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Jun. 21st, 2009
I have had the great fortune to live in a time and a place where I have a good deal of freedom. It's not perfect, and it's always under some degree of threat from conservative wingnut corners of our society, but I have had the right -- and I have exercised it -- to make my own reproductive choices independent of anyone else's imposed "morality". I have a professional job in a male-dominated field. Assuming I ever meet someone I want to spend my life with, I can choose of my own free will to marry them regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I don't have to walk around with my hair covered up, or my whole body concealed under thick robes, lest someone think I'm sexy (ha!) and be led thus down a path to wicked temptation. Other than for weddings and funerals, I haven't set foot in a church of my own volition in decades. I owe nothing to any god not of my own fickle choosing (right now, I'm grateful to the god of comfy things I can put my feet up on while I'm sitting at my desk) and the state of my soul, and whether or not I even believe in such a thing, is solely my own concern.
Never have I been unaware that I have freedoms that other women don't have, or that someday could be taken away from my own children or grandchildren. I think it's been long enough since we've really had to fight for something that we've forgotten what that means, or the price that sometimes gets paid, often arbitrarily and always mercilessly, in blood.
I don't, in general, feel like my life has much in common with that of people in Iran. It's a completely different world, though the overlaps are sometimes startling. But I see the news and it breaks my heart. I know what's happening isn't just about women's rights, but they are the ones with the most to gain, and the most already lost. These women could be my own ancestors. They could be my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who may someday have to fight again for their own freedom. I don't know these women, will never meet them or even pass them on the street, but I care about them, and I fear for them. Even if this particular struggle, and these particular women's losses (and, one hopes, their victories) do not in any way belong to us as individuals, they are ours as women. They are ours as human beings.
Even if all I can do is pay attention, I pay attention. And I mourn.
Never have I been unaware that I have freedoms that other women don't have, or that someday could be taken away from my own children or grandchildren. I think it's been long enough since we've really had to fight for something that we've forgotten what that means, or the price that sometimes gets paid, often arbitrarily and always mercilessly, in blood.
I don't, in general, feel like my life has much in common with that of people in Iran. It's a completely different world, though the overlaps are sometimes startling. But I see the news and it breaks my heart. I know what's happening isn't just about women's rights, but they are the ones with the most to gain, and the most already lost. These women could be my own ancestors. They could be my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who may someday have to fight again for their own freedom. I don't know these women, will never meet them or even pass them on the street, but I care about them, and I fear for them. Even if this particular struggle, and these particular women's losses (and, one hopes, their victories) do not in any way belong to us as individuals, they are ours as women. They are ours as human beings.
Even if all I can do is pay attention, I pay attention. And I mourn.