Last night a police van stood at the entrance to my building. The building manager was running around the foyer, in his pyjamas, lobbying some questions. While passing I asked the security guard what was going on, he replied that a couple on the sixth floor had been fighting and the man had beaten his wife until she bled. A neighbor called the police, unable to stand/understand the situation.

Being only one floor above them, I had been privy to these loud aural matches deep into the night too. Mostly the male voice drowned the female, but she did her share of screaming. I’m not sure what happened to the couple (there’s no more noise from where it came). Either they quietened down or they were evicted. I’m assuming the latter since I rarely hold out hope for domestic abuse patterns ever changing.

Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. And it will come as no shock that boys who witness abuse in their families are twice as likely as adults to beat their partners than those who have not seen it.^[1]

The deeply disturbing film (and even more inappropriately named) “India’s Daughter” about Jyoti Singh, a girl in her early twenties brutally abused by a gang of young men, on a bus in New Delhi, was uncomfortable viewing. Personally I did not feel incredulity at the statements of the girl’s rapist (that girls must not fight back and if they do it is to their violent detriment) or the defending lawyers (that our society has no place for girls). Internationally, being a woman is so intrinsically second class that any shocking statements like this produce little outrage in me. This is moreover supported by the evidence that statistics on abuse in other parts of the world were edited out of the documentary, perhaps to sensationalize the subject matter on India in particular.^[2]

It does not matter that these men are Indian or that the couple that was fighting a floor below are Iranian or that statistics show the Nordics leading the way in gender equality. As human beings we are distinctly biased toward men anywhere in the world.

In Iceland, the peaking country where men and women are equal, it was a revelation to see that women did so much housework – additional to the fact that they were also office-goers with work hours similar to their partners. My Icelandic female friends go partying on girls-night-outs in droves, wear what they like and speak deeply honestly, but they still often go home to fulfill engendered roles of cleaning up a mess, waking up the kids, or taking them to school, while juggling a full-time job. In fact, as recently as 2012 the commissioner for Human Rights highlighted that there is an enduring problem of domestic abuse in Iceland, additionally warning that more definitive legislative measures must be taken to protect minority groups.^[3]

I am often asked how it is to live as a woman, in the UAE, a Muslim country with strict laws on gender rights. Is it weird to see women completely covered, do they become non-persons? Would that be any different from a nearly naked night-clubbing nymph? What is oppression, what is shame, what is trying too hard to meet impossible standards? Who is more likely to get raped? Who is more likely to yell for her right to her body? I don’t really see a difference: it’s either and neither, it’s the same human being: it’s a woman who must in all clothing situations and all gender equality situations, be treated with respect. That a woman may need being in a legally recognized relationship with a man (marriage) in order to be validated in the Middle East, remains a true gender problem. Of course she, as a person, without a man by her side, remains questionable, in this cultural landscape. Historically, Prophet Muhammad took many destitute war-widows as wives, in order to support them and allow them to be in a community where they could support each other ^[4]. This ideology is now a religious norm, for better or worse.

In India poverty keeps life at such a dismal low that there is absolutely no chance for education, there’s no opportunity. Attitudes to women are perpetuated through lack of basic necessities such as water, sanitation, a job. If you come home each night hopeless and awake each morning no different, nothing changes. Even in educated India, the idea that a woman is inferior is historically established through religious literature, through ritualistic practices, through mores of a society with divisive socio-political agendas. When my western friends express shock at girl child infanticide in India, I doubt they understand the massive burden the girl will become on her family. The debts her father will collect to get her married. They don’t see the futility of her life as she grows up, her shadow self over-riding any personality she may develop.

Jyoti Singh is not “India’s Daughter” alone, she could have easily been “UK’s France’s/Dominican Republic’s/Ukraine’s/Japan’s daughter”. Is rape not happening there? Rape, violence against women, genderised role play, is a reality anywhere in the world. Jyoti Singh is the beacon of the resoundingly horrible attitude to women globally.

I do not disagree that culture is important in gender equality, but my point is that it takes a backseat to the very nature of the beast: world-wide we make progress by leaps and bounds to make life between men and women more equal, yet we fail to recognize that it is not about equality. It is about accepting our differences, it is about understanding the strengths in those differences, it is about rejoicing in the similarities. Equality may mean we are the same. We are not the same. Women are more intuitive, men are more rational. And that is beautiful. It’s a healing balance we somehow refuse to accept being part of.

Yes, women have to fight to be heard, yes, they need to get paid as much as men, and yes, families need to show their young a love and respect between the genders which inculcates healthy acknowledgement that we are all human beings and it doesn’t matter if we are men or women. It’s a very lofty ideal to strive toward.

The rapists, sex offenders, domestic abusers of the world are not the only ones who need to be taught that women are just as important and wonderful as men. It’s the male executives who stop paying attention when a female colleague is presenting at a meeting. It’s the teenage boys who use women’s and men’s sexual organs as derogatory words to make fun of others (girls or other boys). It’s the women who judge other women for their bodies, perpetuating physical stereotypes. It’s all pervasive.

How do you set about making such massive changes? With yourself, of course. The brave women who collectively opened up about molestation by comedian Bill Cosby made a difference – legitimizing their worth with a voice against a respected celebrity and secret long standing paedophile. Suzette Jordan declared her personhood by identifying herself by name, shedding the “Park Street victim” label, which invalidated her ^[5]. Veteran actor Patrick Stewart donates his time and energy heavily to the cause of ending domestic violence because as a child he witnessed his father brutalizing his mother. He openly acknowledges it took him many years to come to terms with it, he blamed himself in some way for being unable to make it stop.

The candle wrapped in barbed wire is Amnesty International’s logo, and according to Stewart, a perfect symbol for the caged hope for women’s rights. There is a future but not without a thorny fight.

Punishment by death to abusers is cutting the nose to spite the face. It will not make any unrepentant man any less egregious. It will not stop future abusers in their heinious tracks. It will solve nothing save superficially embalming a fuming society. The message is punishment over mercy, curative over preventive.

I don’t have a full blown solution. This essay is not written with the intention of forwarding it to the G8 governments and UNIFEM. I only want to voice the thought that I believe men and women are different beings cut from the same cloth of humanity. Equality is not what we must seek. We must seek to embrace each other as the same regardless of gender, as people with the same rights – to love, to contentment, solid as one. We must respect women and men for their strengths and accept their weaknesses, which may lead to more kindness, an everlasting empathy. Then perhaps eventually we will live in a society with no abuse against women. Perhaps because everyone will feel validated for themselves and we will have a world not full of equals, but of worthy human beings.

<sup>1. http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/↩
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11472416/Why-to-blacken-India-on-rape-do-they-have-to-omit-the-facts.html↩
3. http://www.humanrightseurope.org/2012/02/hammarberg-highlights-enduring-problem-of-icelands-domestic-violence/↩
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad↩
After migration to Medina, Muhammad (now in his fifties) married several women. These marriages were contracted mostly for political or humanitarian reasons. The women were either widows of Muslims killed in battle and had been left without a protector, or belonged to important families or clans whom it was necessary to honor and strengthen alliances with. Muhammad did household chores and helped with housework such as preparing food, sewing clothes, and repairing shoes. He is also said to have had accustomed his wives to dialogue; he listened to their advice, and the wives debated and even argued with him.
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzette_Jordan↩</sup>

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I’m Peri Desai

I’m Peri, welcome to my space. In it you will find stuff that moves me, maddens me, captures my attention, makes me question its truth. You will read what makes me curious, annoyed, energized, joyful, vulnerable.