Dallas Honor Killings: Yes, A Women’s Issue
September 22, 2009
by Monica Jean Alaniz
|Thanks to Phyllis Chesler for her article Mother of Dead Dallas Girls Calls Their Murder An “Honor Killing”
On New Year’s Day 2008, two beautiful young girls, Amina and Sarah Said were murdered by their father in so-called honor killings. Aasiya Hassan was beheaded earlier this year by her husband. As The New Agenda’s Amy Siskind has previously pointed out, many women’s groups have refused to address these acts of violence because they consider it a cultural issue rather than a woman’s issue.
Perpetuating the cycle of violence against women by placing it under a cultural lens is unacceptable. Women’s groups should not ignore violent acts against women simply because what may have occurred due to “culturally accepted practices.”
Amina and Sarah Said
I think that the problem with this is that women see these practices as something that is happening to “them” not something that is happening to “us.” Female circumcision, honor killings, etc. are things that are cultural issues and are not thought of as gender issues.
How can anyone that claims to be concerned about women and girls ignore the incident in which two young Dallas girls were murdered by their father? It seems that their mother even played a role in these “honor killings.” The blog from the Chesler Chronicle that discusses the senseless death of the two young girls talks about how the mother in the case is just as guilty for complying with her husband’s wishes and for ignoring the abuse of her daughters. I believe that women’s groups that ignore what is occurring are just as guilty.
People everywhere have to speak out and say that these things are not okay. Women and girls cannot be treated this way no matter what the context. If women’s groups start to speak out then I believe that a lot of women from other cultures can begin to see that there is another path that can be taken. In the case of the two girls, if someone had spoken to their mother years ago and shown her that there was still a way to reconcile her culture with progressive ideas about women then she might have spoken up for her daughters; then this might never have happened.
I know that the culture in which I grew up can be misogynistic in many ways, but change has come about as a result of women speaking up and insisting that change has to take place. Progressive ideas about women in cultures that almost seem to consider violence of women to be the norm usually comes about because women have educated themselves, whether formally and informally, and have passed on that knowledge to other women in their cultural groups.
There are so many wonderful things that can be attributed to cultural differences and I think that while it is important to acknowledge these differences, this doesn’t mean that we have to ignore what is fundamentally right and wrong.
Yes, look a the beautiful lives that were taken away!
And yet there is no national conversation. I KNOW there is domestic violence, rape and murder in the mainstream population of the United States. It is somewhat okay for me to talk about this. But WHENEVER I bring up a bad experience I’ve had or a bad news story, say in Mexico, or Turkey or some other nonwestern country, the conversation begins and ends with “that could happen anywhere!” People feel like they will be racist if they speak about a woman’s issue in a non-Caucasian culture or country. This demonstrates how little we care about women. We are willing to let the bodies and bruises pile up, all so we won’t have to fear being considered racist.
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Sexist is just fine, though.
How f*cking sick and morally bankrupt has “feminism” become when the murder of women because they are women ceases to be of interest to them?
When you can find out about the murder of two kids like this — or a sting operation set up by two unperfect people in which underage sex slavery is condoned by a liberal organization — and reply “yes but,” you barely have any business taking up space much less expressing an opinion.
And you sure as sh*t ain’t no “feminist.”
To even accept the phrase “Honor Killing” is sexist in the extreme. There is nothing honorable about killing defenseless people to make yourself feel better. Killing your own children for such a purpose is all the more horrific.
When people, here at home or abroad, do things that we find appalling, it is appropriate to object. It is to our shame that as a society we accept such practices anywhere in the world.
Not to mention that it’s racist as all hell to accept and excuse that behavior in people who happen to be darker — the implication being that they don’t know any better. These people aren’t Martians — they’re human beings.
Women’s groups shy away from standing up to this crap for fear of being branded racist.
To confound the issue, and to show how utterly ridiculous their reasoning is, we are talking about minors, who cannot legally consent so how do we say they are complicit in their cultures? Otherwise, it is the same situation as a voodoo practitioner killing a person in a ritual. What do we call that? Voodoo killing? Is it taken lightly? Dismissed? No of course not, because that can happen to men. The truth is it is a woman getting killed and people don’t care because she had it coming. Neither does the POTUS, who wants to put forth men’s rights under the umbrella of cultural rights when he asserts that -muslim- men should have the right to dictate what a woman wears.
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