Let Us Hope and Try to Stop the Violence against Women

It is in fact promising that a day has been dedicated to “Stop the Violence against Women”. But is that enough? I personally believe even dedicating a week to this cause wouldn’t be enough. The whole year maybe? Perhaps that would be effective, and that would actually do some good. Reminding people every day, what women all over the world have been going through, throughout the history and even today, to this very day - in this technological, modernized era-just because instead of urinating through penis, they urinate through vagina. And I strongly believe this is the only difference between men and women. Yet ironically enough, the only reason that one specific gender has to always suffer and be pushed down to the background of the male-dominated system. Needless to say, I don’t believe in any of the cliché, force-fed myths about the characteristics of human beings based on their body organs: No, I don’t believe women are necessarily more sensitive than men, because of not having a penis. Neither do I believe they are more envious creatures than men. Honestly I can’t even imagine how envy can be related to one’s body organs. I don’t even think men are necessarily physically stronger than women. It is just a well-fed and well-established illusion that the system has pushed us to buy and act on it. And so we have.

How can one write “pain”? One can only feel pain. One can only suffer and stay silent because it does not even occur to her that she has the right to stand up for herself, to speak up and complain about the “pain”; for the simple reason that the “law” does not support her. Even the whole society could look down to her and shut her up. That is why she stays silent her whole life. However I know this is getting much better in the Western countries. I know if a woman’s right gets violated in those countries, the law and the society are supposed to try their best to support her. But my main focus here is on the women in underdeveloped countries –such as my own country: Iran. As a middle-class young woman, I have been dealing with all the logical fears I suffer from, just because I urinate through my vagina and still live in Iran. At times I find myself speechless after hearing the daily news: Female Student Being Stabbed by her Vengeful Lover, Jealous Suitor Throws Acid at the Girl’s Face, Female Student Getting Raped by the Male Clerk, and so on and so forth. This is why at times I get hysterical just by walking on the crowded streets of the city. And I can feel the hysteria, the fear of other women as well as my own. Female gender knows and smells fear all the time. Yet it hopelessly seems we can never overcome it, we can never defeat it. The violence is everywhere; on the streets, in our families, in our friends’ families, in our past, in our news, in our nightmares, in our future. We just can’t ignore it; that’s why the wisest thing to do is to be always on guard. To always obey your fear. And to turn into this fearful, insecure, obedient, weak, impotent female creature that the system wants you to be. We just can’t defeat the system, can we?

Or let me see, let’s be optimistic for a minute, let’s have some hope, let’s believe in a bright future, a future without all kinds of violence against some specific gender -against some specific body organ. Let us remind every woman of her basic human rights. Let us make women express their fears, their desires, themselves. Even let’s change the law, the misconceptions about female (and even male) genders, let’s erase all the evil, insane myths about women -which have obviously had no logical reasons but to push women down, to fade them into the background of the male-dominated world. Let us talk and inform and support this change. Let us try. Because we have this duty. We owe this to ourselves, to our lives and to our future. And by “we” I don’t only mean “women”, by “we” I mean all the human beings regardless of their gender; each and every human being who believes in equality and a safer world and a brighter future for the human race.