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Bänoo Zan by Rumman Rahman .jpg

Photo: Rumman Rahmen

WHICH WOMEN'S RIGHTS?

"The struggle for women’s rights, human rights, and civil rights, is a war. It is not a fashion show. "

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— Bänoo Zan

By Bänoo Zan

Bänoo Zan is a poet, writer, founder and organizer of Shab-e She'r (Poetry Night), and Writer-in-Residence (Sep. 2022-May 2023) at the University of Alberta, Department of English and Film Studies.

 

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"The argument that you can never fully understand other people’s suffering pretends to be unaware that language and literature impart an astonishing range of ideas, emotions, experiences, and wisdom about the human condition."

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If you are a feminist, you believe in women’s equality. Even in the twenty-first century, this is far from reality. 

 

Women all over the world are disproportionately targeted in domestic violence, honor killings, sexual violence, rape, and other crimes, including the large-scale systematic crimes we call crimes against humanity. In the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, women are barred from schools, universities, jobs, and even public spaces such as parks. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, women are forced to wear the Islamic headdress or hijab. Women are protesting this assault on their human rights and dignity. In Iran, women face horrendous beatings. Government hirelings shoot at their eyes and genitals, arrest, torture, rape, and murder them in detention. Schoolgirls in Iran are now being targeted in large-scale poisonings. So far, over 5,000 girl students have been poisoned in their classrooms. A regime that arrests women hours after they ditch their hijab, has not yet arrested anyone for the poisonings, nor has it released transparent findings about the nature of the attacks and the chemicals involved. Instead, it has arrested journalists, issued warnings to the media, and banned hospitals from releasing test results on the victims. The revolutionary guards, a notorious terrorist force serving the supreme leader, with a green light from the education ministry, have been going around girls’ schools forcing students to watch porn videos of sex between animals and humans. They give the girls this warning: “Your protests against compulsory hijab will lead to this outcome!” Some students have been severely traumatized and have been hospitalized. 

 

Meanwhile, some of our brothers and sisters in the West believe that it is impossible to “understand” others’ suffering!  In practice, this argument has led to an unethical dodging of responsibility. One such person writes that she cannot join Iranian protests here in Canada, as she wears the hijab and cannot cut her hair or remove her hijab! She is so out of touch that she has not realized that hijabi women also take part in these protests for rights, freedom, and equality. 

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"If any consideration keeps you silent in the face of the most egregious crimes against humanity, if any consideration keeps you from openly supporting women from Afghanistan, Iran, and other Muslim majority countries, you are NOT a feminist. You are a collaborator with systemic misogyny and patriarchy."

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The argument that you can never fully understand other people’s suffering pretends to be unaware that language and literature impart an astonishing range of ideas, emotions, experiences, and wisdom about the human condition. If you are in Canada, you have access to one of the best public library systems in the world. If you can’t bring yourself to care about a stranger’s suffering, educate yourself by reading. And use your education to exchange ideas with your fellow human beings. Don’t hide your indifference behind threadbare arguments about understanding. 

 

If you support ALL women, you must be vocal against institutionalized discrimination against them in different faith and ethnic communities. If you waver in your support, you are a callous observer and collaborator with dictators and violent opportunistic men. The struggle for women’s rights, human rights, and civil rights, is a war. It is not a fashion show. 

 

If any consideration keeps you silent in the face of the most egregious crimes against humanity, if any consideration keeps you from openly supporting women from Afghanistan, Iran, and other Muslim majority countries, you are NOT a feminist. You are a collaborator with systemic misogyny and patriarchy. 

 

A feminist declares war on ALL who exercise violence and discrimination against women. A feminist does not spare any such criminal from critique just because they happen to be from a minority background. Violence against women perpetrated by a Muslim man is still violence against women. And so is violence against women committed by a Black man, an Indigenous man, a Jewish man, a Christian man, a Buddhist man, a Hindu man, an atheist man, an immigrant man, a man of color, AND a White man. Violence against women is violence against women—regardless of the identity of the perpetrator. If you consider a crime against women committed by a man with a certain identity more horrendous than the same crime committed by a man with a different identity, then you don’t care about women. You have another agenda. 

 

I extend an invitation to all of you to join the Iranian protests in your city or province. And, on behalf of Iran’s neighbours, I also extend an invitation to attend Afghan protests. 

 

Attention: The main site of protest is the streets — not social media! 

 

Woman, life, freedom. 

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List of essential feminist classics: 

 

  1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft

  2. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship that Changed the World, by Penny Colman 

  3. The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir 

  4. A Room of One’s Own, by Virginian Woolf

  5. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan

  6. Sexual Politics, by Kate Millett

  7. The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer

  8. Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich

  9. Against Our Will, by Susan Brownmiller 

  10. Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde 

  11. The Madwoman in the Attic, by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar 

  12. Bad Feminist, by Roxanne Gay 

  13. Headscarves and Hymens, by Mona Eltahawy 

 

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Other writings by Bänoo Zan 

 

 “My Diversity Is Self-Critical,” in Carte Blanche Magazine, Resistance: Resilience Blog Series, http://carte-blanche.org/resiliencebanoo/   

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