Sawt al Niswa | صوت النسوة - Gender-based violence

The psychic wounds of sexual violence: Digging for Syrian victims in UNHCR's registration interview

Lamia Moghnie — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 04:20:00 +0000

Members of a Syrian refugee family give details to a UNHCR staff member during their registration in northern Lebanon: UNHCR /S. Malkawi / August 2012

Lamia Moghnieh

Lamia Moghnieh

“What happened to you?” asked the psychologist

“They raped me” Said the UNHCR male registration officer in a soft and exaggerated feminine voice, and everyone started laughing.

The psychologist carried on with the simulation anyway, playing the role of the humanitarian caregiver responsible for providing psychological support during crisis. He started asking questions in an acceleratedpace: “How old are you? When did it happen? Tell me exactly what happened to you? How did you go back home afterwards? Did they attack you? How many were they? What time did it happened? What did they do to you first? What did they do next? How did you feel? Did you feel terrified? Did you try to resist them?” The registration officer answered the questions in a similar pace.

“This is Debriefing”, declared the psychologist after the simulation was over.“It is making people who went through a violent event relive the experience and get it out of their system by talking about it. It is not efficient because it makes them relive the trauma. We have the tendency to rely on intrusive questions to dig deeper and bring things to the surface. We use this a lot here in Lebanon.”

The psychologist continued his explanation by comparing the psychological distress caused by rape to a wound:

“Let us compare it (the rape) to a wound, to a wounded person. I come and tell him: “are you wounded? Show me your wound” so he shows it to me and I ask him ‘tell me again how it felt’. let’s say I was wounded in my arm here and that the wound healed. I felt at one point that I am able to come tell you about the wound and tell you that ten years ago, five years ago, or a year ago, my hand was wounded and they stitched it, they took me to the hospital, they gave me a vaccination needle and it was okay, it went well. And this is the thin line between Psychological First Aid (PFA) and Debriefing. When someone is ready to talk, he will talk. In PFA it is important to let the person talk. I could have tried to see if the woman (in the simulation) is hungry, thirsty, to satisfy her basic needs before asking her (about the rape). Think of it as a wound, (in Debriefing we say) show me your wound, open it up again and tell me how you felt. Psychological First Aid is not intrusive like Debriefing.”

The simulation described above was part of a three day training on psychological aid for different humanitarian workers around the end of 2012, in a region in Akkar where Syrian displaced communities arrived to seek shelter. The psychologist used this exaggerated simulation to make a distinction between Debriefing and Psychological First Aid (PFA), two global packages of psychological aid that aim to immediately attend for psychological distresses emerging from exposure to violent events. While both packages circulate within humanitarian workers and the communities they assist, Debriefing seems to most capture the popular imaginary of what an emergency humanitarian psychological aid looks like, one that relies on a recitation and a retelling of the traumatic event immediately after it happens[1]. An interventionist model influenced by the intersection of talk therapies, FBI debriefing and psychological disorders of soldiers during war (like Shell Shock and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), Debriefing has been found to be inefficient, invasive and sometimes causing harm to the individuals and communities it seeks to treat[2]. Both military/security and psychological interrogation techniques inform Debriefing, which aim to heal psychological wounds is caused by violence through immediate and probed narration[3].

In recent years, Psychological First Aid (PFA) has become the most accepted emergency response intervention to support survivors’ immediate mental health needs by focusing on the victims’ basic needs, rather than interrogating them on the violence they experienced. The model was first promoted as a way to provide psychological relief for military personnel, when expert intervention was impossible or impractical, but was then recommended for use for civilians in war and disaster, as well as any experienced violence[4]. Designed as a less invasive psychological aid technique than Debriefing, PFA offers overall support and assistance through focusing on satisfying the basic needs of the psychologically troubled person[5].

Rape was evoked in the simulation to show the problems of using Debriefing and how invasive it was. However, the training on PFA soon became a site for debating the ways UNHCR officers could see and tell violence[6] through the psychic wounds of Syrian women exposed to sexual violence and rape. By the end 2012, media and humanitarian reports were highlighting the increasing cases of sexual violence and rape that led many families and communities to flee Syria to Lebanon[7], sometimes calling the conflict “Syria’s rape crisis”[8]. Identifying women suffering from rape and gender-based violence became a main humanitarian target, not only for medical-reproductive and psychological care[9], but also for identifying sexually vulnerable victims as the quintessential innocent refugee, through detecting psychological injuries and wounds (The cases of sexual violence experienced by Syrian women in Lebanon and the trading of sex for aid have had some media attention[10], but have not produced similar urgent humanitarian care, or classification of victimhood). This is crucial for UNHCR, as this article will show, not just for figuring out what care to attribute to the Syrian women, but for achieving a bureaucratized indicator of a ‘true form of victimhood’.

UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie, co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and the global campaign against sexual violence in conflict, meets with a Syrian refugee women in Lebanon

The UNHCR registration & protection officers had requested a psychological training to help them in seeing and telling violence by detecting markers of psychological injuries left by rape and sexual violence. The primary concern they had, and their primary role as registration officers, was to fill the UNHCR questionnaire used to identify and separate victims from non-victims, suffering bodies from bodies of combatants and fighters. As one UNHCR officer remarked, Syrian combatants who engaged in any kind of armed conflict cannot be refugees or victims and therefore should not be registered by UNHCR.

This separation of victim/non-victim required a specific form of interview and interrogation of Syrian men and women around violent events they were exposed to. Psychological injuries were assumed to be an indicator of true victimhood, while sexual violence became a specific form of suffering that enabled an acknowledgement of Syrian bodies as genuine and innocent victims. The role of the registration officers was to figure out whether the displaced Syrians were lying or were truthful about their injuries, a form of telling that became trickier when looking for invisible wounds of war like the psychological scars resulting from sexual violence or rape.

Like one UNHCR registration officer said during the training: “I need to know and have the techniques, so that I know what to write in the claim”. This officer was acquainted with the published reports on cases of rape in Syria, but she was registering people for three months now without catching a case so far: “It is not normal that I don’t find raped women. They don’t say ‘we are raped’. It is not normal. It is the culture ( it is the culture that prevents them from disclosing rape to UNHCR registration officers)” The UNHCR officer here wondered: how can she know what right question to ask? How can she surpass the cultural barriers in order to see the true suffering of the Syrian woman?

UNHCR officers saw the act of “digging deeper” (both a psychological and a security-interrogation technique) into the narrative of suffering of Syrian women as the only way to constitute them as true victims, a technique used by Debriefing that the psychologist declared was invasive and somewhat unethical.Becoming more uncomfortable with the debate around PFA and how to detect sexual violence, the psychologist asserted that it is not the role of humanitarian workers to ask invasive questions about sexual violence. Even psychologists would not seek to ‘know’ whether someone has been raped or not, some people might never disclose this information in therapy, he added, or they might talk about it years after.

Still, the UNHCR officers needed to know. Both to refer the case for proper care, but primarily to file a refugee claim based on sexual and gender-based violence, where women suffering from sexual violence were becoming an important humanitarian category of, embodying “the model subjects of aid”[11]. On the other hand, the psychologist explained that most people engaged in conflict situations have ‘suffered’ one way or another. PFA therefore can be applied to everyone during conflict, without the need to ‘know’ and “detect” one’s specific psychological wound. However, attending to and caring for a generalized understanding of suffering experienced by all parties during conflict was not possible or applicable through UNHCR’s bureaucratic framing of suffering, which relied on specific indicators, variables and information required in order to establish victimhood. What became the center of the debate between the officers and the psychologist during the training was the depth and nature of the biological and psychological data collected about the Syrian refugee. The psychologist argued that ‘knowing’ through psychic data is invasive but also unnecessary since the main purpose is to psychological support the community. The registration officers explained that collecting the most accurate data possible about the Syrian body is crucial for telling the true nature of her suffering, and hence turning her into a refugee.

Conclusion

While PFA as an emergency humanitarian psychological aid was less intrusive than debriefing, the UNHCR questionnaire and the registration interview are highly intrusive by nature, aiming to dig deeper to see whether truth is being told through the Syrian’s narrative of her suffering, and to identify victims. The need to ‘dig deeper’ stemmed from the need to get as much accurate biometric and psychic data from the Syrian body as possible because “sometimes they lie and we need to find out who lies and who does not”

PFA does not allow for psychic wounds of war and conflict to surface and be readable and registrable by experts. It does not allow for a “digging deeper” that normally happens in a psychological or humanitarian interview. This put the UNHCR registration officers in a pickle. In order for them to distinguish between victim and non-victim during the registration interview, they had to identify wounds of war that can produce Syrians into victims and refugees, separating them from those who took part in the conflict, regardless fighting in Syria was for political reasons, self-defense, a rebellion, a better life, etc. Women suffering from rape became the quintessential humanitarian victim that can easily be categorized as victim and refugee, and this a coveted category once detected because of the true suffering it exhibited. Heteronormative men are much harder to get this categorization of true victimhood. Sexual violence constituted one of the easiest way to identify a victim, because it also propagated the image of the suffering distant, “the poster-child of humanitarian aid”[12] other in the way it was imagined by humanitarianism’s definition of suffering. Knowing which women were raped and which we not was crucial to categorizing Syrian bodies as those who have suffered and those who have not.

Humanitarian psychological packages of aid, originally designed for the sake of helping and support violence-affected communities, are also used to generate psychic information about the nature and truthfulness of suffering. Specific forms of violence, like rape, have refocused the violence experienced into the medico-psychological realm, making it a “treatable” form of suffering, thereby detaching it from the politics of war-making, patriarchal regimes, structural inequalities and state violence.

[1] Raphael, Beverley & Wooding, Sally (2004) Debriefing: Its evolution and current status. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Vol 27(3), Sep, 2004. Special issue: Disaster psychiatry, a closer look. pp. 407-423.

[2] Deahl M. 2000. Psychological debriefing: controversy and challenge, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 34 (6): pp. 929-939

Genevieve Slominski. 2003. Experts question value of psychological debriefing, The American Journal of Nursing, vol 103 (8)

[3] Raphael, Beverley & Wooding, Sally (2004) Debriefing: Its evolution and current status. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Vol 27(3), Sep, 2004. Special issue: Disaster psychiatry, a closer look. pp. 407-423

Reyes, Gilbert (2006) Psychological First Aid: Principles of Community-Based Psychosocial Support. Handbook of international disaster psychology: Practices and programs (Vol. 2). Reyes, Gilbert (Ed.); Jacobs, Gerard A. (Ed.); pp. 1-12. Westport, CT, US: Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. xxxiv, 225 pp.

[4] (Blain, Hoch & Ryan, 1944

[5](Reyes2006; Pairojkul et al 2010; ruzek et al 2010

[6] Allan Feldman 2011. Formations of violence: the narrative of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland, university of Chicago Press

Laleh Khalili. 2011. Gendered practices of counterinsurgencies, Review of International Studies, 37: 1471-1491

[7] Human Rights Watch June 2012. Syria: sexual assault in detention: security forces also attacked women and girls in raids on homes https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/15/syria-sexual-assault-detention ; The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). December 2012. Violence against women in Syria: Breaking the silence https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/syria_sexual_violence-web.pdf ; The Atlantic April 2013. Syria has a massive rape crisis http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/syria-has-a-massive-rape-crisis/274583/ ;

[8] The Huffington Post, March 2013. Syria’s rape crisis: women under siege project maps sexual violence http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/syrias-rape-crisis-women-_n_3006973.html

[9] Miriam Ticktin. 2011. The gendered human of humanitarianism: medicalizing and politicizing sexual violence, Gender & History, 23 (2): pp.250-265

[10] Human Rights Watch. December 2013. Refugee women from Syria, harassed, exploited https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/26/lebanon-women-refugees-syria-harassed-exploited

[11] Miriam Ticktin. 2011. The gendered human of humanitarianism: medicalizing and politicizing sexual violence, Gender & History, 23 (2): pp.250-265

[12] Miriam Ticktin. 2011. The gendered human of humanitarianism: medicalizing and politicizing sexual violence, Gender & History, 23 (2): pp. 251

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Me and a Gun #Jan14

hiba — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Laurel Harig

In Tori Amos’ autobiographical song about surviving rape (“Me and a Gun” from her first album, Little Earthquakes, 1992), Tori talks abouther choice to wear a “slinky red thing,” and how women's susceptibility to rape is commonly perceived to have something to do with the way they dress or the places they frequent. Funny how, in the tragic story of the rape and murder of Miriam Ashkar in November, no one asked what she was wearing. Was it because, in this case, the perpetrator– a Syrian worker, all too neatly fit the sectarian demonization bill and so no further inquiry was necessary? Or, was it because she was on her way to pray in church in the early evening, her status as a “good girl” thus confirmed? What would the media have said if she were walking alone late at night, or from her boyfriend’s house? Some might have tried to shift the blame from her killer to Miriam herself, as if a woman could ever prepare for rape, or prevent it, or cause it to happen. What if Miriam were divorced or even, married? Then, the crime would pass from her own body to the honor of her husband. This is the Lebanon we live in today. It is a land where only virgins can be raped.

There is an old German saying that a woman’s place is “kinder, kuche, kirche.” (Children, kitchen, church.) It is not hard to see that this mentality is still alive and well in Lebanon. So, how is it that a woman is not safe from harm in any of these three places? (Neither when a child, at home, or on her way to church?) I am currently working on a paper on women’s role in religion in the pre-modern world. When you study history and scripture, you see that patriarchal attitudes towards women are never part of “history” or “tradition,” rather they are political tools that are deployed against women depending on political goals at the time. An example of this would be how American woman were asked to join the workforce during the 1940′s during the patriotic days of WWII only to be sent back to their homes in the 1950′s to breed the next generation of citizens to replace those killed in the war. This is similar to the status of Algerian women after the revolution who were asked to return to their kitchens after playing a vital role in the resistance rather than take up posts in a new post-colonial government. This is not all bad. If patriarchal attitudes are historical products of a time and place, this means that they can also be undone by direct political action. What if, in the spirit of Lysistrata, all wives of Lebanese politicians refused to have sex with their husbands until the new laws were passed? Nadine Labaki’s new film tries to make this point, although I doubt that Russian prostitutes are the answer.

It is to women, all of them, who suffer sexual harassment, abuse, domestic violence, rape and murder that our actions on January 14th should be dedicated, so that we don’t forget the terrible urgency of what we are doing. Lebanon currently has some of the most archaic rape laws in the world. We need new laws to create a safer world for all women residing in Lebanon, whether they are citizens, foreign domestic workers or visitors. And after the laws, we need the courage to enforce them and watch society change.

Tori Amos Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKzCxi2yf5s
Lysistrata story:

http://drama.eserver.org/plays/classical/aristophanes/lysistrata.txt

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On Why We Are Demonstrating

hiba — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Paola Daher

I read an infuriating article today, a blog post that was so patronizing it made me feel sick to the stomach. The writer referred to our action as “delusional” and while he deemed our struggle as “righteous”, he did not see it going anywhere for the moment. But Behold! For his was kind enough to provide us with an alternative solution, with other priorities and other actions.

The author’s intention was probably not to minimize our struggle, or be patronizing or anything: he probably did not notice that his sickly sweet rhetoric merely felt like a paternalistic pat on the head, like someone telling you you’re cute but naïve. Like someone not really believing you had serious reasons to be angry and to demonstrate.

Which got me to think: what are we fighting for? Why are we demonstrating?

First and foremost, there’s of course the issue of rights. We are demonstrating because the state has duties towards us, obligations it has signed on in an International Convention (CEDAW), voluntarily binding itself to respect, protect and fulfill them, rights that we can see are not being respected, protected and fulfilled. Hence, by making ourselves heard we are simply putting into action our democratic rights. We are neither demonstrating because we are spoilt brats, nor because we don’t have anything else to do or because we are delusional naïve nymphs living in Lala land. Rather, our carefully thought-out collective action is our weapon to put our government in front of its obligations. Its obligations is our rights, and it is our responsibility to demand them, to claim them, for the shameful rape laws are not going to be cancelled by themselves; and neither is the Violence Against Women Bill ever going to materialize and be adopted out of thin air. We demonstrate because the numbers 478, 488 and 489 (criminal code provisions imposing higher sanctions on women found guilty of adultery than on men) 503, 504 and 522 (laws pertaining to rape) cannot be read without a shudder. We demonstrate because of the large Violence Against Women Bill-shaped gaping hole within the Lebanese legislative apparel. We demonstrate because religious authorities are playing deaf and blind to that very simple fact: there are women in Lebanon, and we are not walking wombs. Rather, we are human beings who saw evil, heard evil and witnessed you speak your evil.

So we’re taking to the streets, armed with an international Convention, armed with laws and principles and a whole set of values that we think are worth sharing. Several people and bloggers seem to think that we’re ahead of the game, that before obtaining a change in the laws we need to establish a civil state in Lebanon then we’ll be able to see what we can do about women’s rights. It’s the same old song: women are selfish for demanding what is theirs, they should wait until the whole system changes until we can tackle women’s rights. To which I answer 1) Women Won’t Wait 2) why not think of changes in laws with regards to women as an opening door to a wider change in the system? Advocating for women’s rights is advocating for a more egalitarian society, it doesn’t mean favouring one injustice over another. The way I see it, turning Lebanon into a civil state will take longer than adopting the Violence Against Women law: what are we supposed to do until we reach that point? Sit around and pray?

The demonstration however even goes beyond obtaining our rights. It has become a question of reclaiming our very streets, each corner of our city until we find that we can walk around without fear or of uneasiness because of stares, glares, insults, offensive comments or unwanted physical contacts that is just plain sexual abuse. We’re demonstrating now because our cup is full: we’re tired of unlit zawarib where even the less sporty of us turns into a sprint champion until we reach our cars, we’re tired of feeling as if we’d like our breasts to be invisible, we’re tired to be harassed just because we are women. By pounding the streets of Beirut we’re making a strong statement to those who would like to see us off them, tucked away in our homes that sometimes are more dangerous that battlegrounds, as if under house arrests: look at us, we’re women and human, we want our dignity and safety.

We’re demonstrating because this way we get to say our stories, with our words, our chants, our actions, with no self-appointed authority (religious or otherwise) telling us we’re asking too much, too soon, too aggressively.

Our bodies are ours, and no one but us gets to dictate what we should do with it or whom and when we decide to give it to. Our voice are ours too, and no one but us dictates when and how we should use it.

So on Saturday the 14^th, I will pick up my banner and I will shout for my rights until my voice gets hoarse. But I promise that if you see us on the streets, and still have questions, then I will use it to talk to you.

And maybe then, you’ll walk with me too.

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On living in Lebanon and not looking Lebanese or “clearly” European.

Lamia Moghnie — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:39:02 +0000

Lioba Hirsch

So… last week, I was with my friend from Bangladesh, having returned from a walk together back into the shelter’s living room. A woman I had never seen before, who was staying there, looked at us and smiled. I extended my hand and said, “Hi, how are you, I’m Lioba.”

“Oh, that’s perfect”, was her reply, and she smiled even more. “I’m the Psychoanalyst. Great that you’re here. We’ll be able to work a bit with your friend and you can translate for me.” She went off to get her bag.

Little parenthesis here, who said that Psychoanalysts are more intelligent than other people? No one. Why did I think it was the case? Good question, but the woman was about to teach me a lesson.

“I’m sorry”, I replied, but I don’t speak Bangla” (“Nor do I look Bangladeshi or Ethiopian, you stupid person”, said the uncensored Lioba in my head). She starred at me with consternation. “But, I thought that you were from Bangladesh!” she said clearly irritated.

“I know that’s what you thought, I wonder what put this idea in your head”, said the Lioba in my head. But on the outside, I behaved myself and just smiled. “No, sorry, I don’t,” was my short reply.

“Oh”, she was clearly disappointed. In order to keep her calm and convince herself that her world order was not imploding, but that some things were still like they ought to be, her next question was “So, tell me, where in Hamra do you work?”

Now, living in Lebanon and not looking Lebanese or clearly European, leads necessarily to one developing a certain kind of paranoia. And I don’t mean the traditional Middle Eastern conspiracy theories, no. I mean the Was-that-person-just-racist-or-just-normally-friendly. When one is surrounded by either Lebanese or American friends, it is very often difficult to make them understand why I just did not perceive her question as part of the small talk. You shall see why.

I smiled and said, ready to destroy that world order that she had intended to maintain through that question:”I don’t work. I’m a student.” “OOOOH”, her surprise was dancing around the room. “OOH”, she repeated, “At AUB?” I nodded. “Ok, then”, she breathed in. So did I. I realized at some point during my stay here that it annoyed me to be compared to Ethiopians (most of the time) or people from Bangladesh (sometimes), or Nepalese (once).

I usually formulate all sorts of nice, cute answers in my head, ready-made to yell at the next racist person. But most of the time I just smile.

Not because I don’t want to argue. No, I just think that sometimes it is pedagogically way more valuable to take one step at a time. We wouldn’t want to overload her, would we?

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Mamnou3 el mourour! Just Another Day on the Streets of Beirut

Lamia Moghnie — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:30:00 +0000

Dima Karam

Sometimes I feel so confused, I’m under the illusion that I have to choose.

Where to go, what time is best, what I should not wear, what areas to avoid, with whom, what make-up should be kept on… How should I deal with a harasser or a rude leer? Where is least likely to have group of rascals that that I’ll have to confront? A maze of places as a map forms a possible plan. All this, just to walk. For something as basic as the act of walking, in a small perimeter like central Beirut, it is indeed a headache.

Ahhh…Well, no. Actually I walk wherever I want. Because you see, I see it as completely normal thing to open a door and step out walking, in a space that belongs to us, the city. Apparently though, this is neither quite recommendable nor reasonable. Because, truth be told, it is not a normal context. And the more you learn that useful fact, the better you will navigate the network of acceptable/objectionable – read “ladylike”– and risky/safe situations.

Hey pedestrians, walkers, if thou art hiding, reclaim your city! Why must we engage in a dance of contortions and acrobatics, choreographed to avoid crazy cars? Swiveling my way through them, it’s a street dance actually, with metal bodies, rubber wheels for feet, car horns as background music… And here we reach the subject at hand, the ceremony served only to women: The syrupy, foul faces of small-time harassers all lined up.
Wait, should the act of walking really be so stoic? Even daring?

Back to zero then. Just thinking and writing about it seems bizarre. Should one really ponder such liberty? Are we actually really in a jungle? Uncivilized and savage, with strange incidents and looming faces popping from behind every page of a story about a girl walking in Beirut?
When I was younger, I used to dress up like a boy to go out into the streets of civil war Beirut with my brothers. To feel unassailable, I added a kitchen knife as a pocket accessory to go get a sandwich 500 meters away from the house, and prove we could be counted on. As a boy, I felt I could be less vulnerable than… the street was a combat zone.
That was during the civil war, and now Beirut graces the cover of The New York Times’ travel page, paraded in clichés of a festive city. And it’s still easier to be a boy on the streets…

As a sample of the comments heard on the street, let’s start with the nice ones: “Haram timshi a3l ard” (It’s a pity you should walk on the earth). Walla, Neruda himself would have befriended my guy here. “Fini se3dik bil mashi?” (Could I help you in walking?) “Yukborni el a3sabiyeh” (How sweet the frown!)
Other more problematic ones are found in the likes of “Shu ra2yik t’2assri hal short ba3d shweyy? (How about you shorten those shorts a little more?) Apparently, shorts are objectionable for women, and lead to the territorial “Shu a3m ta3mli inti bil zabt inti hon?” (What exactly do you think you’re doing here?) questions. And these are, of course, mild compared to the other forms of more literal sexual harassment that any woman living in Beirut has surely experienced if she hasn’t been locked in the attic for the past 20 years.
But one night, not long ago, while leaving a place in Gemmayzeh, (central party zone ground zero), I was alone at about midnight. A guy jumps out and follows me to the secluded stairs up the narrow street, grabs my arm and tries to get close to me. The café is empty and the big adjacent parking lot is quiet. For a second I panic, then I start shouting at him. I tell him to stay where he is, and walk off with a fake march, promising him a rambunctious show-down if he doesn’t back off, while I am in fact as scared as a rabbit.
Another time on a very sunny Sunday, I’m walking in the archaeological park next to Martyrs’ Square. I take pictures of a boat parked in the port while the soldiers standing close by keep watch. Then, after 20 some photos, the soldiers decide to order me to go the barracks to be investigated (after checking the unclear pictures) and instruct me to walk in front of them. National security, it seems, demands it! As an explanation, their officer says it’s a Sunday, and I’m being investigated because the soldier is bored and stuck to the barracks. I walk off while he’s still talking. It would have been thoughtful to wish them more girls to harass as a goodwill gesture; for national security, of course.
I walk on the Corniche, it’s evening, warm weather and the seaside is quite crowded. A guy whizzes by on a bike. Walking a little further, he passes by again while staring, then roams around staying close, crossing my way again and again, pushing for an exchange of looks and maybe smooth revealing eye-locks. I dismiss it and ignore him. He tries to talk to me, introduces himself and tells me his name; I walk faster telling him to not follow me. The guy is quite insistent though, and keeps following me from a distance until I finish my walk and leave the area. Back home, a few minutes later, the entrance buzzer rings, they tell me it’s for me, an unfamiliar voice says my name and that he’s the corniche bike rider. I don’t know how he got my name. He must have been looking for new friends, possibly.
I just want to have the liberty to be outdoors and not feel myself as susceptible goods. The simple liberty to open a gate and go out prancing about as I see fit. Do I have to have a guy holding my hand so I feel safer? That would be indeed an accessory, quite a means of transportation. Are we reduced to accessing this liberty only through a man’s benevolence?
So I’d like to walk out one day, with a short skirt, unkempt hair, maybe even more revealing clothing, and strut wherever I wanted to go, do a cartwheel perhaps on a sunny day, laugh when I want and not be so defensive lest someone make a comment. It’s the space we inhabit beyond a window, an urban landscape, built by us, ungoverned and belonging to none but us, the scene under the sky I could call mine.

The streets are indeed a social enclave, and continued harassment just highlights that in a patriarchal society such as this one, the indoors is seen as the territory of women, while the outside public sphere, the street, is understood more as the privatized province of men. It’s not only men, but society as well, that reinforces this restriction. So that when an incident takes place, it is viewed as the result of some shortcoming on a girl’s part, and she finds herself answerable for a lack of foresight. Blaming the victim is an automatic and necessary first response to an incident, in a pattern of known social occurrence; she is indeed “going against common sense”. The symptom is censored and tabooed, while the cause remains undealt with and lurking. A girl walking late at night has many labels and suspicions attached to her, because there has to be a specific reason behind why she would put herself into such a “situation.” It goes without saying that, for a boy, no labels are attached, no suspicions raised.
The street is the first public space outside the private one, the first zone outside closed doors, a foremost public area, providing a model where all these divisions can be explored. Look at how revolutions and change happens – uprisings and revolts occur when the streets are no longer regulated, some sort of a system breakdown comes about, and gender divisions are no longer evident. Patriarchy falls down as the elements of a system are defied, and the streets are flooded with free will. The real revolutions only happen when we have an equality of the sexes on the streets. Read that, all the brothers and sisters who perpetuate this divisive system.

I want to be a free to walk on the street! On the pavements, at any time. A basic simple thing, gratuitous to all. Free to be in a space beyond walls, taking in a sense of what surrounds us, things I have yet to see, light surrounding the dusk, the breeze passing by, discovering and shaping a sensual memory of a city at liberty. Without calculations – unbound, unrestricted, and unwary.

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Gender-based violence

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عن وضع العاملات يلي جايين من القمر

Lamia Moghnie — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:25:00 +0000

Farah Salka فرح سلكا

كتير منحكي عن وضع النساء بلبنان وكتير مهم انو نحنا وعم نحكي عن وضع النساء بلبنان، انو ما ننسى العاملات الاجنبيات وما ننسى انو هني عم عيشو بعد قمع وذل واستعباد بعد اسوء بميت مرة من يلي نحنا عم نعيشوا ويلي نحنا عم نواجهو وكتير مهم إنو نعرف انو هني نساء متلنا ومش فئة جندرية جاية من القمر. اذا بدنا نحكي عن وضع العاملات الاجنبيات بلبنان عن شو ممكن نحكي؟

عن ايام العطلة؟

سمعي مني، يا بتخليها بالبيت يا بتخسريها… نحنا منعطيها عطلة بس تضل بالبيت… اكيد الاحد ما بتشتغل بس بتروح معنا على غذاء العايلة وبتهتم بالطفل.” على ال 150 دولار يللي بيطلعولها – اذا طلعولها، بآخر الشهر؟ في عالم بتشتري احذية رياضة ب 150$ وعالم بتعيش وبتموت وبتشتغل كل النهار والاسبوع والشهر والسنة وبتاخذ نفس الشي. ايه، وبعيشو بنفس البيت.
عن ساعات العمل الغير محدودة؟
قانون العمل اللبناني يللي بطبيعة الحال ما بيشمل العاملات الاجنبيات يحدد ساعات العمل ب8. العاملات الاجنبيات بيشتغلوا وبيعيشوا في نفس البيت مع رب العمل تبعهن. ما حدا بيعمل مراقبة وزيارات لهذه النساء حتى يشوف وضعهن ومطالبهن وطبيعة شغلهن. فبالتالي، اذا رب العمل قلها تشتغل 8 هو 18 ساعة (او اكثر)، ما حدا حيوقف بوجهه وما حدا حيوقف وراءها. العاملات اللاجنبيات موجودين ببيوتنا متل الروبوت. ما في وصف وظيفي محدد ولا ساعات عمل محددة ولا ساعات راحة محددة.
عن المكاتب يللي فاتحة تجارة بشر؟ يستوردوا ويبادلوا كأنهن بضاعة. مكاتب بتضرب وبتحبس وبتربي العاملات وما في دولة تراقب او تربي المكاتب يللي بدها تربية؟
على وزارة العمل يللي وزيرها كل ما حدا خبره عن العنصرية المتفشية واوضاع العاملات بينكر وبيستنكر وبينجرح وبيتهمنا بتخريب صيت لبنان؟
عن التحرش الجنسي والاغتصاب يللي بيصيروا وما بتعرف المرأة شو تعمل ومع مين تحكي وكيف تخرج من هيدا الوضع؟ وشو بيكون وضعها اذا قررت تترك (مش تهرب متل ما عادة يقال) من هيدا البيت كونه ما في قانون يحميها؟ وضعها القانوني انو شي ما تفل من هيدا المكان يللي يشكل خطر على حياتها، بهذه اللحظة يصبح وجودها غير قانوني، كونه:
اولاً، جواز سفرها موجود مع رب العمل.
ثانياً، وجودها القانوني في لبنان مرتبط رسمياً باسم رب العمل.
وثالثاً، في معظم الحالات، رب العمل بيرفع شكوى انو هربت من عندي وسرقت 2000$ وصيغة ولازم تنحبس، واكيد كلمة رب العمل اللبناني مقدسة امام كلمة عاملة اجنبية سوداء وفقيرة.
اذا بدنا نحكي عن وضع العاملات الاجنبيات فينا نحكي كتير ولو قد ما حكينا ما منوفي حقهن…
العاملات الاجنبيات عم يموتوا في لبنان الواحدة ورا الثانية. يا بيرجعوا على بلدهن مكسرين ومش مدفوع معاشاتهن… يا بيرجعوا منتحرين او مكسرين او مقتولين. الاسبوع يللي مضى، في عاملة من اثيوبية وقعت عن الطابق السابع لما الشرطة اجتاحت بيتها وبيت اصدقائها الساعة 4:30 صباحاً لأنه ما معهن اوراق. في نفس الاسبوع توفيت عاملة نيبالية لما شنقت حالها في غرفة ربة عملها.
في هرميات انواع العمل، شغل هذه النساء من اصعب الاشغال ولكن عم ينَظر الى شغلهن بطريقة دونية جداً كون “شغل نسوان” بيُعتبر شغل سخيف والنسوان اصلاً لازم يشتغلوا بلا مصاري.

وفي عقلية سائدة وقت بيفكروا حالهن الناس احسن من غيرهن اذا بيعاملوا البنت متل بنتن او حدا من العائلة. وهون بالذات تكمن المشكلة. كأنو ما حدا عم يعامل او عامل هذه المرأة بطريقة منيحة. العمل الذي تقدمه هذه النساء هو مهني وله شروطه وتفاصيله وسعره. لما نصير نقول ان هذه العاملة بنتي و اختي ورفيقتي، عم يخرج هيدا الشي عن نطاقه الاساسي وعم يدخل عليه كتير احاسيس، صادقة او مفتعلة، لا تفيد العاملة ولا رب العمل.

لازم يجي نهار نستوعب ان هذه العاملة ما بدها لا شفقتنا ولا حنيتنا ولا من يحزنون. بدها عدالة وحقوق وواجبات واضحة جداً. بدها تشتغل ساعات عمل محددة وتعمل كل ما يحق لها بوقت فراغها. بدها مفتاح البيت مثلها مثل اي حدا ساكن في هذا البيت. وبدها مجتمع بأكمله ينظر لها بدون عنصرية، ينظر لها كشخص مش كديكور بيت.

Publisher:

Sawt al' Niswa

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Opinions

Category:

Migrant workers

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Fair and Lovely: Racism in a Product

Lamia Moghnie — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:30:05 +0000

By Sara AG for SAN 2010

Maya El Helou

A few years ago, back when I was a teenager, I was walking in one of those beauty product exhibitions, and a man jumped out of nowhere, telling me that he has a product that can whiten my skin color! It was summer, and I was really happy with my dark tan. I told him to bug off because I love my color and I am going to keep it for good, so no thank you. I was about 12 and after that I don’t remember encountering any stupid invention as such until…. well, few days ago!

It was a commercial on the mbc4 channel– if I am not mistaken. And as I watched, I could not find the words to express the trauma and the disgust that I felt.
Drum roll. Introducing “Fair and lovely,” a miracle product that presents racism and sexism at their peak.

The ad talks about a dark skinned woman who is going for a job interview, and she gets refused because she is “too dark.” Then she “whitens” her face with “Fair and Lovely” her face, and poof, she gets her job back, and everybody is happy; she is successful, and she even gets invited out by a dude!

So if you are a black or brown or yellow or whatever woman of color you are, and you saw this ad, what would you think?

You’ll think that dark means ugly, and that you can’t get a job, just because you are born with a dark tan, and you’ll never succeed in anything, and nobody will want to date you, until you drop your background, culture, ethnic origin and simply become white, and then poof, everything is at your feet!

Maybe a lot of people don’t understand my point of view, and why am I so traumatized by this ad. So allow me to elaborate. Fair and lovely is a skin whitening cream that categorizes dark skinned women into ugly, dirty creatures that need to be whitened! Only when you are about to believe that the old dark ages of racism and discrimination against dark skinned people is over, you see an ad, on tv, rubbing it in your face, that being dark is bad, and mainstreaming white as beautiful, and stereotyping the color you have to be, otherwise, you’re a loser, with no future whatsoever.

Moreover, and beside the fact that refusing an employee just because their skin is dark, is severely immoral and technically illegal, the Fair and Lovely ad discriminates against women by enhancing the stereotype that women can’t get a job with their brains, but with their looks. And if you didn’t look all white and “lovely” then forget about employment.
And what about all the teenagers who are watching TV, in the arab world, who are dark-skinned, do they all need to feel bad about themselves, so that the business of fair and lovely can feed on the insecurity they implanted in them!

But what pissed me off the most about the ad, is how it passed the “censorship” carrying all this blunt racist content. I mean, shamefully, we are used to sexist ads, but racist, I swear, it’s fucking ILLEGAL.

Dear Fair and Lovely, You know what’s fair for me, is for you to get banned from existence, and specifically from tv, because you are watched by vulnerable teenagers, and what would be more “lovely” is that your products get cut off from the market and get labeled as racist demeaning products that should NOT on any level exist in the 21^st fucking century.

Publisher:

Sawt al' Niswa

Section:

Opinions

Category:

Body Image

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Gender-based violence

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Must Be A Friend

Lamia Moghnie — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:25:17 +0000

Jackie S,

I am guilty. I admit it. I am guilty of doing something I encourage others not to do. I am guilty of remaining silent. Until today.

It was a beautiful Wednesday in Amman that demanded a walk. Sunrays still strong with summer but cooled by impending autumnal breezes. I want to walk as far as I can before night brings too great a chill for my temperature-sensitive temperament. So I finish work and set out from the 2^nd circle to Abdoun for my 7pm yoga class. I am late in starting but never mind, I can always jump in a cab if it gets too late.

Up to the third circle I go, mindfully crossing streets still heavy with traffic. I hang a left at the third circle, heading towards Ras al Ain. Second right to cut behind … behind … behind me … behind me must be a friend playing a joke. Behind me must be someone I haven’t seen in a long time who wants to surprise me. Behind me MUST BE A FRIEND MUST BE A FRIEND MUST BE A FRIEND is the mantra that runs through my head as the guy who is most obviously NOT a friend wraps his right arm around my neck, catches my mouth in the motion and pulls me towards him … pulls screams from my throat as he pulls my body towards the ground and slams his left hand into my ass and grabs it … grabs ME … squeezes so tight and pulls pulls pulls as if he wants to separate bits of myself from me. MUST BE A FRIEND tries to cover my screams with his arm but fails. MUST BE A FRIEND makes sure he hurts me before he drops me to the ground and runs away … runs away right in front of me. He seems so young. Only seems because I cannot see his face. He has that awkwardness of youth. And that arrogance. He pauses to show me his back. To taunt me.

It works. I lunge up towards the dark-pants-sky-blue-shirt-wearing lumbering oaf with short dark hair and light skin who carries a bag or something in his hand. As I run towards the stairs down which he disappears I wonder how he could possibly have grabbed me while holding something. This nonsensical question obsessively repeats itself in my mind until I refocus on holding him with my eyes if not my hands. He runs. I run. I run to catch up to him. Run to catch him. Run to do I don’t know what to him. My thoughts haven’t strayed that far. I am in the here and now. Present. Focused. To catch him. But I lose sight of him instead.

A man who saw what he did to me asks me if he did anything to me. I turn on him, venom rather than words spew from my mouth. OF COURSE HE DID ARE YOU BLIND DOES HE HAVE TO MAKE ME BLEED OR SOMETHING WORSE BEFORE IT CAN BE CLASSIFIED AS HIM DOING SOMETHING TO ME??!!

I call my friend. My real friend. He arrives in less than 5 minutes. We drive around, asking people if they have seen MUST BE A FRIEND. No one. No one saw anyone. Anything. I don’t know what to do so I go to yoga. I breathe and stretch and keep my tears at bay until I get home two hours later.

Until the What-Ifs come.

What if he wanted … what if he tried … what if he had … WHATIFWHATIFWHATIF is the obsession in my head that bursts the dam. The tears come – and the perfectly formed thought with it: What if he wanted to stick a knife into my skin – or something far worse into my body – but my screams drove him away.

I am a writer, a filmmaker, an actor. It is my job to communicate. But I am left expressionless until later that same night, when I manage to form the 420 characters-with-spaces Facebook allows me to enter as my status.

I am a Libyan-born, half Jordanian, half Egyptian, American-raised woman. I am passionate by birth, proactive by design. But I am left as flaccid as the laws that that are more pretence than protection of women in this country.

I am a human being who habitually ignores my family’s pleas to please just “shhhh” about all the injustices in the world that bother me, hurt me, make me angry. I’ve never known how to keep quiet until now. I never want to know this again.

I am a concerned citizen working on a project to fight harassment who, after more than two years, stepped back to take a break from the incessant societal bureaucracy that obstructs the development of something that is just so damn reasonable. The irony does not escape me.

Nor does the irony of me keeping quiet when I’ve spent over two years asking, encouraging, begging women to speak up – speak out – speak now – against harassment. It is the first and most important step in recognising, addressing, and fixing what is most definitely broke. Without knowledge, no society can do anything towards correcting a problem. And a society, ultimately, is the sum of its people.

So the question must be asked. I must ask the question. Do we, as a society, as THIS society, really and truly care about protecting women? If we do, we are bad at manifesting it. If we don’t, shame on us. Every citizen, resident, short-term traveller is complicit in every crime we tolerate, ignore, deny exists … just as every government is complicit in every crime it does not punish.

I have since reported my assault to the authorities, thanks to the encouragement and support of my friends. Why didn’t I do so the same night it happened? Why was going to yoga literally the only thing I could think of doing 15 minutes after it happened? Because I didn’t believe then – just as I don’t believe now – that there is a cohesive body of caring, proactive protectors in this country. And I find it incomprehensible that the efforts of the few individuals who do care and take action are diluted down to nothing by those who condemn the victim rather than find and punish the perpetrator.

Even so, a few proactive individuals, though better than none, are not enough to change the fact that most women in Jordan and in the region prefer to remain silent about harassment rather than risk being blamed for inciting it, or feeling shamed into believing they could have prevented it, or sacrificing their freedom of movement. It sounds as obscene to me now as it did in May 2008, when I began what has become objecDEFY Harassment, a women-powered, Arab world-based, self-perpetuating system that empowers women to combat harassment. The problem with not having anyone to count on to protect us – besides the obvious – is that the behaviour it perpetuates is destructive: neither being quiet nor being reactive does any of us any good.

Either way, all of us are in danger. Women, for the obvious reasons that lead to our exclusion from holistically participating in our societies. Men, not only because they fall victim to a culture of violence they might not even want to engage in, but also because they nurture destructive behaviour and then must intimately interact with women who are scared and angry. Society as a whole, because no society can positively evolve without the participation of all its members.

We need reliable, enforceable and – most importantly – enforced laws that act as deterrents, with punishments for harassment and assault that transcend institutionalized patriarchy and protect women rather than victimise us. At the very least, our reactions should not be deemed more heinous than the crimes committed against us.

My ass is still sore, but I’m happy to be moving it towards a healthier way of being in the world. A world that can only become safer if we make it so. All we all need to do is to take a first step. Together. We’re right here: www.objecdefy.com.

Publisher:

Sawt al' Niswa

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Opinions

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Activism

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