A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You

[easternabeille]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-ch ... 18849.html

This is an absolutely amazing post that brought tears to my eyes. Here's my favorite part of the article

How do you threaten them? A girl, alone? By being able, strong, confident and yes, shameless. You may not "naturally" be interested in domesticity, piety, purity and submission, and they rely on your commitment to those things to order their worlds. Their actions, from one end of the spectrum to the other, are designed to fill you with self-doubt and, ultimately, fear -- either bodily or spiritual -- because otherwise you, and the young boys around you, will be fully aware of your strength and potential.

Because of this, they single-mindedly focus their attention on you, your body, your clothes, your hair, your abilities, your physical freedom. When their "manners" and "morals" are not universally applicable, but different for boys and girls, you can be sure that this is why. They seek to teach you, subtly, through small slights and gendered expectations, that you are "different," weak, unworthy, incapable. The sadness is that, in their perception, if you are none of these things, then they are not strong, worthy and capable. This is not an excuse, but an explanation. It's why they find infinite "benevolent" ways to undermine and disparage you, all in the name of "God's word." When that fails, they resort to violence. All over the world, their anxiety is manifest in a spectrum of actions ranging from mild paternalism, respectful of "proper boundaries," to deadly enforcement of their rules.

[holierthanyou]

Fabulous. Thanks for sharing.

[luckystone]

Good article, though devastating. I liked how she included all the references to news articles to back up her statements - I couldn't look at any of them though, they all sounded too upsettting. However, I hated the underlining, italics, bold etc. it was so distracting! I stopped writing like that in high school.