid foreigner. I knew all too well that what Khosi was facing was so complex and beyond my understanding, that I could only bear witness and pray for intervention. It is a horrible feeling for a person like me, raised on the concept of agency and the ability to change one’s fate if only one works hard enough, to learn that the truth, for many people, in many parts of the world, is that little can help. I knew also that my “being there” for Khosi was relative; I would go home and be safe, and she would not be. So much for being the big, white American savior.

“Jen, I’m scared,” she said.

“I am too, Khosi…” And I was, even thought I didn’t even know exactly why yet.

“I am scared some days what I might do to my child… Sometimes I get so angry, especially with my little boy, that I can’t stop hitting him….” Khosi looked me in the eye to see if I understood what she was saying.

I thought I understood. “You know Khosi, when I was a kid, I saw my mom get so angry at me that I thought, ‘I can’t have children, because I will look at them like she looked at me.’ I was so afraid that I would pass that anger down and hate my own kids that I never wanted to have a baby myself….”

“Yes,” she said, “my Gram was like that to me. She beat me so much; I hated her…. “ She took a deep breath. “But now I am afraid. Jen, some days I am afraid I might kill my children… I love them so much… But I don’t know what to do.”

There was silence in the little shack as we both listened to her baby’s breathing, now asleep on the blanket between us.

“Jen, can you help me get therapy?”

I hadn’t expected her to ask that. I was happy and surprised by the request. But seven trips to South Africa had made wiser to the obstacles I would have to deal with:  “I can try Khosi, when I go back to the guesthouse, I will make some calls…”

”You know I’ve tried going to the social workers that they give you at the hospital, you know like when my father was murdered, or after my sister died of AIDS, and now since the baby was born, I went again…but they all say the same stupid things, like I am not being ‘positive enough about my life’. That ‘I have a bad attitude…’”

Hearing that someone had the audacity to tell Khosi that she wasn’t ‘thinking positively’ enraged me so that I myself wanted to kill someone right then and there. I hated this psychobabble - used again and again by people who really needed some help. And it was rampant in South Africa for some reason, like they’d watched too many episodes of Oprah.

I told Khosi what I thought. But I also asked her if she thought that she needed to be away from her children for a little while. I was worried deeply for them. She said she had strategies of what to do when she felt that way, neighbors she could leave her daughter with; thankfully her son was at her mom’s, but the problem was that when she saw him, he behaved so badly because he was angry at being left there, that she got angry back at him. We talked until the darkness fell and the air turned cool again

When I left Khosi, we hugged for a long time. I would see her several more times on that trip, and I would find her a good therapist, whom she went to see once, but after that session she stopped going (although it would take a few months before this became obvious). The problem was that it took her all day to go back and forth to the good therapist in the fancy section of Johannesburg, actually only 20 minutes away if she could have driven there straight. You see, there is no public transportation system in South Africa – another legacy from Apartheid – so you have to take a series of “Combis”, which are mini-vans driven by private drivers. Each driver packs his van fill of people on a specific route. So it might take her five or six Combis to get to the closest stop to her therapist and then she’d have to walk a half an hour. Who could she leave her baby with? How could she take a whole day just for therapy? Suppose she had a doctor’s appointment for the baby on that day? How could she pay for the transportation? But there were other obstacles too, like when the second appointment came time, it rained, and she didn’t have an umbrella or a raincoat and she was afraid to catch a cold, so she didn’t go.

I tried to solve some of the complications: I had to give Khosi money for the combi rides, but I couldn’t wire it to her directly because she didn’t have a bank account. Meanwhile she couldn’t keep a lot of money on her at any one time, because she could get killed if someone thought she was getting extra cash from a foreigner. So I had to find someone in Johannesburg who would agree to receive the money, but then they had to arrange to get it to her. Then, another fear started to haunt me: What if me trying to help meant her leaving her baby home alone or with a stranger– and then something happening to the baby – like was happening all over south Africa, where mothers had to leave their babies to go to work and gangs of men were coming and raping these tiny beings.

I drove away from Khosi that night, the air ripe with the smoke of kerosene from the gas stoves being lit across the valley of Soweto.  As we passed kids playing kickball in the flickering shadows of bonfires on the dirt lanes, I sat in silence. When I arrived at my guesthouse, the driver let me out and drove off. One of the young car parkers that roamed the street making small change by helping people get parking spots – a job that was created by the government to help unemployment – approached me and asked for some money.

I looked at him surprised, and shook my head, “I don’t have any change…”

“You owe me” he said his eyes menacing. “You haven’t bought me a soda or tipped me and I know you are staying at this guest house. I have seen you come and go….”

“I don’t owe you anything,” I said angrily; somehow Khosi’s story had enraged me against all men. “I don’t have a car and I don’t need parking.”

I marched up to my guesthouse door and pulled out my key. He was standing feet away staring at my back.

“Next time you better bring me something!” he yelled at me and spit on the pavement.

I turned around and gave him the finger. Then I slipped inside and shut the door, which locked behind me.

Once in my room, I sat on my elegant wooden four-poster bed, with the curtains that had little bows holding them back in the middle, looking into the golden-tiled bathroom that was the size of Khosi’s shack. I was breathing hard, trying to catch my breath, furious at the young parking punk from the street, at Khosi’s boyfriend, at the current government that left no hope and no jobs, at social workers who pretend to heal, at the god damn apartheid system who had destroyed a nation and created this mess so complicated it would take a hundred years and so much luck that I couldn’t imagine it to undo the harm that had been wreaked upon this most beautiful country.

I wanted my blessed South Africa back, the one I fell in love with. I started to cry. I was seeing South Africa for the first time and I was gripped with fear - for Khosi, for my black friends, for my white friends, for the strangers I had met, for everyone - and yes, I am ashamed to say, for myself too, because I didn’t want to become one of the twenty-five to fifty percent of the women (depending on the region) who were raped in South Africa that year when I left my gated guest house in the morning. It was easy for me, I just had to make it a few days more to get on the plane out to beat the odds of violent crime, but Khosi couldn’t escape like me. I sat there, engulfed in something I had never felt before, something that was so big, I couldn’t even name it.

Khosi and I remain friends today. She still lives in Soweto but has moved back with her daughter to live with her grandmother, mother, son and other extended family. You can read about her life on her blog here. To date, I have not returned to South Africa.

It’s been seven years and it feels like it was yesterday. 15 November 2001, the day summer became winter and day became night: that was the day I first felt the impact of crime. Things were happening to other people, and I read about terrible deaths in newspapers and saw them on television. I felt pity for them and prayed every day for God to protect the ones I love from becoming statistics.

My dad - my loving, caring, reserved, and protective dad - was brutally murdered by his friends. He was beaten and left to die in the bushes, lying in a pool of his own blood. He died a slow, painful, humiliating death. That day, I lost the only person that made my life worth living. He was everything a daughter could ever ask for in a father. A day before his death, we were tending to the garden and as we were working, he took a deep breath and said, “Girl, you know i don’t want to do this job anymore. I am so tired. I don’t have the strength and power to keep on running away from the law.” I asked him how we are going to survive. He said, “God will provide, and you know that he always has a back up plan.” In case you were wondering what kind of job he had that made him run away from the law, he was a fraud master. At times, he would spend the whole month doing a job without luck, or maybe end up in jail.

The following day, three of his friends came to our home to fetch him early in the morning and they left, same as always. But this time, something went wrong, and my dad didn’t come home that day. The following morning, my siblings and I took off to search for him with the help of one of the friends, and we found his lifeless body, face down. Most of the body was OK, but the face and head were vandalized; you could see the skull just by looking in the big hole in his head. I couldn’t understand, and still can’t, why he had to die such a horrible, unmerciful way. I remember the whole community was shaken by the news of his death… but their pain and disbelief was nothing compared to mine. I found myself wanting to know what he was doing as they were beating him. Was he crying? Was he begging for forgiveness? Or was he quiet and accepting? I wish I could know the last thing that came to his mind as he realized that he was dying and leaving his beloved. What was he thinking about before he took his last breath?

We had no funeral policy, and no money to bury him. Our funerals are expensive too: you have to cook for everyone and organize transportation to and from the gravesite. Thousands of people came to his funeral - he was a people’s man. Jennifer Fox was there for me from day one. She gave financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical support. She paid for the coffin, and the groceries with the help of Robyn, Don, and Teresa. They gave my dad a funeral fit for a king. Jen went as far as paying school fees for my sister and even bought her school uniform. Sometimes i wonder what would have done without her. Wherever my dad is, I know that he is resting in peace. My only prayer now is for the law to take its course, not only for my father’s killers, but for all who commit crime, and for our goverment to create more jobs for people like my daddy. In that way we will all leave peacefully. Jen, Robyn, Don, Teresa: thank you guys very much, may the God of love and peace bless you and give you much more in return. To you, dad: I love you and deeply miss you. Years have passed, tears have dried, but your memories remain in my heart. Rest in peace.

I was traveling to a tribal village in the heart of India when my cellphone got into range by sheer luck, and a friend called to say that Barack Hussein Obama had won. She turned up the TV so I could hear some of the speech on the phone. I have not felt so inspired in a long time. Things are so depressing and scary that it is wonderful someone can win a presidential election on the planks of hope and change!

In India, too, general elections are around the corner and how I wish we had a leader who would invite Hope and Change to come visit this side too! Don’t go by what the Bejeweled Princes of India, Inc. want to portray. Where politics is concerned, things here are pretty grim. Elections in India have always meant an escalation in violence – and this year is no exception. In the north, Kashmir is burning. Certainly no hope and no change there. There have been more bomb blasts in the past few months than we care to count anymore – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Assam, Imphal, Jaipur, Malegaon and so on. Interestingly, a serving colonel in the army has been arrested, allegedly for teaching a group how to make bombs.

Since we are a religious country, violence and religion always go together here – a heady cocktail to start preparing for the polls. So in Orissa in the east, Hindu groups destroyed churches where some of the poorest people in India went to pray. The same thing was repeated in Karnataka - this time in the south of the country. Christians fled their homes in fear, sometimes crossing states in search of safety.

And in the west, in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, we are seeing the rise of the worst fascist group in many decades. It goes by the name of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by a young politician who has woven his politics around the fear that the North Indians (Biharis in particular) are going to take over their jobs and their beautiful city. From Mumbai it has spread to other towns. People have been killed and maimed, shops have been vandalised, students from ‘outside’ stopped from appearing for public exams and many ways of humiliation have been devised.

Even in its mildest form this kind of politics has opened debates about what to do with the Biharis who are dirty, vicious, perverted, criminals, hateful and here to eat our jobs! The ruling party is torn between trying to stop the violence and showing that they are better North-Indian-haters. We are living in a pool of political venom.

On any given day, India is full of groups who can’t stand each other, and in an election year, all these pet hates explode – politicians make hay while the pyres burn.

This is only the build-up to the elections. As things hot up there will be news of kidnappings and murders of candidates, rigging, booth capturing, arson, and so on. It is really hoping against hope that Hope and Change will have anything to do with elections in India.

Meanwhile, congratulations congratulations congratulations to the USA for having gotten it right this time and wishing everyone, everywhere all the best.

With fingers crossed.

Paromita

I realize that my last blog sounded somewhat bitter. Part of the reason that I write is because it is helpful to me - it helps me to put things into perspective for myself. If someone else can identify or find some helpful information for themselves from something that I have written, even better. I certainly could  have applied the truths (yes, yes - “truths” as I see them - not necessarily the facts) about parenthood that I spoke of in my last blog to people in general - not just to men, but perhaps to anyone who is a single parent or a parent sharing custody. Yes, those were “truths” that I suppose could have been applied both to men and to women.

While the tone of my writing or speech may, at times, come across as bitter and while I would say that some of the situations that I have encountered in my life have contributed to me becoming pretty cynical for my age, I like to think that writing helps me to heal - that I am able to share a complaint and move on from there after having been honest with myself (and whoever else may read) about the way that I feel.  Contrary to what I may have led readers to believe in my last blog, I do not blame entire segments of the population for the way that I feel or for things that I have faced in my life. I also generally do not attempt to categorize people based on my preconceived notions. I have noticed though that the preconceived notions that I have about people sometimes do end up to be true. At times, they may even end up being true about several people that I meet that share similar traits or characteristics.

I realize that I am as guilty as anyone of making snap judgments and coming to incorrect conclusions based on appearances or first impressions. But I have also come to some conclusions that I have found to be correct about characteristics that people possess. I do not normally attempt to classify people and to generalize. I try to avoid that. But I think it’s important to be honest with myself. I do have some preconceived notions about people. I also have come to realize that a lot of the people I have met have had a lot of things in common with one another. All of this can likely be attributed to the human condition – my habit of forming opinions and large segments of the population sharing personality traits. I do my best not to act on my preconceived notions - I do my best to not let whatever biases and opinions I have cloud my judgment. To a certain extent, though, it is important to exercise judgment- not to judge people for their decisions and to categorize them based on said judgments, but at least to judge what decisions and circumstances are or are not right for us - this is only fair.

I had a dream the other night that caused me to become very disappointed with my subconscious mind. The dream was a thinly veiled metaphor for a situation in my life that makes me feel awkward, at best, and at worst makes me feel vulnerable and violated, dirty and used. I have begun to question the nature of trust, recently. Trust suddenly seems to me far more fragile and far more powerful than I ever imagined it could be.

My ex-husband is currently under investigation and will be on trial shortly for something that I never would have imagined him capable of. But then, I never really knew him.  I feel a bit like a fraud even describing him as having been a “husband.” In retrospect, he was never my husband - he was a stranger, and what we had was not even a bad marriage - I would not not classify it as a marriage, at all… I have been contacted to give a deposition and possibly to testify against him.

While I blame myself having exercised poor judgment and for making bad decisions, I have spent the last few years doing my best to distance myself from situations that I considered bad and, I realized the other day, from the person I might have been in the past. I have been working on becoming a grown-up and have started my life anew. I am married now to a wonderful man and while we experience problems in our relationship, we have a relatively healthy relationship and he has been the only “dad” that my daughter has ever known. I just received my first promotion ever and I have now been employed by a company for whom I enjoy working for nearly two years. I am looking forward to that two-year milestone, as that will be the longest that I have ever been employed with one company.

While I want to help with this situation in any way that I can, I am not sure that I will even be a good character witness, as I don’t really know the man. I have not been acquainted with him for the past several years and furthermore, as I was being interviewed by the investigator from the district attorney’s office, I came to the conclusion that I never really knew the man. I don’t like discussing that part of my past, that period in my life because I feel that it reflects poorly on me. When I discuss it, I feel like I am confessing, not just to having been young and stupid and reckless and wild, but to having been nihilistic and to having been a bad person. I do not blame the stranger to whom I was married for ruining my life or anything quite like that. Like I said before, I consider it a setback - a mistake, a lack of good judgment on my part. But I also don’t blame myself for his actions. I blame myself for not having had the foresight to avoid ever entering into an unhealthy and abusive relationship, especially since I have always considered myself a strong independent woman, and I blame myself for not having ended things sooner and leaving the situation. I am doing my best to take responsibility for my poor decisions and for my mistakes and I have spent the past few years trying to correct several errors that I felt I made in my life - not other peoples’ errors. Yes, I was fooled and fell for things for which I should not have fallen. Yes, I maybe was not thinking at all when I made some choices and yes, maybe based some of my decisions on things that I should not have. Maybe I left too many decisions to chance. Perhaps I was self-destructive and did not think or care about the future enough to work towards goals. These are all things that I have now realized and I feel like the person that I am today is 167 degrees from the hedonistic person that I was in my teens and early twenties.

I want to do what is right for my daughter and for myself and for society in general. I want to assist in the case against this man, I do. I think that he should be put away. I am not certain I can help put him away. As I was being questioned, I felt numb and unsure and I felt like the questions were leading, which was fine - they led me in the direction of the case against him. I just realized that I am so far removed from that situation now, realistically in my life and emotionally, from the person that I was when I allowed myself to, in a sense, be a victim. I had very little knowledge of a man with whom I lived, and I am certain that I should not have allowed myself to live in such a situation. I have even less knowledge of this man now and question if I ever really knew anything about him.

I know that there are a lot of people that have faced worse adversity in their lives. I am happy and somewhat successful now. I struggle a bit, but I no longer have to worry about the things the way that I used to worry. I did not have the best childhood growing up, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I was raised by my aunt and uncle from the time I was nine and they worked to the best of their ability to provide some sense of normalcy in the lives of my younger sister and myself. Our parents, when my sister and I were ages 9 and 7, respectively, were still not grown-up enough to be parents. My aunt and uncle became my mom and dad. I remember how betrayed I used to feel when my aunt would share information about my background and earlier childhood with a teacher of mine and how much more betrayed I would feel when that teacher would, in turn, share that information with my classmates.

I felt & still feel that advertising adversity that I’d faced was kind of like asking for charity. I hated it. I never found a happy medium and still have not, so I think that I tend to deal with things by not dealing with them. Hence, the reason I might have sought out situations and characters that reminded me of my biological parents once I reached adulthood. Hence the reason for now trying to make amends for that and moving in a new direction with my life.

In closing, I think I am coming to a crossroad - I think that I am now trying to somehow reconcile my “past life” with my current life. I want to be able to share things with people around me about what I am going through and what I am feeling without feeling dirty or confused. I would like to be able to talk about these things without feeling like I am whining or playing the victim.  I just want to be able to discuss things that may surface from my past without apologizing or feeling ashamed ’cause while I don’t play the victim, I am not interested in suffering in silence and playing martyr instead.

I am grateful that I can share this here…

I don’t know if I should be happy or sad, laugh or cry.  My brother just got released from prison after serving two years for armed robbery. I didn’t know how to react.  Some say I am cold and heartless, maybe I should have given him a hug or a kiss, but I couldn’t.  I was not happy about his release.  The thing is, we don’t see eye to eye since I had him arrested for stealing my clothes to buy drugs and booze.  And the second time we had a fight he kicked me in the stomach and I was six months pregnant at the time.  We have never gotten along since.  My mom and gran were not talking to me for having him arrested - they wanted me to drop the charges, and I did for the sake of peace.

If I remember correctly, he started doing drugs and crime at the age of twelve and dropped out of school in grade five.  Since then, he’s been in and out of prison, and my mom has always maintained his innocence.  So the thing is,I’ve got a baby boy who is six years old, and he looks up to him since he’s the only fatherly figure in his life.  I’ve got my own way to discipline my son and my mom is always on my case, she wants to teach mea how to discipline my son and she can’t even do that for her own son.  I only want the best for my son, I want to teach him respect, responsibility, and I also want him to know that nothing is free, he’s supposed to work hard .

Truly speaking I’m not happy about his release, I’d rather he be dead than alive and causing trouble.  I know him better than anyone in the family does, he will soon go back to his ways.   I don’t want my son to be there when he starts doing all the wrong things.  Maybe I am bad, anyway I don’t care, they’ve made me be what I am in a way.  My mom never cared for me, she was always too drunk to notice that I was around and needing her.  I struggled on my own, until I met Jennifer Fox, who inspired me to talk about my experiences.  She made me realize that nothing and no one is more important than me.  And that I should give my kids all the love, protection, and care they need.  So I am doing that - I just want to protect my son from the life I lived.

I got home from work to find out that my boyfriend mood hasn’t changed. I then started cooking, bathed my baby, and tried to make conversation but no one else seemed in the mood for talking. So, I kept trying to create new conversation and admittedly started an argument. By this point my boyfriend was arguing and although I have told myself that I am done begging him, asking for forgiveness I continued to do so… even though I felt as though my opinions were justified. While we were arguing he said something to me that caught me so off guard it took me an hour to adjust. For a minute I thought that I was imagining things, I took a deep breath then a paused and asked him to say to me what he has just said, to my surprise I had been right and there was nothing wrong with my hearing aid.

He said, “You are a bloody murderer.” I had nothing to say… no words could come out, only tears… tears of sorrow, regret, and painful memories that I have tried my best to bury. My god, I wished I could drop dead and die that instant. When he told me this he took me back to that night, that terrible night. I was quiet for a long time and so was he, he was looking at me and you could see that he wished he could take his words back, he could see that he had hurt me, deeply.

If I remember, it was last June when I realized that I was pregnant with his child. I called him to tell him the news and he asked me to wait for him to come home and said that we would discuss the matter then. I did as he said, although I was confused by the wait. In the meantime I was thinking that I knew in my heart that I could not have another baby.
I have two children with different fathers, and my 3-year-old daughter Azania was born with many health complications. She is suffering from heart failure and asthma… to make matters worse I was not working when I found out about her illnesses.

It is so hard to realize that I’ve got two children that already I can’t support, what was I going to to with the third one? And I thought about the possibilities of him leaving me for someone else, alone to raise our children. I had already made up my mind; I knew what I had to do. So when we talked about the matter in a civilized manner he seemed understanding and supportive, we agreed that we couldn’t have another baby while Azania is still young and sick. He said while he was working I need to go back to school and continue my studies in order to find a job. He was so understanding, I nearly changed my mind and I thought to myself that he was too good to be true.

The plan of action was to terminate the baby. Then I went to the hospital to get myself on the waiting list because I couldn’t afford to pay a doctor. I was in the top 10 of the women who were seeking an abortion. The procedure here in South Africa is that they give you pills you take them home and insert them yourself. All of this you have to do alone and the nurses tell you that no matter how much pain you feel don’t come back and don’t call the ambulance.

You can only come the following day to have your womb cleaned. I arrived home from the hospital around 6 pm and I then inserted the tablets in my Vagina and a maxi-pad in my underwear and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night I felt something unusual so I woke up and went to the toilet to check what was wrong. As I took my panties off I saw something but it was covered in my blood so I couldn’t see it very clearly. I wiped the blood with toilet paper and as I was wiping it I realized it was a baby, my baby, my own flesh and blood. I looked closer and I could see the little formed body parts. I cried, I felt so dirty and thought I have just killed a defenseless child, my own baby.

I wanted to take what I had done back, I lost my mind, I bathed myself and scrubbed myself so much I ended up with a very painful infection. Then, the real problem began and I fell sick with very bad headaches and lost my appetite. I had other emotional problems and started to resent the two kids I had, I felt as if I couldn’t give him my love why should they have it?

I used to have dreams and hopes of a beautiful life, but I now I don’t think I will ever experience those dreams as a reality. Everyday, morning and night, I think about what I did and the picture is still in my mind. It doesn’t matter how happy and pure I pretend to be; what I did is eating me alive. I am so ashamed of the thing I’ve turned out to be.

People often say there is a lesson to learn in everything but I have gone through so many experiences, and I am still waiting for understanding to come. I just hope that as time passes things will improve. Maybe one day I will begin to feel at peace with the decisions I have made, and the life I have in front of me… for myself and my family.

Khosi is 24 and was born in Suwet, South Africa where she grew up with five siblings. Due to the harsh economic effects of the Apartheid her parents could not find work, and so Khosi relocated to live with her grandmother. When she was 13 she moved back in with her father in attempt to reconnect with him, but after two years she moved yet again. Her father supported himself through acts of fraud and in 2001 was brutally killed by his associates for 1,000 Rand they had all stolen together.

Khosi dropped out of high school because she could not afford to purchase a uniform, and later took a course in HIV/AIDs counseling but was unable to find work. Khosi and her boyfriend recently had a baby girl together who was born in need of open heart surgery, and doctors told her not to get attached. The baby survived, and is being raised by Khosi, her mother, grandmother and boyfriend.

Well it is 4:14 am on Saturday morning, May 3, and I am wide-awake. After tossing and turning in bed, since 2 am, I finally got up and came downstairs to the main room of my loft, so as not to wake my partner sleeping soundly. I am at the dining room table typing on my laptop in the dark. The soft light of the streetlamp pours in. Dark is never dark in the city.

I have to teach early in the morning to a group of ‘at-risk’ teenage girls at the Jacob Burns Center in Huntington. Part of not being able to sleep, is the need for my mind to plan out what I will say before I get there. I will be showing clips from FLYING and demonstrating techniques, literally “passing the camera” with them. I have never done a presentation with young girls and I am excited, but also scared. I had to discuss with Lois the Burns Center programmer, what I could show to them. Was it alright to talk about sex? Masturbation? Violence against women? Abortion? My married lover? The good thing is that Lois felt many topics would be acceptable – “these are inner city girls who have seen a lot” she said – but some of the unacceptable topics surprised me like abortion. As I sit here tonight, I muse how a child who has been sexually abused – as Lois told me many of these girls are ¬– should not hear stories about abortion. It has always been a strange world around issues concerning a girl’s control over her own body and sexuality. With these thoughts, I crawl up to my bedroom and under the covers to try to sleep the last two hours of the night.

Now today about eight hours later, I am in the midst of these youth, most living in a girl’s shelter in upstate New York. I talk, I show film clips, and they “pass the camera”. And there are things that strike me about what they know and don’t know. There are the outspoken one’s who always have their hands up, who always want to hold the camera, and then there are the girls that stare ahead and don’t speak, the one that sleeps, and the one that looks blank at me when I pass the machine.

Things that shock me: I show the clip where Ladawn is talking about divorce and an inter-cut strand of Ladawn’s daughters, Margie and Kait, talking about divorce. Afterwards, the girls are visibly moved. They are able to read the honesty of Kait and Margie, young women their age, in a way that surprised me. “I like the way they were so ‘real’” one girl said, “You never see that on TV, people are all fake.” This gives us an opportunity to talk about what it means to be ‘real’ with a camera present? I ask if any of their parents are divorced? All of them raise their hands. Most of them tell stories of how their fathers treated their mothers badly. When I ask if they think there is a way to change this, they shake their head ‘no’. “Men will always have the power,” they say. I am dumbfounded. I can’t think of a way to rebuttal their pessimism.

I show the clip where I am talking about my sexual abuse with my girlfriends Theresa and Lucilla. They are surprised that it happened to me too. When I ask how many of them were sexually abused. Three quarters of them raise their hands. I show the sequence of the women in Pakistan and they are concerned about how I kept filming when the women ask me to shut it off. I say that there are some times when you think that showing the world something – in this case these women’s fear of men – is more important than their desires. I explain that as a filmmaker you are always making these subtle judgment calls, but you can be wrong. Now, rallying, I try to explain that I believe that films can change things, that I hope by making films I can improve the power relations between men and women. I hope I sound convincing. If I don’t have faith, how will they?

But the real surprise comes when we break into small groups of four and they “pass the camera” amongst themselves for the first time. The shy girls come out and start talking, the sleeping girl wakes up, and the catatonic girl becomes animated. Slowly they begin to speak to each other.

There is one young woman, Ann, who when asked to tell about her life to the camera says, stonefaced: “I have had a tragic life, there is nothing good. My father hit me and my mother didn’t want me.”

The other girls in her group, chorus in: “ I feel you.” And “Same for me.”

They pass the camera some more and end up back on Ann, “Tell us about your day?” Her friend asks now.

Ann begins again, “ I have a tragic life, every day is bad…”

Then the friend says: “But look at you now, you are smiling.”

I watch Ann do a double take as if she was seeing herself for the first moment – indeed she is grinning. “Yes I am.” She says slowly. “Today is a good day.”

Besides reading LOVING WHAT IS this Christmas, I’ve been catching up on a lot of other reading in my days off. Books have a kind of magic for me: I walk into a bookstore and wonder what book I will find that day that will change my life. (I wonder: Does that happen for other people too?)

For the holidays, I picked up a novel just before I went away on vacation about the attempted succession of the state of Biafra from Nigeria in 1967 and the civil war that ensued, called HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I grew up aware of the struggling nation and the horrible starvation, as Biafra was always on the news. As a young teenager we collected money for the cause by going door to door and hosting bakesales. It was a big part of my childhood and a time where we really believed we could change the world. Even though back then I’d always been aware of the troubled state of Biafra, I had forgotten much about it. This strangely beautiful book opened my eyes again to this baffling tragedy. Not only was the new country being starved out of existance, but rape was a constant use of warfare on both sides of this religious civil war. The book made me ask again why men see women, not only as objects of sex, but as objects of violence? Are we just property to be damaged as pawns in the games between men? I began to ponder the tragic role women and sex often play in times of violence. As naive as I feel saying this, it is something I want to think more about, and join forces with others around the world to find a way to stop. (If anyone out there know more about this subject of rape as a tool of warfare or feels there is any group in the world that is having a sucessful effect against this, please write in and share your knowledge.)