The Mind of the State is Set Against Women

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

The recent public service ad prepared by the Ministry of Family and Social Policies ends with the sentence, "There is no violence against women in our culture". At the start of the ad, late to middle-aged couples from various parts of the country appear before the camera in their best moods.

People from the Black Sea, Aegean and Eastern Anatolia regions are forming a panorama of the country with their traditional clothes and accents. Men speak with words glorifying women
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In short, the public service ad prepared by the ministry presents a discourse that reverses the truth as the truth itself. It is marketing not what is but what should be as if it already is.

We could perhaps be fine with such a white lie if we could see even an ounce of good-intention in it, but this is a discourse of denial rather than a white lie.

The Ministry of Family is just adding on to its systematic discourse of denial, the baseless and groundless examples of which we hear often as in "Muslims don't commit genocide" or "Turkish soldier doesn't rape".

In our region, violence against women is a phenomenon that is sometimes internalized by women themselves, imprinted in our culture and fortified with religious references.

Essentially, this is a phenomenon which should not be evaluated separately from the world of perception that sanctifies violence.

Extolling masculinity constitutes the starting point of the twisted mindset that leads to violence against women. And sometimes we see that the man has a privileged status in the family by means of a hierarchy of values shaped by the mother.

Through family training, the girl children mix the mortar of the culture of violence against women by accepting their secondary position in society, by being forced into it, and finally by settling for it.

The role of religions in violence against women

The more interesting thing is that men who are raised in these conditions are markedly weaker than women, both mentally and in terms of physical abilities...

The fields where the man, which is a very much incompetent gender compared to woman, can establish himself are highly limited. For instance, the man who falls behind woman in everyday life, in the natural course of life, has found the opportunity to actualize his vision of a womanless world in the field of military where muscle strength is determining.

By the same token, woman has suffered a significant loss of position in monotheistic religions in which the belief in gods and goddesses of mythology transitioned to an abstract notion of god/Allah. In addition to the names of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, the lack of a feminine prophet figure is very conspicuous.

Likewise, we do not come across the name of a woman among the associates such as Solomon, Abraham, Pavlus, Petrus, Yohanna, Omar Ali, Abu-Bakr, Hassan or Hussain either.

Here, the figure of Virgin Mary cannot be considered a woman in the real sense either, since, as is known, she has the surreal ability to become pregnant by smelling a flower.

At the present time, just as the woman is not allowed to go up to the altar of a church, she is also prohibited from lining up for prayer in the mosque.

Moreover, according to the narrative of creation, which is recounted in Torah and has also been embraced by Christianity and Islam, our mother Eve was created from the rib of the Prophet Adam. She yielded to the temptation of the Devil and allured Adam, causing the human race to be banished from heaven.

In short, according to the narrative of all three holy books, "women, who are prone to sin, are to blame for the miserable lives that we lead". Even this narrative in itself can give an idea about the role played by religion in violence against women.

The ones who were blamed for witchcraft and sorcery and burnt alive in the darkness of the Middle Ages were women. As for Islam, it also targets women with the punishment of stoning to death. While the retaliation principle of Sharia law cuts the hand of the thief and the head of the murderer with a sword, when it comes to women, it has embraced torture and a way of killing that involves the participation of the community.

When Muslims fulfil the holy obligation of Hajj, they stone the Devil; in secular life, they only stone women.

In practices that are generally intertwined with religious references and shape the social lives of people with the definition of "custom" as well, the place of women is belittled while manhood is glorified as much as possible.

This glorification, naturally, results in an unhealthy self-confidence, which, in turn, reproduces misogyny as a paradoxical spiral and, hence, violence against women. Violence of this type, which takes its source from education within the family, cannot be overcome through academic education.

Feminism is the medicine for us all

Since the system of values which produces violence against women is shaped with a social presupposition, counter values have to be oriented towards forming a new presupposition. It requires, above all, a struggle with denialism, lies and deception.

In this sense, feminist women are continuing their relentless climb to raise the purple flag in their hands ever higher.

It seems that the aim of this climb is not to re-idolize the deities and goddesses of polytheistic beliefs such as Hera, Aphrodite or Anahit against the bigoted understanding of religion, but to elevate humanity through the emancipation of women.

That is why, the feminist movement should be seen not solely as a women's movement, but as a movement of humanity in its entirety. (PE/ŞA/APA/SD/TK/IG)

* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses

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