The Chosen and The Damned

I'd be lying if I said I never wondered on what basis God judges a person as good or bad. I've had these thoughts since I was a kid when I was told that being certain things was good, while doing things or associating with certain people was bad. I tried to maintain those guidelines while growing up, looking at things purely from black and white vision goggles. It was easy, relatively. I just had to hold to some criteria that I thought were objective and fair, but that was as far as my child brain could take me.

But growing up, to me, was discovering that life has a wide array of grey-scale shades. And these shades often get tinted by a certain color representing where you stand on the spectrum. I learned that my idea of right and wrong is different from my sister's, and we grew up in the same house raised by the same parents! I'd be lying to say that it was easy, because I remember at a point in my life I was being constantly shocked by what other people viewed as true, right, good and fair. Let's just say it was a bumpy road...

Part of the teachings children receive, especially in religious backgrounds, is knowing which people belong where when it comes to the afterlife. We're taught that certain people who do a,b and c belong to heaven, while some others who don't, and maybe have 1,2 and 3 as their set values, they belong to hell. The first pile, The Chosen, often include people like ourselves and our parents. They're the familiar, the similar, the congruent to our codes of morality. While the "other," they're The Damned. Those classifications are often termed "moral tribes."

Setting apart moral tribes starts to take place by associating with only the people who fit our definitions of good. But like any other tribal behaviors, it ends by eliminating and alienating those who don't. A bit further down the road, the tribe starts having a more specific list of "admission prerequisites,"  which means that its circle shrinks and starts to exclude more people. And to ensure the survival and propagation of its values and morals, it starts to fight other tribes.

This means that fighting only happens when a tribe feels threatened by the presence of another option, or by the lack of enough followers. It happens when the "other" is viewed as the enemy who could possibly destroy our own tribal values, or at least when vanquishing the "other" is seen as a sign of strength that could attract a bigger number to join the victor tribe.

It's obviously primal thinking, using primal strategies. To fail at belonging to a community, having certain values and beliefs, while simultaneously being able to view the "other" as a human being with as much value on their life, as many rights as you possess, and as big of a possibility to be a good human being. This is all childish clinging to the black and white vision goggles.

But you know, sometimes those goggles don't work.

On Misogyny and Objectification of Women (January 15th, 2014)

"Sexual objectification of women has become more than prevalent, whether women seek being the ideal "object" by dressing scantily and showing their bodies to get attention, or "preserving" their bodies against their wish, just because they've been told to view it as a commodity that goes bad by being looked at.

To the women/girls out there: Your body is your medium of going out there and being active in the world. Learning, working and making your surroundings better. It's not anyone's business what you choose to wear but your own. And as a woman, you should take pride in the image God has created you as. You're not made to please any other human being if it does not include your own pleasure.

To the men out there: False empowerment it is to feel you're superior to the other sex. God has created you as equals in everything; you complement each other. Leaning on the pillar that women are weaker than you, and therefore should submit to your image of them will eventually leave you hurt. Why, you ask? Because there are women out there who are much stronger and much more able than you would expect. Women who changed and continue to change the world they live in for the better. So, you can't always rely on being "stronger" as an excuse for their objectification. And I dare ask you to stop exploiting the lack of self-esteem that many women around you have, and start empowering them instead."

I wrote that part after watching a TEDx talk about objectification through "sexiness". Now, since that kind of objectification is quite abhorred where I live, the opposite kind is the first prize winner here: forceful chastising and condemning of any kind representation of female sexuality (except of course, in "art" where most objectification is Type 1).
The problem with women is that they spent so many years thinking their worth is tied to them being sexy things, whether made to gratify the lust of men by being perfectly ogle-able statuettes, or to curb it by dressing in a certain way that allows no temptation to befall the men. So we can say the idea stuck.

However, women were not created for men, women were created to be with men. That means a woman's role as a human being is to live, I dare say equal to and the same as the way a man does!
Girls, your role is to envision a life for yourself that's comprised of your own hopes and dreams, your own adventures and mishaps, your own mistakes and lessons learned, because frankly, the rules forcefully imposed on you for your "protection" have successfully failed to protect many other women who followed them word by word.

That means that "what she was wearing" does not justify her being raped.
It also means that although in Afghanistan the women are covered head to toe quite literally, they still suffer the world's highest sexual harassment rates, often justified by -wait for it- how a woman is walking!
It means that my beloved country back in the 60s and 70s was more accepting of a miniskirt than it is now of a girl walking without Hijab, and in many a case (one of which happened before my very eyes) women wearing Niqab are ogled and groped while walking down the street!
It means that every time you are blamed for something because you're a woman, you are blamed for NOTHING you have done. In fact, you're blamed for being the way you were born, which is the most absurd form of discrimination, and quite horrifically, the oldest..

Misogyny's worst proponents are the women who believe they deserve it. So, next time you see a woman working to support her family while her deadbeat husband dozes off at home still scared of divorce, next time you see a woman accepting to be belittled by a lower ranking male employee just because she's a woman, and next time you see a mother passing down demeaning ideas to her daughter on sexuality, patriarchy, body image or self-worth...do something.