A Pakistani woman attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself under the wheels of a train after the torture she suffered at the hands of her husband for not bearing him a male child. A Thai woman jumped into a pool full of crocodiles, reportedly because of the way her husband treated her.
The last two stories where distributed by news agencies on the same day. What kind of treatment would drive a woman to throw herself in front of a train to be turned into mince or to jump into the pool of crocodiles to be devoured?
What treatment can drive a woman to overcome all instinctive fear and subject herself to such a violent death?
Not a week passes without stories of women who suffer from the tyranny of men in various parts of the world. We have become so overloaded with such stories that the reader (at least the male reader) glances over them without being moved by it. Why should he be when it doesn’t concern him? Perhaps it gives him pleasure, impelled as men are by the desire for control over women and the joy they get from humiliating and torturing them for no other reason except that they are women. Oppression of women to the point of physical violence is a worldwide phenomenon.
Newspapers ceaselessly print these kinds of reports on the curiosity pages and look forward to more such strange stories with which to fill their pages. Men in the media don’t care about the problem itself. They never for example attempt to research these cases. They never ask such questions as: Why do men torture women and oppress them through physical or psychological cruelty? Why does society simply sit back and do nothing? Why isn’t the law given “teeth” to put a stop to such violence and let women regain their lost dignity?
The criminals are often close relatives — husbands, brothers or fathers. Men’s subjugation of women has been around for centuries. Modernization has not affected it: It is a basic instinct. The problem will not go away except when women using all their mental and physical strengths face up to men and don’t yield to them. Women have huge reserves of untapped strength. When the time comes and they use it they will turn men into whimpering nothings.
As long as women are subservient, men will abuse their authority and cause them pain and suffering. Men must come to realize that women are their equals without either side overstepping their bounds. They must also realize that relationships based on subjugation will spill over into a crippled and shackled society. Women must not be afraid to speak out and say: “Stop hurting me, stop deceiving me, stop neglecting me and stop amusing yourself with me.”
Neither the Pharaohs nor Hitler nor Saddam would have been able to sit on the throne of tyranny were it not for the weakness of their people and their total submission.
Arab News Features 16 May 2003