Father demands 'one million likes' dowry for daughter
A Yemeni young man who sought to marry his sweetheart was shocked when her father demanded “one million likes” on Facebook as a dowry for her.
The father, Salim Ayyash, asked the would-be husband he must write the word “like” one million times over a period of one month in all his tweets and contacts with friends on Facebook. But the father quickly assured the daunted young man, identified as Osama, that he might consider cutting that number before the end of the deadline.
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Ayyash, a well-known Facebook personality in the western Yemeni province of Taizz, also told the suitor that he would be watching his Facebook and Twitter activity to check whether he was making progress.
“Ayyash said he was watching Osama’s online activities as he set off to accomplish that dowry task …he also told him that before the end of the month, he would evaluate his achievement and could reduce the dowry if he is satisfied with his achievement,” the Saud Arabic language daily Sada said in a report from Yemen.
It said the rare request by Ayyash came amidst soaring wedding expenses and dowries (money paid by grooms to their brides under Islamic law) in Yemen.
In November 2011, after I joined a protest
on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo with a friend, Egyptian riot police
beat me – breaking my left arm and right hand – and sexually assaulted
me. I was also detained by the interior minister and military
intelligence for 12 hours.
After I was released, it took all I had
not to cry when I saw the look on the face of a very kind woman I'd
never met before, except on Twitter, who came to pick me up and take me
to the emergency room for medical attention. (She is now a cherished
friend.)
As I described to the female triage nurse what had had happened to me, she stopped at "and they sexually assaulted me" to ask:
how could you let them do that to you? Why didn't you resist?
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It
had been about 14 or 15 hours since riot police had attacked me; I just
wanted to be X-rayed to see if they had broken anything. Both arms
looked like the Elephant Man's limbs. I explained to the nurse that when
you're surrounded by four or five riot police, whacking at you with
their night sticks, there isn't much "resisting" one can do.
I've
been thinking a lot about that exchange with the nurse. Whenever I read
the ghastly toll of how many women were sexually assaulted during last
week's protests against Mohamed Morsiin Tahrir Square, I have to wonder about such harshness after brutality.
Activists
with grassroots groups on the ground who intervene to extricate women
from sexual violence in Tahrir said they documented more than 100 cases;
several were mob assaults, several requiring medical attention. One
woman was raped with a sharp object. I hope none was asked "why didn't
you resist?"
This isn't an essay on how Egyptian regimes like
Mubarak's targeted female activists and journalists as a political ploy.
Nor is it about how regimes like Morsi's largely ignored sexual
violence, and even when it did acknowledge it, blamed women for bringing
assaults upon themselves. Nor is it an article about how such assaults
and such refusal to hold anyone accountable have given a green light to
our abusers that women's bodies are fair game. Nor will I tell you that –
were it not for the silence and denial surrounding sexual assault in Egypt – such assaults would not be enacted so frequently on women's bodies on the Egyptian streets.
I
don't know who is behind those mob assaults in Tahrir, but I do know
that they would not attack women if they didn't know they would get away
with it and that the women would always be asked "why didn't you
resist?"
From the ground up, we need a national campaign against
sexual violence in Egypt. It must push whoever we elect to govern Egypt next, as well as our legislators, to take sexual assaults more
seriously.
If our next president chooses – as Morsi did – to
address the nation from a stage in Tahrir Square for the inauguration,
let him (or her) salute the women who turned out in their thousands upon
thousands in that same square, knowing they risked assaults and yet
refusing to be pushed out of public space. The square's name literally
means "liberation", and it will be those women who, in spite of the risk
of sexual violence, will have helped to enable his (or her) presence
there as the new president of Egypt.
Undoubtedly, the Egyptian
interior ministry needs reform, especially when it comes to how it deals
with sexual assault. The police rarely, if ever, intervene, or make
arrests, or press charges. It was, after all, the riot police themselves
who assaulted me. Their supervising officer even threatened me with
gang rape as his conscripts continued their assault of me in front of him.
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Any
woman who ends up in the ER room deserves much better than "why didn't
you resist?" Nurses and doctors need training in how best to care for
survivors of sexual assault and how to gather evidence.Female
police units are said to have been introduced at various precincts, but
they need training. They also need rape kits – in the unlikely event any
woman actually gathers herself enough to report rape in Egypt. When I
was reporting on sexual violence in Cairo in the 1990s, several
psychiatrists told me their offices were the preferred destination for
women who had survived sexual violence, be it at home or on the streets,
because they feared being violated again in police stations.
While
that fear is still justifiable today, something has begun to change:
more and more women are willing to go public to recount their assaults. I
salute those women's courage, but I wonder where they find comfort and
support after their retelling is over. PTSD therapy is not readily
available in Egypt. We need to train more of our counsellors to offer it
to those who want it.
We need to recruit popular football and
music stars in advertising campaigns: huge, presidential election
campaign style billboards across bridges and buildings – addressing men
with clear anti-sexual violence messages, for example – as well as
television and radio spots. Culture itself has a role to play in
changing this culture: puppet theatre and other arts indigenous to Egypt
can help break the taboo of speaking out; and we need more TV shows and
films that tackle sexual assaults in their storylines.
There is
an innate and burning desire for justice in Egypt. Revolutions will do
that. We need to coordinate efforts and aim high to ensure such a
campaign meets the needs of girls and women across the country, not just
Cairo and the big cities.
In January 2012, I spent a few days
with a fierce 13-year-old girl we'll call Yasmine, for a documentary
film, on which I was a writer, called Girl Rising. The film paired nine
female writers with girls each from their country of birth whose stories
they recounted to illustrate the importance of girls' education.
Five
months before we met, Yasmine had survived a rape. My arms were still
broken and in casts when we met and I naively considered removing the
casts and pretending I was OK in order to "protect her". I did not want
her to think that 30 years down the line, at my age, she could still be
subject to such violation.
She certainly did not need my
protection and I'm glad I kept my casts on, because as soon as we met,
she simply and forthrightly told me:
I'm going to open my heart to you and you're going to open your heart to me, OK?
She
then went on to recount what happened to her. I admired her courage and
her insistence on going to the police with her mother to report the
rape. She was lucky she found an understanding police officer who took
her complaint seriously.
When I told her what had happened to me,
she was shocked that it was police who'd attacked me. "Have you reported
what happened to you? Have you taken them to court?" she asked me.
Yasmine has not had a single day of formal education. She believed she deserved justice. We all do.
domestic violence in Saudi Arabia made headlines worldwide
Saudi Arabia, a country not exactly known for progressive attitudes
toward women, has launched its first major campaign against domestic
violence — its latest effort to embrace, at least superficially, some women’s rights reforms.
The ads in the “No More Abuse” campaign show a woman in a dark veil
with one black eye. The English version reads “some things can’t be
covered.” The Arabic version, according to Foreign Policy‘s David Kenner, translates roughly as “the tip of the iceberg.” A Web site for the campaign includes a report on reducing domestic violence and emergency resources for victims.
Exact figures on domestic violence are hard to come by. The State Department’s most recent human rights report
cites estimates that 16 to 50 percent of Saudi wives suffer some kind
of spousal abuse. Saudi law does not criminalize domestic violence or
spousal rape, and social repercussions can make reporting violence of
any kind difficult. Both rape and domestic violence “may be seriously
underreported,” according to the State Department report.
The Saudi government has begun to address the problem, at least in
name. In 2008, a prime ministerial decree ordered the expansion of
“social protection units,” its version of women’s shelters, in several
large cities, and ordered the government to draft a national strategy to
deal with domestic violence, according to the United Nations.
Several royal foundations, including the King Abdulaziz Center for
National Dialogue and the King Khalid Foundation, have also led
education and awareness efforts.
None of this changes the fact, of course, that Saudi Arabia remains an often difficult place to be a woman. The World Economic Forum ranks the country 131st out of 135 for its record on women’s rights, citing a total lack of political and economic empowerment.
The country has a strong record on women’s health and education, however: On metrics such as enrollment in higher education, Saudi Arabia actually scores well above the global average.
Some of those well-educated women are leading the fight against domestic violence now. Maha Almuneef,
a pediatrician, directs the National Family Safety Program, an
anti-violence effort that has also benefited from the patronage of Saudi
Arabia’s Princess Adela.
“Reporting violence and abuse should be compulsory, and there should be a witness protection program,” Adela said at a 2009 conference on ending the country’s domestic abus
الجنس في مجتمعنا " الشرقي " و نظرة الناس المزدوجة ليه
الجنس هو أقصى درجة من ممارسة الحب بين الاحباء فيعتبره أغلب الرجال شيئا عظيما
و في نفس الوقت إذا أراد أحدهم إهانة شخص ما وصفه بألفاظ جنسية هو أو أمه
أو زوجته و كأن الفعل الجنسي هنا إهانة أو ازدراء لا معنى عظيم للحب
إذا وجد الرجل في شريكته درجة ما من المعرفة الجنسية أو التجاوب الجنسي اعتبرها " شمال " و شك في أخلاقها
و إن وجد فيها جهلا أو عدم تجاوب اعتبرها " باردة " و غير مؤهلة لممارسة الحب معه ..
البنت تربى طول عمرها إن عيب تكلم الولاد أو تختلط بيهم .. الرجال جميعا
أشرار و في نفس الوقت نطلب منها مرة واحدة أن تتعرى و تمارس الجنس مع زوجها
الذي ربما لم تعرفه بالقدر الكافي و ربما يختلط لديها مفهوم الفضيلة فيخلق
لديها مفهوم سلبي عن الجنس و مقاومة لا إرادية حتى مع زوجها
هي لا تعرف هل الجنس عيبا أو حراما أو مصدرا للسعادة
هي لا تعرف هل جسدها مصدر للنشوة أو الازدراء
هذه الازدواجية في مفهوم الرجال عن الجنس تجعل المرأة في حيرة في التعامل مع هذه الغريزة الراقية
With millions more men than women in India, many wonder about the state of bachelorhood in India.
There have been arguments that this “shortage” of women [as if women are a commercial resource] would force the ‘gender’ ratio to fix itself! But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The gender ratio keeps plummeting, and you don’t have communities going into panic saying “We need to find a woman for sex and reproduction!!” Why is this economic/ “women as commodity” theory not working out the way it was assumed it would?
Perhaps because Indian men indeed view women as “commodity!” And since there is a shortage of “female commodity” the users have found other methods of procuring women! They are now BUYING, SELLING, AND RECYCLING! It is another response to “commodity shortage”, and is essentially the Indian version of DOMESTIC SEX-TRAFFICKING. This is a practice in India that is as old as female gendercide, and there are reports that it existed even as early as the 1900s. Only now, with plummeting gender ratios, the practice is out in the open and increasing rapidly. It is often referred to as ‘BRIDE-TRAFFICKING.’
Much of this sex-trafficking is in the guise of ‘marriage.’ Each family, community and people involved call it a ‘marriage.’ The girl or woman is sold as a ‘bride’ to a man. She may be married to one man in a family but is used for sex and reproduction by the other men within the same family. She is then re-sold again as a ‘bride’ to another family. Some women are sold and resold up to four times, and there are indications that there are thousands of such ‘brides’ being trafficked in the name of ‘marriage.’ Most of these girls are 15 years or younger and often kidnapped and sold into “bride-trafficking”.
Government officials explain their lack of action against this form of sex-trafficking with, “”If they are legally wedded, what can we do.”
However, from many rural areas, families will often sell their daughters to a commercial “agent” for as little as U.K. £15
There is one report of a man beheading his “bought” wife for refusing to sleep with his brothers.
Munni who was forced to have sex with her husbands brothers, has had three sons from them. It is interesting that all her children are boys, no girls. It is believed that there may be many more women like Munni in the region. Here is Munni’s story in her words:
“My husband and his parents
said I had to share myself with his brothers…
They took me whenever they wanted – day or night.
When I resisted, they beat me with
anything at hand…Sometimes they threw me
out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over
me and burned me.”
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS: Claire Pismont and Delphines are members of The 50 Million Missing Campaign’s Photographers Group on Flickr. supported by more than 2400 photographers from around the world. To see more of each of their works, please click on the pictures.