the deadly risks of just being you

^ Sajida Bibi tells her story.

From Victim To Heroine | The New York Times (video, 5:26)

From rape to slavery to honor killings, extreme oppression can be the norm for Pakistani women. But, Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof reports from Pakistan that one courageous woman has built an oasis of hope in her village.

Chances are some of you reading this blog post are female, American, and enjoying the freedoms of being a woman in a democratic first world country in the 21st century while still advocating for even more rights, from preserving Roe v. Wade to a law for equal pay. You can easily and effortlessly bare your face and head in public, wear pants or leg exposing skirt and heels, go on dates, even fall in love and couple with someone without necessarily marrying them first. You know, all the things we take for granted. You embrace personal responsibility for your own decisions, you're respected and admired for your accomplishments, and you breeze through life on your own terms.

But in a country like Pakistan, staggeringly huge amounts of money are being invested by the government in nuclear arms (with some help from the U.S., not surprisingly). In fact we Americans continue to give our tax money to the Pakistan government, who in turn continue to funnel it into their military. And yet little effort is spent on building their human infrastructure - education, schools in remote villages, domestic industries and jobs, and human rights assessment and legislation, especially for women.

In Pakistan if you even dated a man without the approval of your family, you could easily be scorned by them. And your own family could, by tradition, allow you to be gang raped, or even murder you for it. Your own family. Your own brothers and father would be more than willing to sell you off as a slave, if not kill you instead. This is happening today, right now, as it has happened again and again for hundreds of years. Be glad you don't live there as a woman.

^ This is what could easily happen to you as a woman if you simply wanted to marry for love in Pakistan. ABC News, September 2008. I had tears in my eyes watching this story.

Sajida Bibi is a beautiful young woman who is simply trying to live her life. In The New York Times video above she tells her story. Because she had "shamed" them, her own brothers couldn't even decide whether to kill her or sell her off into slavery. There are many other women like her, surviving and eventually getting on while still existing in the shadow of a vicious and cruel patriarchal society and culture. But there are also other women who aren't as strong and must live in mortal fear, they continue to be subjugated to a tradition that treats women as the property of men.

And isn't it hard for you to enjoy your life and your accomplishments when you live under the threat of abuse, torture, and even death for simply trying to be you?

Related:

when fierce, wear pink! | a space alien

when fierce, wear pink!

^ Meet the pink ladies of India. You DO NOT want to fuck with them, they are at least a hundred strong and getting even stronger with new recruits. Fierceness never looked so chic, don't you agree? | Part 2 of this program.

I first found out about this incredible gang of women from a BBC News story last year. My initial reaction was the typical "You go girl!", but the more I ruminated on it the more I felt both inspiration and sadness. Inspired, naturally because of the extreme courage of Sampat Pal Devi, founder of the Gulabi Gang. She had the balls (so to speak) to finally stand up to the physical, psychological, and social abuses she and other women of her region had endured for years from the very family they relied on and from the community they lived in.

The very thought of being perfectly conditioned from birth to accept your lowly status not only as a woman, but as one of the worst treated groups in India's traditional caste system seems like an entire world away from what American women in the 21st century just about take for granted. Yes, there are still parts of the world today where it feels like you exist in the Bronze Age. It's also mind bogglingly ironic how India, one of the upcoming leaders of the world in terms of technology, industry, and commerce still treats many of its citizens like animals. Many of the 'dalit' class are subjected to what we would consider supremely humiliating and dehumanizing work.

Like you and me, these are good people, and given the chance they can do incredible work to contribute to the progress of their community, their country, and of the world. They are no different from us, yet they have been intently thrown into the garbage by their own people, by their culture, their government.

And of course I felt sad about this gang because of why they had to form themselves. To have your very own husband beat you day to day, your own in-laws physically abuse you. And you can't fight back because it is all you've ever known. And even worse, the local police do nothing because they're so corrupt and, frankly, don't give a shit. It simply makes Sampat's story, and the stories of her female allies, all the more extraordinary. Yes, in this case it needed extreme measures to counter and eventually champion equally (if not more so) extreme, horrible situations.

^ The legendary Vogue editor and fashion icon Diana Vreeland once declared that "Pink is the navy blue of India". I wonder what she would have thought of Sampa and her girls. I bet she would have then declared, "Navy blue never looked so fierce and chic, my dear!"

Think about it, we're talking about hundreds of years of brutal physical abuses of women living within their culture, which is all they've ever known. Sampat and her sisters-in-arm have never been properly educated if at all, most of them are illiterate, but all they want is to live with some respect and dignity and to work and to provide for their children.

Sampat and her gang are trying to undo centuries of cruelty and mistreatment in perhaps a radical way. But if this must be the way for them to do it, so be it. It is her ultimate way of saying "Fuck you! You mess with me and you'll never live to see tomorrow! And I will look so fucking chic wasting your sorry ass, too!"