Purity is highly overrated
Now that the Americans have captured Saddam, the Swiss and others say Iraq should return to full independent state sovereignty soon, while some Arabs (Jordanians, especially), who consider the murderous Saddam a “national hero,” are depressed that Americans instead of Iraqis got him. Why, I wonder, should it be about being intact, inviolable, sovereign, which leads to “healthy” national aspirations to be free of shame, “untainted” by dishonour, to be unpolluted and pure? Which leads to “justifications” for atrocious killing and violation, at which point sovereignty and inviolability go out the window again…? To me, it sounds like a huge family drama, where liberation from tutelage is the necessary goal. Personally, I see no other way forward except through absolute equal rights for women: the family has to become free of these cycles. It’s the necessary first step in interrupting the political cycles of violation and sovereignty. Shame, dishonour, humiliation, “assertiveness,” patria, me, you, I win, you lose, you win, I lose, no win. Sovereignty in Iraq? In Afghanistan? Ensure equality for women, let women assume leadership roles. Let the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth mentality get laid to rest: it’s been providing an unpolluted purity that’s clouded our judgement for too long. Let female “pollution” become an accepted part of the body politic instead.
December 14th, 2003 at 5:55 pm
Ah yes, I could never understand men’s obsession with purity … and yet, I, too, have been bewitched by the assumed purity of reason’s reasonableness….
Considering the recent item in the news about the appallingly low number of girls in schools in “the Third World” countries, it’s going to be some time before the body politic sheds some of that testosterone
Great post … and a good dose clarity on the issue (unlike my post on this topic, which I just put up….)
December 15th, 2003 at 6:46 pm
Purity
is obscurity
Ogden Nash
December 15th, 2003 at 6:51 pm
The recent finding that indicates that men cannot think straight after seeing an attractive women while women can keep their heads after seeing attractive men suggests to me that the wrong people might be leading.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:51 pm
I hadn’t realised that Dubya saw so many attractive women. A leftover from the Clinton Era perhaps, Joel?
December 16th, 2003 at 5:24 pm
Stu Savory, more like taking after his father.