One can hardly envisage Jaycee Lee Dugard’s dark somber past looking at her bright, unruffled face, and tranquil emotions. Appearing in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Jaycee exhibited incredible verve and optimism. Her insinuations for future appeared as clear and pleasant as a sunshiny sky. Sitting calmly with an immutable balance while talking about her past wounds, Jaycee not only looked magnificent, but also majestic. For someone whose life was wildly tangled as a child, Jaycee’s grandeur as an adult was indeed moving and inspirational. Her story dates back to 1991 when Jaycee’s life took an unexpected detour while she was just 11. Jaycee was kidnapped by a pedophile from a school bus stop near her home in South Lake Tahoe, California, and held captive for 18 long years.
As a child ensnared in a dungeon at her abuser’s backyard, Jaycee was subject to grave and unending sexual assault. Jaycee’s abuser, an ex-convict and a man in his late fifties was a sexual deviant and a chronic drug abuser. He mortified Jaycee with social isolation, and continual threats that ultimately led to a rebuttal of her true identity while she was under house arrest. In her predator’s sexual captivity, Jaycee at 13 and 15 was forced to bear two daughters with him. As a helpless child who was unknowingly nestled into motherhood, Jaycee saw a new meaning in her lost life with the birth of her two daughters. She says that her daughters brought her companionship during her imprisonment years with her captor. But in the midst of her solitude, and physical and mental cruciation, Jaycee never ceased to hope. While jailed to a circumstantial silence, Jaycee constantly dreamt of a reunion with her beloved mother though she was coached to forget her past and feel secure in her captor’s den than in the open air. In the lock and key of her abuser, Jaycee lived a chilling life until she was miraculously set free by an investigation sparked by the campus security of UC, Berkley.
Submerged into darkness like the unsinkable titanic, Jaycee narrated the deepest fears of her captive years on public television. She, however, seemed unfettered by her past and portrayed a persona of a cheerful, confident young woman who today is inspirited to resurrect her stolen years. It seemed that for Diane Sawyer interviewing Jaycee and listening to the unspeakable was nothing less than a phenomenon. One could see a stupendous Diane bedazzled with Jaycee’s strength and intentions of evolving out of trauma. For millions of onlookers Jaycee stood as an example of a lost child who had ultimately found her way home from a deadly maze. As a victim once, but a survivor today Jaycee certainly is a miracle of life. Her past represents a picture of woe that ultimately was destined to culminate in peace and joy. Most of all, her daunting account, her endurance, and the ability to embrace her past as it is and move beyond it indeed is a vestige of hope. Jaycee’s life is a journey of faith and holding on to the power of belief that even though life may appear as a rugged terrain, it does leave us with notable lessons. Jaycee’s story is not a reminiscence of her past, but a renaissance of victory and pride.
Women, for long have been a buffoon puppet of the media and entertainment. As a gratifying toy, women have mainly been recognized as an object of seeking pleasure by pulling their psychological and physiological strings. Women, more often have been recognized for their physicality and least for their inner beauty. The media portrayal of women today is nothing less than an active and passive eroticization that often leads to a desire for voluptuous figures and augmentations in young girls, an accession sadly not of their intellectual and emotional self, but more often of their physical self. Billboards, magazines, video games, music videos, internet and even sometimes in movies, people love to see women unclad. As a poster girl, physicality of a woman displays her audacity to bare it all in public, showing a gallantry for fame that’s not far away from shame. From a velvet image in the past, women today have been incited to arousals, real or fake, who cares? The fact of the matter is that women are being used and sometimes even violated to animate passionate emotions and media largely has been the impetus to it. What then is the consequence of such consummation? Is it dignity alone that’s at jeopardy or does it hurt conscience too? Does this portrayal influence our value systems and family integrity? Or is it giving a wrong message to a docile child next door? Most importantly, is it in any way affecting our social systems? The answers to these questions may not have one possible solution, as many would have differing perspective on this issue. The idea of this post, however, is not just to seek solutions. But to raise concern for covert and restricted opportunity structure that women exist in and for the innumerable overt ways their talents are judged.
Also, one of the many fall-outs of an inappropriate media message is abuse and sexual violence against women that inadvertently leads to annihilation of positive emotions. In the pursuit of objectification, how different is the sex trafficking trade that causes illegal physical gratification and immoral manifestation? To what extent can the brothel businesses that so graciously put an innocent girl on sale be ruled out from their glooming, yet ever growing flesh trade? Moreover, is objectification of women concoction of a stark expression that lacks subjectivity? These are few stances that need to be uncovered and emphasized as we usher into a new epoch marked by the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day 2011. To achieve the goals of equal access for women in science & technology, education and training, and providing decent work requires United Nations to uplift women in general, including the one's trafficked and those who have suffered turmoil in trenches, so that tomorrow when we look at a woman, we can look beyond her gender and her physical appeal.
Each day around the world a woman is ostracized. She is abused, neglected, abandoned or ousted from her identity to exist. Her consort, whom she looks up to as her knight in shinning armor becomes her greatest predator. Her valor and enthusiasm for life is often assumed to be audacious. She is continuously prejudiced in her right to survive, in her will to live a life of equality and similitude. Her tolerance for pain and suffering is considered to be her fate and fear. Her emotions are speculated and judged. Soraya. M, a woman sacrificed in the name of honor and stoned to death for alleged adultery almost two decades ago in a village in Iran is a mirror of such tribulation. More than 20 years later, women still are victimized and terrorized around the globe. Their voices are suppressed and their rights are extirpated to shun them of love, dignity and opportunity.
Soraya.M’s horrific tale, a true story made into a movie by Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Stoning Of Soraya.M, 2008) is a pinch to the soul and a volcanic eruption for the mind. It is not a story of a woman, a village or a country but a story that lapidates the prerogative and state of womanliness. Like her even today many Sorayas are suffocated in relationships, trafficked across borders, abducted to brighten brothels, swindled into sexual drudgery though child marriages, genitally mutilated, beaten and infiltrated through aggravated sexual assault. Are these acts less barbaric than casting of stones? These may not seem as horrifying as stoning. But the screams from such acts emit an equal shrill. If I had simply watched the Stoning of Soraya and wiped my tears that trickled down during the movie’s climax, I would have been incompetent in my service to self and in torching justice for injustice. I hence decided to present my readers with this video to aware and educate on ostracism against innocence, independence and empowerment, which are the basic constituents of woman’s rights.
In order to understand the necessity to honor a woman’s right; one needs to appreciate the role she plays in our survival. She gives life to gift mankind with the greatest pleasure on earth in being alive. She nurtures in a way that makes one learn the essence of subsistence. As an epitome of love and compassion, she consecrates harmony and happiness in relationships. For man to accept such feature may seem unlikely of his might. But it’s imperative to realize that strength of man’s muscle and character, the power in governances around the orb and the depth of ecclesiastical tenets does not lie in her coercion and crucifixion. With each woman executed physically, mentally and/or emotionally inside her home, on the streets, in business, politics or in foreign lands leaves us with martyrs for causes just like Soraya left with her story for the world to feel her pain. Man and his masculinity shouldn’t just be a symbol of violence and transgression. Likewise regulations and axioms shouldn’t be so gruesome that they become a threat to the spirit and essence of existence. Irrespective of our physicality, for god both men and women are equal for he decides not to reside up above in the blue sky but inside us, in our wisdom and in our deeds. He created man as an epitome of care and courage to fend for his counterpart (not just through marriage or any relationship) but in the chastity of an eclectic circle called humanity.
So if you are a man and you see a women being expelled of her rights……
Stand up against violence. You shall be more of a man in doing so
Care for other women as you would care for your own
Learn to respect femininity. It may not seem as powerful as masculinity but without it your machismo certainly is incomplete
Be an advocate to stop ostracism against women. Talk to peers, family and friends or whoever you think is the smallest dust particle that causes such offense.
Everybody says that it’s a man’s world. Is it or isn’t it? is not the question. The real quest is to make this world a better place for everyone to live including every woman you meet in your lifetime, irrespective of her role or abilities.
If you are the King, she is the Queen, so treat her like one. You will be a torch bearer for others.
If you are a woman and you see another woman being blackballed......................
The best thing you can do is to stop being critical of another woman’s plight
Stop mutter or gossip about other woman’s dilemma. Stand up for truth and freedom. It will show your magnanimity and not self-centeredness.
A woman standing up for every other woman will empower so many sisters in the spirit circle. It shall lessen half the problems that we women create for each other knowingly or unknowingly throughout our lives.
Break the cycle of abuse. Call for help/ emergency or crisis network if you see or know of a woman or child being abused physically, mentally or emotionally.
Log in http://www.hotpeachpages.net/( an International directory of domestic violence agencies with abuse information in over 80 languages).
On exposing to such change and bailing out the one in crisis, we shall rescue ourselves from mental handicaps based on discriminations and radical doctrines and realize that women’s rights are human rights.
Copyright (c) 2010 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarkhaDhar
With a geographic location in Southwest Asia at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is a country that most may know of as third world. In its topographic terrain lie colossal poverty, indigent economy and grim possibilities of a social and a cultural transition. An impending plague of child marriages leading to physical, sexual and psychological abuse of the girl child is this country’s incessant social menace. Haley Sweetland Edwards’s crisis report about a 13 year olds death due to internal hemorrhaging from sexual assault by an older husband is a symptom of Yemen’s parasitical social and cultural outlook. How callous are the Yemeni men who treat little girls as cash reaping cattle and barter innocence for an eclipsed life. With dearth of resources, lack of education, Yemen’s social facelift today seems feeble and impervious, given the religious and stringent Sharia law that favors child marriages. At an age when dolls are like desires and physical and emotional maturity is raw, an unwanted relationship is like sailing in deep sea without navigation. From the thrill of getting a new dress and some bridal jewelry, the exhilaration and efflorescence of these young child brides turns into rage and sexual drudgery overnight. A sprout of chastity and childhood in naive Yemeni girls turns into a forced and aggressive invasion of their virginity and demure. It is not only pitiful but also shameful for a civilization to act brutal and insane against the impeccant emotions of these little lily-whites. Tormenting as it may sound but this truth is like a dark dust that covers Yemeni clouds and sand castles with its dogmatic mores. According to UNICEF’s data on monitoring situation of children and women, as of Feb 2010, Yemen ranks No.1 at 32% in terms of marriage before the age of 18, which is highest compared to its middle east counterparts in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Morroco, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Algeria. For Yemenis child marriage may be a traditional habitude and a religious precedent. But how apostolic is this cultural practice that changes marriage into slavery and adolescence into apartheid? It is important to understand that what may have been applicable in ca. 570/571 or after (the early Islamic era) cannot and should not be same in the 21st century. With a critical perspective, we would realize that if man had survived on prophecies and prognosis alone, space exploration and technological advances would have been impossible. Moreover, implementing social change through education, liberation from injustice and emancipation through equal rights would also have been Utopian. In my opinion, child marriage is an abuse not only of child rights but also of kinship. A father selling his daughter for few thousand dollars or for an exchange of a new bride for himself in no way is veneration for religion. It’s a question of attitudes and avarice for all those who preach and perform such practice. Calamitous for any society yet true, it is man’s stereotypical nature to use religion and the Holy Scriptures to shield any conservative thinking, misdeeds or sin. Besides, all religions stand alike in their humanitarian philosophy. So what could be more benevolent than letting little girls bud into maturity before they fear of marriage as rape? The Yemeni parliamentary subcommittee’s decision that is scheduled for May should be an echo of such change.
