tagged w/ gender apartheid
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I was shocked from the moment the plane landed at the reaction I elicited. I had never felt so sexualized and objectified. It was a suffocating and overwhelming deluge of incessant, aggressive, unwanted male attention. Taxi drivers tried to kidnap me. Soldiers harassed me. Strange men tried to lure me into their shops, their homes, their beds. I was baffled at the rudeness of these men who felt absolutely no compunction in trying to touch and grab me.
I was terrified and dismayed. I thought, “How am I going to get to and from work? How am I going to maneuver through my daily existence, buy groceries, go to the bank, eat out?” I was incredulous. Walking down the street by myself in downtown Rabat, in front of the Parliament building no less, seemed like a nightmare in which I had mistakenly exposed my genitals............
I was shocked by how open and honest these young Muslim men were about their misogyny, their racism, their tribalism, and, especially, about their antiSemitism. They were also brutally honest about their interpretations of Quranic tenets and Islamic dogma. They proudly bandied about their cell phone displays, emblazoned with images of the two hijacked planes hitting the Twin Towers, for my amusement. They then sheepishly put them away when they saw the look of utter horror upon my face. Somehow they thought that my disapprobation of the American president would equate with my pleasure in seeing thousands of American innocents slaughtered.......
One need only visit a Muslim Arab country to understand the true nature of the much-abused concept of jihad. There is no talk of internal struggle on the streets of Rabat. There is no talk of nonviolent conversion in the cafes of Morocco. There is only talk of blood, lust and martyrdom. Keep in mind that Morocco is a moderate Muslim Arab nation, infused with European culture and populated with cosmopolitan cities, and, arguably, America’s greatest Muslim-Arab ally.....
What did I take away from my Moroccan experience? I realized that Moroccan women are artful and disingenuous deceivers and survivalists by necessity, not choice. I also realized that the complicity argument is hogwash. And I realized that men care not for their religious tenets and dogma, except to impose sexual slavery upon women. Embracing cultural relativism makes the West complicit in the gender genocide and sexual slavery of millions upon millions of women living in predominantly Muslim countries. People don’t realize how many Muslim women are fighting for their rights in Muslim countries. Their governments don’t want the West to know. It defeats the cultural relativism argument.
The whole notion that societies where family ties are paramount are more moral is a sheer and utter fallacy.
I used to be more sensitive to the cultural relativism argument. When I arrived in Morocco, I was terrified of appearing culturally insensitive. I didn’t want to be labeled an egotistical Western imperialist. But now, I am a militant secular humanist. I wholesale reject any suggestion that insistence upon human rights is in some way imperialistic. Three months alone in Morocco will do that to a girl.
(Read it all)I was shocked from the moment the plane landed at the reaction I elicited. I had never... more
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