Dreams Derailed

March 8th was International Women’s Day, and I remained mum.
March 10th was the 6th tragiversary of my aunt’s death, and I forgot.
March 12th was the 2nd blog about Jordan day, and I didn’t participate.

While attending a seminar last summer at the Socialist Thought Forum, about women and the Left, I was genuinely captivated by the eloquence of the speaker — a Palestinian activist. She knew her stuff and she spoke so well that I almost couldn’t breathe. I had found it, I knew I had found it even though I didn’t know what it was.

In the Q&A session that followed, a man with side parted hair stood up. He demanded to know if women had a “special condition” that would call for “special treatment.” The man with side parted hair was wearing a white shirt and grey pants, he had grayish hair even though he was young. He was clearly emotional as he made his case against the separation of man and woman, his arms moving restlessly and his voice a tad louder than necessary.

The man didn’t even attempt to conceal the sarcasm in his voice as he demanded to know what women thought was special about them that would authorize them to designate a part of the struggle as their own. Anti-imperialist, anti-zionist, anti-capitalist — his anti-’s were so many I thought he wasn’t pro-anything. He argued for “collective struggle” by “liberating man and woman alike.”

As I watched the agitated man try to dismiss the unique condition of women, and the others present nodding or staring with empty eyes lulled by the evening warmth, I felt a burning sensation crawl to my stomach. This man wants to rob us of our individuality? Melt us in the anti-capitalist pot? Strip us of our legitimate struggle against injustice under the pretext of socialist revolt? Free men first, he said, and women will be free… Men first.

A friend slid to my side across the two vacant chairs next to me and whispered: “Won’t you answer him?” At the same time, the speaker addressed his comments. My friend slid back to his chair and I listened with enthusiasm to the response furnished by the lady. She really knew her stuff. She gave him Marx, Castro, Beijing, and solid evidence of feminist socialist activism.

The other day, I was talking to a political analyst and professor about this same issue. The minute I mentioned women his lips curled, his eyes rolled, and he sat back in his chair with an impatient sigh. He said he didn’t believe that women had a “special condition” that required “special treatment.” He argued that this “dichotomy” being shoved down everyone’s throats by feminists was not good for anyone, and that it, in fact, backfires. What’s the point, he asked me? Then he answered that we should strive to free men first, and then women will be free… Men first.

My father agrees with these men. What’s so special about woman to make her demand justice tailored specifically for her needs? Why can’t woman stay put for a while until capitalism, socialism, or Islam deliver a Utopian society where man is liberated to a degree that allows him, in turn, to liberate woman — a liberty tinged with the flavor of the delivering ideology? Let’s focus on liberating men first, and women will follow.

This begs the question: why men first? It is, of course, an implicit admittance of gender monopoly of power and resources in society. It is as well a millenia-old pattern of thought and behavior which follows from this monopoly: men lead, women follow. Tell that to anyone and you risk being called a man-hater, even if you love men to bits. There’s nothing new there, we all know that telling the truth is not without consequences.

Liberate men first, for how can you have a free woman if her father and brother are not free? — that’s how the argument goes. The idea is that woman is dependent on man, even in freedom, and cannot be completely liberated without his participation. The opposite is not true: man can be free with or without woman’s participation, and freeing woman is at his discretion; a privilege he bestows or denies at will.

That, precisely that, is the “special condition” of woman. The sum of woman’s life experiences differs immensely from the sum of man’s, as while the first is treated as a woman, the latter is treated as a man in the social, economical, religious, psychological, and biological senses of the two labels. The reality of men’s monopoly of power renders any parallel calls for studying “the special condition of men” void. After all, we all live in “the special conditions” set by men.

Tradition holds that woman is thought to be dependent on man even if she really isn’t, inferior to man either implicitly or explicitly, and consequently denied many of the rights enjoyed by man. At the same time woman undergoes a process of brainwashing that starts from infancy; a process that teaches her where “her place” is and prohibits her from trying to change it. Almost miraculously, all the forces that shape human consciousness take part in this process: religion, society, economy, etc., and it’s a vicious cycle.

The “special condition” of women is the expectations and assumptions made by society about women: they affect women’s psychology, perceptions, behaviors, and aspirations. For centuries, women have been largely meeting these expectations and assumptions because they have been programmed to do so. Now that they are attempting to define who they really are, not necessarily as feminists but as freedom seekers, they are told to wait, let’s liberate men first.

My aunt was an example of the “special condition” of women which is so often denied. None of the difficulties she had to endure, none of the injustices she had to suffer would have been remotely thinkable if she were a man. She was married off to a stranger at 12, had to satisfy this patriarchal society at her own expense until the day she died, and spent her entire life under surveillance from the numerous holier-than-thou chauvinists — men and women who thought they had the right to monitor her life because society disadvantaged her.

None of the hardships my aunt lived through would have been applicable if she were a man. That is the sad fact in Jordan and in most other countries where a biological difference means a completely different life, different rules, different priorities, different everything. She has been dead for six years already, and it was only after she died that I realized how oblivious I was to her story. It was only after she died that I had to confront societal demons not unlike the ones she had to confront in her lifetime: 3eeb, honour, reputation, duty, expectations, propriety, womanhood.

I can’t compare my life to hers because hers was considerably more miserable and her situation a lot more disadvantaged, but what I can say is that I am doing what I am doing for her. She couldn’t speak up and she couldn’t fight back because she didn’t have the tools, but I can, and I do. She was too eager to please everyone and to go with the flow, because she knew no other alternative and was never allowed to consider herself or her life as separately significant. I know there is an alternative, and I am determined to pursue it.

Until women are treated as human beings, granted every right known to man, not objectified scandalously or conservatively, there will be no true justice. How can anybody expect justice to rain down from the sky without sacrifice? In my life, my aunt’s sacrifice was enough to prompt me to question, think, learn, and revolt. This was counterintuitive: the idea was to have all the women in my family dread such a life by submitting to whatever was thrown at them. The exact opposite happened, at least to me.

Justice knows no gender, like it knows no color or race. Why then are we constantly supposed to believe that the only domain we are not to probe is this one, and none else? Why is racial discrimination universally abhorred, while gender discrimination is still a matter of discussion, nay, denial?

In Jordan, if you express a hint of a desire to want to fix what’s broken in the gender balance, you are accused of man-hating, blasphemy, or self-loathing. If you do so much as pose a question on the validity of the definition of honor, you are most likely to be the object of suspicion. If you criticize tribal practices leading women to be held in “administrative detention” for fear on their lives, while their male sources of threat remain untouched, you are considered a cultural outlaw. If you dare to contest patriarchal power, in any shape or form, you are seen as a woman who has gone astray and every measure is taken to restrain you.

As long as this continues, and it will continue for a long time, we will remain stuck in the intellectual equivalent of the Middle Ages. As long as we do not recognize that women do go through extremely different life experiences that shape their lives, we will have ignorant men and women who will find no shame in dismissing the fact. Finally, if we do not call things by their names: injustice as injustice, not a feminist luxury, we will have those who stand up and arbitrarily demand that we liberate men first.