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Last month,
seventeen-year-old Du'a
Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them
(the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death.
This is an example of the breathtaking oxymoron "honor
killing", in which a family member (almost always female)
is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Du'a
Khalil, who was of the Yazidi
faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni
Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted.
That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a
particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch
the action up close on CNN.
Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face
nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men
who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming
the event with their camera-phones.
There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing,
but the footage of the murder was taken—by more than one
phone —from the front row. Which means whoever shot it,
did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate
it. To share it. Because it was cool.
I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized
to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world
in which everything is shown and everything is game; but , honestly,
it's been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda.
I like to think that, in America, this would be considered unbearably
appalling; that Kitty
Genovese is still remembered; that we are more evolved. But
coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid, I watched
the trailer for Captivity.
A few of you may know that I
took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film,
which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and
murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was
perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was
directed by The
Killing Fields' Roland
Joffé) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The
trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Du'a Khalil.
Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha
Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped; inventively, repeatedly
and horrifically tortured; and that the first thing she screams
is "I'm sorry".
"I'm sorry."
What is wrong with women?
I mean 'wrong'. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural,
something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.
How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly?
I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and
I'm no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture
that doesn't buy into it. Women's inferiority—in fact, their
malevolence— is as ingrained in American popular culture
as it is anywhere they're sporting burkhas. I find it in movies,
I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards—and
not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are
manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification:
another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of
this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.
I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college
(shared by many, I'm sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy.
Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But
they're also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to
overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have
and nurture children—with or without the aid of a man. Oh,
and they've also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the
life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will.
Somewhere, a long time ago, a bunch of men got together and said,
"If all we do is hunt and gather, let's make hunting and gathering
the awesomest achievement, and let's make childbirth kinda weak
and shameful." It's a rather silly simplification, but I believe—on
a mass, unconscious level—it's entirely true. How
else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate
each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular
religion puts restrictions on women's behavior that are practically
untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive
woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this
upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Du'a Khalil,
mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing
pleasure.
It's safe to say that I've snapped. That something broke, like
one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum.
All my life I've looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand,
and I've shorted out. I don't pretend to be a great guy; I know
really, really well about objectification, trust me. And I'm not
for a second going down the "women are saints" route; that just
leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning).
I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that
we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was
evil—or, at best, a little embarrassing—and we ought
not look at it, wouldn't that tradition eventually fall apart?
(I was going to use ‘trees' as my example; but, at the rate we're
getting rid of them, I'm pretty sure we really do think
they're evil. See how all rants become one?)
Now, those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased
opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may
be way ahead of me. But I can't contain my despair—for Du'a
Khalil, for humanity, for the world we're shaping. Those of you
who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn't bring
you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a
place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the
question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying
to change the answer. Because it's no longer enough to be a decent
person. It's no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned
grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing
that can save humanity from itself. I've always had a bent towards
apocalyptic fiction, and I'm beginning to understand why. I look
and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.
All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out,
showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly-worded eMail.
Pick a cause; there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself
past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once
a year, or just once. If you can't think of what to do, there
is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject
so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual
personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out,
would have intervened, had you been in that
crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you're
all in it, now.
I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props
on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the
technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent
race we are, and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that
half of us are inferior, we're pretty amazing. Let our next sleight
of hand be to make that myth disappear.
The sky isn't evil. Try looking up.
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(2004), was published by 
