Buried Alive In Balochistan

September 3, 2008 – 2:05 am

Far be it from me to reinforce stereotypes about Pakistani attitudes towards the safety and security of women. I am a product of Musharraf’s Enlightened Moderation and the soft image of Pakistan is my top priority. Pakistanis are nothing if not conscious of the softness of their image.

This was evidenced today in the remarkable step taken this week by the Senator from Balochistan, Sardar Israrullah Zehri, when he was asked why no inquiry had been made into the murder of five women, buried alive in Balochistan a month ago in the name of honour.

Zehri said, and it was quoted as such in the daily Dawn, that this was a part of “our tribal custom”. On Monday, he appeared on Dawn News television, an English language news network, to let us know that, yes, murder is against the law and, yes, it is un-Islamic to bury people alive, but, you see, there is no real education in this area, it’s tribal culture and it will take five thousand years to change.

Well, that’s alright then. Thank God it wasn’t an act of barbarism by otherwise civilized people. Thank God they were already barbaric to begin with. Now we can go sip coffee and continue to exploit natural gas resources in Balochistan without providing any infrastructure, education or healthcare in return. Read More »

By Kyla Pasha | Posted in Current Affairs, Feature, family, feminism, human rights, islam, politics, women | Comments (0)

Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy: Motherhood and Discipline

September 2, 2008 – 2:46 am

By now, many of us are aware that Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, is pregnant. You probably have listened to the media pundits trying to spin this in several different directions.

Some are gleefully rubbing their hands together, expressing overwhelming euphoria. Senator Obama issued a statement saying, “I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” He specifically denied that his campaign had anything to do with the information becoming public.

Most of the debate on Bristol’s pregnancy deals with whether or not her mother Sarah is responsible, because of her public insistence that abstinence education is what we need to be teaching our children. Some see this as proof that preaching abstinence to our children is a failure, as clearly this approach did not stop the Alaskan governor’s daughter from deciding on her own to engage in sex. Others feel that Sarah Palin is not responsible, because a parent can only control a child’s behaviour to a certain degree. Some claim that the whole debate is irrelevant because it is a family matter. Here you have three opinions on one pregnancy.

It astounds me that people believe that they have the right to even enter into discussion on what another does with their body. It seems that in our post-feminist world, women’s reproduction is still something that is open for social discipline. I find it interesting that no one considered for a moment, that pregnancy could have been an active choice for this young woman. Immediately we assume that birth control failed, that she lacked morals, or that her closed-minded harpy of a mother did not engage in conversations with her regarding sex and sexuality. We claim to acknowledge the autonomy of women and yet motherhood as a conscious decision never once entered the debate.

Yet motherhood cannot be considered an entirely active decision simply because the female body is policed. Though we claim to honour motherhood in this society the opposite is quite true. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, Feature, Society, election 08, family, feminism, north america, politics, racism, sex, women | Comments (7)

Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama: Hypocrisy in Mainstream Feminism

August 31, 2008 – 9:22 am

On Friday, McCain announced his choice for a running mate. He chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

According to CNN’s John King, McCain met with Palin only one time before deciding that she was his pick, leading one to believe that he chose her because he believed that one vagina could substitute for another. Clearly his aim was to appeal to the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. Some women will embrace vagina solidarity, and support McCain because he chose a colluder as his running mate, and others will be enraged because Palins political positions are resoundingly anti-woman.

Palin is not a feminist, though she has benefited from feminist organizing. Were it not for generations of struggle, she would not have the ability to vote, much less run for political office. The Feminine Mystique was written with women like her in mind, and yet if she were elected her decisions would lead to a reduction of women’s rights. The irony of this has not been lost to me, nor I suspect on many women who today are asking how a pro-life woman could possibly represent women’s needs.

Palin is not only staunchly pro-life, she is pro-death penalty, and anti-gay marriage. No matter how many images we see of her shooting guns, or rocking her newborn, her record of conservatism is at odds with everything that feminism stands for. Sarah Palin is not only anti-feminist, she is, as I already mentioned, anti-woman.

Now, the sexist attacks have started against her already. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, feminism, north america, politics, racism, women | Comments (1)

Gods and Nymphs: The Myths and Realities of Modern Life and Love

July 21, 2008 – 6:53 am

A few months ago, I read that Russian women have lost the war against sexism, and that one of the symptoms of said defeat is the dominance of the Nymph - “a professional beauty,” the ideal partner for the modern man.

The author of the essay I’m quoting is Evgenia Pischikova, a funny, clever woman. While I found her perceptions of American feminism to be somewhat idealized, and some of her statements regarding modern Russian woman downright exaggerated, I nevertheless believe in the Nymph. I’ve seen far too many beautiful women, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian, affect a soulless gaze in the presence of eligible bachelors to deny the Nymph’s existence.

Yet I do not think the story of the Nymph to be simple. Neither do I think that her tale is complete without a thorough discussion of her male counterpart - the God.

Now, the modern God, for the sake of Pischikova’s analogy, is pretty much any man who is, for some reason, desirable to the Nymph, usually marked by a paternalistic (or, as some people are fond of saying, “protective” attitude). We’re accustomed to believe that the God is wealthy, or well-off, and he generally is.

Modern Gods demand sacrifices as readily as the ancient ones. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, europe, feminism, love, sex, women | Comments (5)

Yoni is the Wrong Damn Word: Marginalization and Exoticism

April 30, 2008 – 5:48 am

Why, oh, why does it have to be Yoni Ki Baat? Why? I’m South Asian, right? I’m solid South Asian. So why does it make my blood boil that South Asians are doing an adaptation of the Vagina Monologues called Yoni Ki Baat?

Well, I don’t have a damn yoni, for one thing. The first time I read the word yoni, it was in a Nancy Friday book of sexual fantasies and some white chick was describing her power centre being plunged or whatever and calling it a yoni.

I do not call my c*** yoni. I’m Pakistani. We don’t do Sanskrit in Pakistan, not on purpose, anyway (I take no responsibility for accidental Sanskrit). Pakistani vernacular has many words for vagina and none of them is yoni. So running into a performance of Yoni Ki Baat by South Asians in Seattle really just fries my onions all wrong.

However, I can deal. I know that in the US South Asian communities are dominated by Indianness and this is simply a reflection of the sub-continental hegemonic power structures. I don’t like it, but I’m a lazy person and that’s not a fight I’m going to pick on a 6-month quickie in Seattle.

A little bit of investigation, however, brings me the news that, no, in fact, even in Indian contexts, using yoni for vagina is extremely problematic. It’s a Sanskrit word. Sanskrit is the base for north Indian languages, including, most prominently, Hindi. Using it successfully projects, once again, north India as true India and Dravidian south India as other. As incidental. As internal or private. As “ethnic.” As not-really-there.

Well done, feminism. Read More »

By Kyla Pasha | Posted in Arts & Literature, Society, feminism, sex, south asia, women | Comments (10)

Just Shut Up and Drive Into a Wall Already

February 2, 2008 – 9:26 am

Of all the indignities one has to suffer on account of being publicly female, nothing irks me quite as much as being screamed at from of passing cars. Or so is the case as of late, anyway.

Harassment by random jerks is, of course, nothing new.

It happens on Internet forums. It happens to children - sometimes with terrible consequences (and lingering questions as to what, exactly, can be done about such phenomena). Even record companies are not above harassment nowadays, or so I’ve read.

Yet, what I hate about drive-by harassment in particular is how bloody cowardly it is, and how unnerving for the victim it can also be. There’s nothing quite as easy and consequence-free as rolling down your window and shouting something malicious at a startled pedestrian before speeding away.

I’ve traveled enough to know that this sort of thing happens everywhere - from sleepy suburban subdivisions in the Bible Belt to cosmopolitan cities in Muslim countries to the parking lots of upscale shopping malls in the heart of Europe. Here, there, and everywhere, the common denominator seems to be gender: the perpetrators are usually male and their targets are usually female.

My love of travel combined with my love of walking results in the fact that I often get shouted at in languages I don’t understand. This creates an entirely new dimension of creepy. What is the guy saying?

“Hey sexy, lookin’ good!”…?

“Your visible elbows are offensive to me!”…?

“Dear God, I’ve just discovered an enraged king cobra under my seat, please do something!”…?

I may never know. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, feminism, humor, women | Comments (6)