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What are Women Doing to Demand Change?Posted by Victoria Bresee, 4/6/05 at 9:55:21 PM.
In response to the following 1885 quote of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course he can do it, Nikki Smith responded that, "I guess it just amazes me that women are not furious and trying to change their status around the world. Are men this powerful, or are we (women) just this weak?" My parents and I were asking the same question last night, as my mother told us of the book she had just finished reading, Desert Flower, by Waris Dirie, that describes the experience of female genital mutilation firsthand. ("Mutilation" is a much more accurate term than "circumcision"). Why do women continue the tradition? We might ask, "Why don't they stand up all at once and refuse to do it?" It is so much easier to look at the traditions of other cultures, and act dismayed that women carry on hurting new generations of young women, than to look at our own culture. What about our own ways of letting adolescent girls know that their bodies are not good enough? How do we raise our sons? What are we doing to stop the violence of war, allowing our young men to sacrifice their bodies? A fascinating website with tons of resources and places to explore is The Lysistrata Project. One of the pages tells the story behind the name: Lysistrata whose name means “she who disbands armies” organizes Athenian and Spartan women in a sex strike in order to force their men to abandon the war between the two city-states. The women are tired of losing sons and husbands. Lysistrata’s bold plan works because the men, befuddled by horniness and tripping over erections, give in and decide they prefer to make love, not war. The play ends in a celebration of pan-Hellenism with Athenians and Spartans singing of their common battles against the Persians who are “numberless as the sand on the shores.” Now I am not advocating a sex strike, but the story does show the strength that women who unite behind a cause can create. As far as I can remember, with the war in Iraq, the mothers that have been shown on TV talk about how proud they are of their sons decisions to go across the world to make the world free. There certainly are parents, after the fact, that are speaking up after they realize that their sons died needlessly, but where are the mothers that refuse to let their sons be used this way? Can we start to demand change, like the MADD mothers? For what other issues should we be making our power felt?
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