Opinion: A plea from an exhausted [Human] woman

From CNN:
A Plea from an exhausted Muslim woman

I wasn’t surprised by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent statement about a “problem within Islam.”

It's not as though I've never heard anything like it before. I hear it all the time.

Still, his words – in response to a recent attack in London that left a British soldier dead – made me wonder: How might the public have reacted in a different context, had Blair replaced the word “Islam” with “Christianity” or “Judaism”?

I’m guessing not well.

But Muslims are used to having their faith openly denigrated by public officials.

We’re used to people failing to distinguish between “Islam” and “a few Muslims.” And we’re used to being called terrorists despite the fact that the vast majority of terrorist acts on American and European soil have been carried out by non-Muslims.

But being accustomed to abuse doesn’t mean we bruise less. If anything, being beaten repeatedly in the same spot makes each successive blow all the more painful.

I totally relate to this, and I am not a Muslim Woman. I am an agnostic mother of two young adults, trying to make my way in the Western world. Yes, it's hard for us, too.
That's why I decided to tweak the title of her essay for the OP -- and am posting this from the GLOBAL FEMALE perspective.

When I read the essay (it's really short) I thought: "I feel you, sister."
So.....check out the essay - substitute for "Muslim" in her article ANY form of faith or nationality (i.e. Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, American, British, South African, Indonesian, Paki, Chinese - whatever) - and I think we'll have a consensus.
I'm tired. And it hurts.
I think we're all tired (not just ATS community members - the entire civilian population.)

We have to stop beating each other up. We have to allow each other room to breathe, to speak, to ask, to answer. We have to make sure that peace is established, and that all persons have what they deserve (WHICH IS NO LESS THAN what we all require): clean water, nutritious food, adequate shelter, safe working conditions, adequate family- and personal-life time, education for ourselves and our children.

We're running out of time.
None of us (we women in particular, but the public at large as well) are unfamiliar with this hopeless, flimsy, sorry frame of mind that nothing will change and that what we think doesn't matter in the slightest.

The film "Dangerous Beauty" is an adaptation of the true story written by Veronica Franco, a real person, almost 500 years ago.

Beatrice is an exhausted Venetian Woman in the 16th century.

Beatrice was married off young, a forced bride, to a rich, powerful, decrepit old fart of an aristocrat. Against her will. Her brother, a Senator of Venice, was forced to marry a woman he did not love, as well.
The woman he DID love was Veronica Franco, his sister's best friend.

Because Veronica's family's money had been gambled away, and her father's inheritance gone, she was not allowed to marry Beatrice's brother. So she became a "courtesan" - a "prostitute" to the ruling elite politicians, clergy, merchants, and royalty. A "high class call girl." In the process, she became one of the most influential and educated women of her time. She wrote an autobiography entitled "An Honest Courtesan."

In the movie, her friend Beatrice speaks to her in private. After Veronica refuses to teach Beatrice's daughter (responding to Beatrice's request) to be a courtesan, saying "I will not pimp your daughter!"Beatrice says this to her:

"Do you know what my daughter's nurse told her today?
'In a girl's voice lies temptation - a known fact. Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body.'

[My daughter] doesn't believe it yet, but she will.

She'll grow up just like her mother.
Marry, raise children and honor her family. Spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the day she was born a girl.
And when she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and Country

FOR NO BIBLICAL HELL COULD EVER BE WORSE THAN A STATE OF PERPETUAL INCONSEQUENCE."

(Emphasis mine)
A great line from a great movie.
Later, Veronica is arrested and tried by the INQUISITION. Who "are determined to damn me no matter what I say!" She winds up being supported by her countrymen and the Inquisition is left speechless and impotent. This is SO IMPORTANT in our world today.

Women have as much say-so in this world as do men. Our voices are NEEDED.
So, how do we help one another NOT feel inconsequential? Fellow citizens, men and women alike. How do we serve to prop others up in their struggle, to relieve them of their pain?

Any and all suggestions welcome, as long as they are non-violent in plan or action.
Please.
Please. Let's try.

reply to post by wildtimes


source for the OP quote: en.wikiquote.org...

reply to post by wildtimes


The war on ethics is a war of attrition. In all my time pondering this, I still can't see another solution. We simply have to wait for people to die. Ignorance peels off in layers as generations unfold. I do see this happening in the next 20 years, though, because it's already been happening.

People will credit different things for it when humanity does purge itself of ignorance and starts to heal. People will yell that it's the attack on their religions and others will say it's an attack on manhood or "freedom". Feeding, clothing, and sheltering those who cannot do it for themselves is not in the best interests of many of these "morally superior" people who feel the need to defend their last vestiges of bigotry like it's the last slice of pizza.

Chin up, WildTimes. The wild times ahead will be great and they will be right. This old world order will be dragged out into the sunlight to be burned away and then reason and love can finally take its proper place as leading authorities.

reply to post by Cuervo

Chin up, WildTimes. The wild times ahead will be great and they will be right. This old world order will be dragged out into the sunlight to be burned away and then reason and love can finally take its proper place as leading authorities.

I sure hope so, Cuervo.
I sure hope so.

Thanks for your response.

reply to post by wildtimes

How might the public have reacted in a different context, had Blair replaced the word “Islam” with “Christianity” or “Judaism”?

Can't speak for a jew, or other christian but i know what i would have done. I would have knocked the man with the cleavers on his ass and disarmed him, instead of standing around watching and doing nothing.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

Originally posted by lonewolf19792000
reply to post by wildtimes

 

How might the public have reacted in a different context, had Blair replaced the word “Islam” with “Christianity” or “Judaism”?

Can't speak for a jew, or other christian but i know what i would have done. I would have knocked the man with the cleavers on his ass and disarmed him, instead of standing around watching and doing nothing.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

The thread is asking how the public would react to Blair's comment if it were different, not what would happen if you were the soldier that got assaulted.

But I agree with your sentiments; it was really odd that people not only didn't stop him but acted casually around him afterwards and that one lady even walked up to him and then around him like he was just some dude selling kitchen wares. The whole scene seemed dreamlike.

reply to post by wildtimes

Originally posted by wildtimes
reply to post by Cuervo

 

Chin up, WildTimes. The wild times ahead will be great and they will be right. This old world order will be dragged out into the sunlight to be burned away and then reason and love can finally take its proper place as leading authorities.

I sure hope so, Cuervo.
I sure hope so.

Thanks for your response.

I really hate to be the wet blanket here, but:

The idea of waiting for the bad'uns to die off is a bit non-realistic, they must somehow be removed from any position of authority or privilege. That means arrest, conviction, and a prison sentence which includes a lifetime ban from access to any venue of public trust or public policy making, either government or non-government contractor to government.

Just to date myself, I was in college right after U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam. The policy makers of Cold War policy were the same WWII folks who considered the death of 60-85 million people in a 7 year period as "just doing what needed to be done". We thought that once those folks left power to the new generation things would be better. Sadly, no.

In college, my roommate was Iranian, under the Shah's program of increasing Westernization. I worked digging ditches along with a Vietnamese refugee and a Nigerian veteran of the Biafran civil war. We were supposed to be the new enlightened leaders of a new generation. Sadly, no.

When I look back on it, I realize now that most of my fellow students were Economics and Business Management Majors, sort of pre-Reagan uber capitalists. What we got was a bunch of people lining up to be the new "too big to fail" and "too involved to convict". We got Iran placed on the de facto permanent enemy list. We got Corporate Executive pay going from about 12 to 14 times the average wage to 200-300 times the average wage.

We got privatization for profit of anything and everything that could be privatized, including defense and espionage. All while infrastructure crumbles. (a major bridge on a major interstate not far from me just recently collapsed )

Sorry again for sounding so depressed. If you want to demonize my generation, go right ahead, I won't object. But please, please imprison some of us too. Remove us from any position of public trust.

Originally posted by pthena
Sorry again for sounding so depressed. If you want to demonize my generation, go right ahead, I won't object. But please, please imprison some of us too. Remove us from any position of public trust.

edit on 16-6-2013 by pthena because: (no reason given)

Gods no. I hope you don't think that I mean that your whole generation is to blame. Mine is too. To me, it's not the merit of the people who are "born better" or anything like that. It's the technology and communication that is curing us. I don't think atrocities are any worse now than before but now we can broadcast it to everybody when it happens.

Think of how worried we are about the recent NSA stuff. I imagine that the governments and Old World Order are even more afraid of us and our recent abilities to whistle blow and organize like never before. The most obscure infractions of human decency get reported to everybody directly now. Now it's just a matter of having the kids who were raised in that structure grow up and start caring.

So when I say we are waiting for people to die off, I don't mean it's because they are somehow inferior to the younger folks; they are just in the better place at the better time.

reply to post by Cuervo

Think of how worried we are about the recent NSA stuff. I imagine that the governments and Old World Order are even more afraid of us and our recent abilities to whistle blow and organize like never before. The most obscure infractions of human decency get reported to everybody directly now.

It's a two way street though. Any jerk-wad can insert himself as "the people's voice" and then feed the government line. It happened about Syria, some guy in London calling himself the Syrian Observer or some such, feeding terrorist/rebel propaganda to left wing news outlets about how horrible Assad was, and the people just sucked it up. Result: U.S. and Western backing of al-Qaeda types in destroying a nation.

And what really can I do about it? Nothing much, it seems.

Remember TIA, Poindexter's DARPA project? It got shot down in Congress, so it just went into NSA instead. It didn't surprise me at all.

People are really, really going to have to wise up about propaganda and such.

Originally posted by Cuervo
Ignorance peels off in layers as generations unfold. I do see this happening in the next 20 years, though, because it's already been happening.

...people have been saying this for generations.
It's not going to happen.

I know this will seem counter-intuitive given the topic, but I think the Bible puts it best when it says "the heart of man is desperately wicked, and deceitful beyond all things."

The problem here isn't extrinsic to the situation we find ourselves in. It's not some external force exerting its will upon us and turning us into violent self-serving capitalists, or retributive explosive muslims (if you'll pardon the pun - I actually mean that word both in political terms and in literal terms, depending on the level of extremism).
The problem is intrinsic. The problem is us.

We can even step outside the Bible for this one, it's a common observation. George Orwell would do:
"power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Give a man a stick and teach him how to fish with it, and he'll rip off the fishing line on the end, sharpen the stick into a spear and go kill someone instead. That's how life works. ...and no matter how much we might try to convince ourselves otherwise, mankind is not intrinsically good. There is good in us, yes. Certainly. We have the capacity to do great good, or great evil.

...but in the example we've seen and discussed already - one man doing great evil so greatly overwhelmed and outweighed those who stood around doing nothing... and this is the world in which we live. Great evil rides upon a warlike horse while the good stand around talking about it on forums.

Nothing in this world will change until Christ returns. It will only get worse.

reply to post by pthena

Sorry again for sounding so depressed. If you want to demonize my generation, go right ahead, I won't object. But please, please imprison some of us too. Remove us from any position of public trust.

pthena,
I started college in 1976, my friend. I'm like "your little sister", and I will NOT demonize our entire generation. On the other hand, some of the Baby Boomers DO NEED TO BE REMOVED from the public arena, business, religion, and government. And I will name names if anyone wants to know who!

What a disappointment our "future" has turned out to be.
I weep for my children.

reply to post by Awen24

Nothing in this world will change until Christ returns.

It seems that nobody who believes that is able to explain why that is, exactly.
I keep asking but I don't get an answer.
Is it because like in South Park, Jesus is going to have his own TV show?
Or is everyone just going to be killed and there will no longer even be a world?
And are humans going to be extinct, and there will only be spirits who have no ability to do bad things?

My opinion is that Jesus established true religion, which is caring about others as much as we care about ourselves, and it is up to us to adopt that as a way of life.
The "second coming" was a visitation of judgment (again, in my opinion) which demolished the old religion which just made the priests fat and rich. That happened in 70 AD when the Roman legions converged on Jerusalem resulting in the complete destruction of its temple.

reply to post by Awen24

Give a man a stick and teach him how to fish with it, and he'll rip off the fishing line on the end, sharpen the stick into a spear and go kill someone instead.

This made me laugh out loud.

That's how life works. ...and no matter how much we might try to convince ourselves otherwise, mankind is not intrinsically good.

This did NOT make me laugh.

There is good in us, yes. Certainly. We have the capacity to do great good, or great evil.

Then let's do GREAT GOOD.

...but in the example we've seen and discussed already - one man doing great evil so greatly overwhelmed and outweighed those who stood around doing nothing... and this is the world in which we live. Great evil rides upon a warlike horse while the good stand around talking about it on forums.

I don't just talk about it on forums. I'm an ocean and several thousand miles away from all of this savagery (thankfully). For now. I'm 1500 miles from Boston, too. And NYC. And D.C.
What would you like me to do?

Nothing in this world will change until Christ returns. It will only get worse.

I'm sorry, Awen, but this is A LOAD OF DEFEATIST CRAPOLA. If ANYTHING, "Christ" expected us to live up to our potential without further ado. And he's not coming back, not in the form you imagine.

There are people born in EVERY GENERATION who are Christ-like, who work tirelessly to spread the words of peace and ENLIGHTENMENT that he, and many others!, talked about.

The reason the world is so atrocious is NOT because Jesus hasn't come back. It's because PEOPLE ARE STARVING, OPPRESSED, NEEDY, ENSLAVED, and DESPERATE. The day that we all start CARING about one another instead of WARRING with others - whether on forums using digital pens, or in car-bombs, or on the front lines of "battle arenas" or in the back alleys of the Gaza strip...
IS THE DAY IT WILL GET BETTER.

Even if Jesus DID come back recognizable to all of you who so desperately wish for it, and encourage the "end-times" to arrive, THIS is how he would feel:

and THIS is what he would say:


Now. STEP UP and start insisting that EVERYONE have what they need, and NO ONE hoards the excess at the expense of others. Righteous types seem to think it's easy being poor, starving, desperate, and afraid of illness and war EVERY DAY THEY WAKE UP.

I'm sick to DEATH of the Christians saying "it won't get better." Yeah, as long as there are people saying that, and therefore doing NOTHING but wanting WAR to bring on his fantasy-return, it won't.

Religion is the twin sibling of greed. They BOTH corrupt and damage people's minds and souls.
Sorry, Awen, I don't mean to attack YOU, but I'm just so tired of hearing this defeatist "do-nothing but wait and have faith." It's lazy. And childish.

reply to post by wildtimes

What a disappointment our "future" has turned out to be.
I weep for my children.

And my grandkids, I've got two.

I'm kind of wondering why this is in Religion instead of Social Issues, oh well, I'll go with it.

I had some big sermon planned for my first stint in the pulpit. Then the Lockerbie bombing occurred.

What I ended up doing was singing Paul Simon's song The Boy in the Bubble

It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry

It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry

Then I focused on the line, "The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky", and explained my personal interpretation about the people who used to sing "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius", and how that dream was dying in the corner of the sky.

Anyway, that's how my first sermon went.

Here, Paul sings it better than I can.

reply to post by pthena

I'm kind of wondering why this is in Religion instead of Social Issues at the moment

Mostly because I'm tired - for the time being - of being ripped apart on the Social Issues forum. I can only stomach so much before I start to get REALLY pissed off. Either place, I get accused of being a commie/demon. Gotta pick your fights. Ya know.

, oh well, I'll go with it.

glad you're 'going with it'.

Glad you're back on here with us, too!

reply to post by pthena

Thanks for the tune! I love that album of his!!!

That's dying in a corner of the sky", and explained my personal interpretation about the people who used to sing "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius", and how that dream was dying in the corner of the sky.

Anyway, that's how my first sermon went.

When I was 10 years old, my mom took me to go see The Monkees in concert. (think hysterically excited little girl!), and the Fifth Dimension was the opening act.

They sang "The Age of Aquarius" - and I remember THAT more than I remember the Monkees singing.

Yeah, I miss that dream.
Sometimes I hope my very bright, balanced kids don't decide to have kids. But that would be a loss for the world....
still....
SIGH.

Here I go again with my 'signature' vid for ATS: Been a few months since I posted it.
Lest we forget....

Originally posted by wildtimes
We're running out of time.
None of us (we women in particular, but the public at large as well) are unfamiliar with this hopeless, flimsy, sorry frame of mind that nothing will change and that what we think doesn't matter in the slightest.

Ok, but I think we got that hopeless, sorry frame of mind years ago when then the situation then proved to be hopeless to solve.

It (the situation) only got worse since then? Some things bettered, some things gone bad again. What is it in fact that needs change? From a certain point of view countries are just governments anymore. We do not run the country, we make the governments run. All people outside the government do for eachother is 'underground' nowadays.

Someone with the same opinion?

If it weren't for the government, I would've never... pff, it's not even worth of words. What a sh*thole.

"Do you know what my daughter's nurse told her today?
'In a girl's voice lies temptation - a known fact. Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body.'

[My daughter] doesn't believe it yet, but she will.

She'll grow up just like her mother.
Marry, raise children and honour her family. Spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the day she was born a girl.
And when she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and Country

FOR NO BIBLICAL HELL COULD EVER BE WORSE THAN A STATE OF PERPETUAL INCONSEQUENTIAL."

who ever wrote this is wrong.having a family is a blessing.let me explain why since this piece of literature is offensive to me.I have 4 children.my wife died 10 yrs ago in a terrible car accident.my children at the time were 11 months old 1.5 yrs old 2.5 yrs old and 5 yrs old.I have raised them alone all these years because they are our children,it is not a terrible thing to be dedicated to your family.after all you made them,so don't whine.They need you,are women so selfish that they have come to think in this manner?a foundation has been laid for family.and people seem to want to adopt this notion just like above.If you feel this way,why have children?get fixed,stop having sex,your philosophy is flawed and worthless,cold and bitter.maybe these type of people should get fixed.I never complain about raising my children.after all they are my children and I love them.It is truly sad to see women think in this manner,and very selfish of them. It is why I decided to stay single for 10 yrs,who needs it?I certainly don't.and neither do the children,you bring them into the world and think you can say I don't want this any more,they are people maybe little people,but they are people and deserve better then that.Shame on women who adopt such mindless thoughts.what do you think your sending out into the world? more mindlessness?shame to the women whom think in such a manner,your worthless.

reply to post by wildtimes


We are living in a very special era,,things are changing rapidly and people who fail to adjust are going to have hard times ahead...It seems like a very big surgery is taking place and of course it will be painful and expensive,but I am sure there will be a happy ending for all of this after wards...greedy people of the world have to back up a little and let us all to breath easier for a change....Morality kindness,care,freedom,dignity and respect should be the motto of the next generation or we are all going to vanish from this beautiful earth.The world can not go on much further continuing the same trend of greed and lust for power.I am not sure that religions are the answer,but i think they each can offer some solutions and suggestions....At the same time all we individuals can do is to be more tolerant and understanding towards each other and simply be a little nicer.This feeling of public exhaustion is just because we have been waiting for changes for soo loong,and i am sure it will go away as we enter the next stages...cheers.

reply to post by dellmonty


How very ironic.
We're worthless?

Shame on women for wanting their daughters to be educated (you failed to read the set-up of the scene - obviously.)??!! To be free to explore the world and their own minds without being CONTROLLED by men and kept illiterate and quiet?

This was a young woman who had been forced into marriage - because she was a girl, she was only allowed to do needlepoint and be submissive. Because she was an "aristocrat", she had a 'nurse' for her daughter. She was not allowed to read, go into libraries, or have her own opinions, and she knew her daughter would also not have that freedom. She was complaining that the NURSE told her daughter that women are supposed to stay SILENT. That women who were "eloquent" (education and well-spoken) were EVIL.

Her best friend had become a courtesan SO SHE COULD GET AN EDUCATION. Like it or not, courtesans were the MOST EDUCATED WOMEN in the WORLD at the time (in the 1500s in Europe).

The woman has asked her friend the courtesan to teach her daughter, SO THAT HER DAUGHTER COULD GET AN EDUCATION because that was the ONLY AVENUE OPEN to girls at THAT TIME in the patriarchal CATHOLIC empire.
The courtesan would later be accused of being a "witch" for her influence on the heads of state and leadership.
She even won the favor of the French King who had been asked for ships to go to war with an invading navy.
BECAUSE OF HER, they got THEIR SHIPS.

I'm very sorry to hear about your family's terrible loss. I'm afraid, however, that you completely missed the point of the quote.....and then you proceeded to lash out at women in general - saying they should "get fixed" and are "worthless."