Piling wrote:She told that, not the journalists. As a Bedirxan Kurd, freshly escaped from Syria she is not precisely a 'Western voice'. Telling systematically 'that is a Western influence' each time a Middle Easterner woman claims that she just want to be free as a Kurd and as a woman is like these Arabs or Iranians stating that all Kurdish rising for independence is only a Zionist plot.
It's not about conspiracies or "western influence". You shouldn't accept everything a middle-easterner tells you. Some middle-easterners want attention and "recognition" by the western establishment, by playing on fabricated personal stories, stereotypes and cliche held notions(there are plenty of people who make a career out of it), to westerners with a confirmation bias, or with cliche notions of the middle-east/middle-eastern societies/middle-easterners. Today f.ex there was a woman who lives in a immigrant neighborhood, who claims she is harassed for not wearing a veil in the newspaper. My aunt has worked there for 25 years in the community center and talks to a lot of different people, she has never been harassed, neither has the 10 other unveiled women who i know personally and talk, go there frequently since they were children.
Sometimes having a middle-easterner talk shit about their own community, country and society, is a career move for talentless individuals, who can satisfy the need by sensationalist/conservative westerners for "critical opinions" from communities who are in the media scrutiny. It's a farce, like reality shows and other forms of media-whoring. I could claim tomorrow that I received death threats by my father, for not going to the mosque, and western journalists would believe me. You as a expert on the middle-east should be more responsible, and not accept everything anyone tells you, just because you believe your culture is superior to others. I'm not saying that women aren't forced to wear veils(that might be the case, but it's the exception rather than the rule, unless we're talking about saudi-arabia or Iran). But it has to be the height of the most ridicules to make your debut in western-media as a "Freshly escaped oppressed Kurdish woman, who is free from the evil anti-woman veil and society". There is just something tacky about it. When I look at the societies we live in, it just doesn't check out. I've lived in kurdistan and middle-eastern countries for 3 years.
It's the same with honor-killings. 10-20 women get killed per year in the entire region of kurdistan due to honor killings, suddenly it's an all important, super-priority for human-rights organizations and other western NGOs and media bureaus. While you hear absolutely nothing about societies best sides. That's only reserved for powerful societies who have the money to promote themselves. They also never talk about other forms of killing women, if they happen in the west. It's only a cultural phenomenon if it happens outside of the west( a very centric notion of crime).
Posted: Fri May 16, 2014 3:31 pm
