The stereotypical woman

Mamdouh Bitar Raba Mansour: 

The purpose of veiling, then promoting it and linking it to the gains of heaven, then linking unveiling to the consequences of hell, was and still is the “objectification” of women and then their “stereotyping” to prevent difference and diversity, at least superficially. Women are canned like canned goods. Stereotyping is not limited to appearance but also includes essence. Depriving women of the freedom to choose clothing ultimately means practicing the principle of prohibition on other aspects of life. There is a male or religious force that limits women’s freedom of choice, which includes almost everything: economic, social, familial, etc. Women must be obedient to what is imposed on them. Even sexual intercourse is primarily for the pleasures of men. Therefore, they circumcised them specifically for their lust, so they lost their pleasure. They must give pleasure to the male at any time he wants. And if they don’t, they are legally required to trim and discipline them with beatings. Even beatings have their false “humanity,” as they stipulate that beatings must not be accompanied by… Broken bones and ribs, or disfigured faces! Glory be to Him for His wisdom. Women, even in ancient times, were able to partially free themselves of their subservience and enslavement. In some cases, they were rebellious and defiant, even dominant in the era of gathering and gathering. As legend has it, they conspired against Adam, whom they caused to sin (myth), thus pushing him to commit the sin. Thus, a socially – male – tendency to despise them developed, such as considering them a spoiler of prayer, and then deficient in mind and religion! When we possess even the most minimal self-respect, of which women constitute more than half, it would be a shame not to remove the phrase “women are deficient in mind and religion,” not only from the Bible, but from existence altogether. There is no shortage of distortions in the male society, in its extremism and its tendency to settle matters as they are settled by swordsman. The settlement was by declaring the woman’s body from the soles of the feet to the top of the head almost “private” that may not be revealed except in the case of buying and selling, taking and giving. There is a difference in buying and selling between the free woman and the slave woman. The slave woman is considered an open commodity and her price is therefore lower than the price of the free woman. The slave woman is a used commodity and her price, i.e. her dowry, is appropriate to this situation. The objectification of women denies their existence as an independent human entity, equal in value, dignity and needs to others, especially men. Objectification has turned women into inanimate matter reduced to a thing, devoid of privacy, independence and will. Nawal El Saadawi said about this: “Women live with social contradiction in a sharp way. They must be cold, chaste and pure, neither feeling sex nor seeking it. They must be an instrument of pleasure to satisfy their husbands sexually to the point of intoxication. Their bodies are shameful and must be hidden by moral standards. Their bodies are permissible and must be exposed by the standards of commercial marriage and advertisements for goods. I do not think there is any exploitation more severe than this exploitation nor any humiliation more severe than this humiliation that women live. Women are prey between two conflicting and conflicting forces, like a piece of meat between two ferocious jaws. All of this is natural in a society in which women have lost the components of their personality, have been emptied of their humanity and have been transformed into a thing or a tool. Sometimes they are an instrument for advertising and other times they are an instrument for purchase.” And consumption, sometimes a tool for pleasure and serving desires, and sometimes a vessel for children. We summarize: a maid by day and an unpaid slave by night. Within local culture, women are considered a vagina with a body. Compared to modernity and postmodernity, which view women as a body with a vagina, it seems as if fundamentalists do not care about the difference between the two situations. The difference is vast. It seems as if reason is atrophied or nonexistent when considering women as a vagina with appendages, that is, a distorted consideration of women’s nature. A body with a vagina is natural, and it is unnatural to consider a woman’s body or being an appendage to her vagina. Rationality distinguishes between the position of women in conservative societies and their position in modern or postmodern societies. In postmodernism, women have become half-consumer and half-productive, and therefore not a parasitic appendage. There is no development in modern and postmodern societies that does not adhere to the principle of equality between women and men, and there is no oppressor and oppressed. Women in modern societies have been transformed into… A major, fundamental actor in society, there is no force that can return women to the passive form and strip them of their active status! Fundamentalists should therefore expect the worst for themselves.

Fundamentalism claims that the creation of the new believing woman, who is not equal to anything, is achieved by fighting the wave of women’s sexual liberation and what they call sexual pornography, knowing that pornography has nothing to do with women’s liberation. Pornography, by definition, is something else. They want her to return home and maintain chastity and refrain from mixing with the opposite sex, then wear the hijab so that she does not turn into a source of arousal for men’s desires and temptation. The new believing woman is primarily represented by her protected reproductive organs, and this protection is necessary in order to privatize the use of these organs and to stay away from experimental use to gather experiences, as every woman has only one experience. And with only one man, the male, on the contrary, his field of sexual experiences is not defined. The hijab and niqab are not the only prison in which a woman must live. She also exists in a larger prison, which is the home. The prison of the home exists in a larger prison, which is the prison of society, which imposes everything on women, even their outings. Have you learned the rules for women’s outings? According to Islamic law, she has three outings: an outing to her husband’s house when she is given to him, an outing for the death of her father, and an outing to her grave! The problem in general was and still is the objectification of women, their stereotyping and their definition by the rules and regulations of men. The hijab and the niqab are part of the philosophy of objectification, which reduces women to a reproductive system. Women are something attached to the vulva, they are a complement to the vulva. There are many other shocking points, such as considering their testimony before the court equal to half the testimony of a man. Here, immorality has reached its peak. Liberating women from the veil is less important than liberating them from slavery and exploitation. Liberation requires first enlightening women and encouraging them to reject and rebel, i.e. independence, especially economic independence. It is difficult for a male-dominated society to humiliate an economically independent woman.

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