http://www.foxnews.com/us/2009/10/30/muslim-arizona-man-arrested-allegedly-running-westernized-daughter/
http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/latest/honor-killings-in-america
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2349892
/noor_almaleki_murdered_by_her_father.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhoDK2xfXsw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhT0u2X1Qdg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwbEc_NSoHI&feature=related
Although gender separation seems to be a global, broad phenomenon, it is actually intricately linked with local, regional, and national cultures. One’s culture colors the lens with which one views the world, so it is impossible to separate one’s views about sex, gender, and the separations between the “male sphere” and the “female sphere” from one’s culture. If a woman wants to pose half-naked for Playboy magazine in America, hardly anyone is scandalized or shocked; American culture views female sexuality as something alluring and lucrative that should be exploited and American media – which is a direct expression of cultural shifts – is daily bombarded by sexual jokes, images, storylines, and news as Douglas has asserted numerous times (Douglas 3-11, 24-25, 54-60). Americans are somewhat inured to sexual topics because it is so prevalent in American culture. On the other hand, in Middle Eastern cultures, a woman posing naked for a magazine would cause outrage and her execution or punishment would be called for. These cultures are still extremely polarized to value men far above women, thereby allowing women to be suppressed, controlled, and punished due to their assigned and perceived inferior status.
The perpetuation of the Middle Eastern cultural view by families living in those countries as well as in the United States that men are superior to women still continues. For example, Fausto-Sterling relates how some Saudi parents of children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH, refused to raise their masculine-looking children as girls or to have them undergo feminizing surgery despite their children’s ability to get pregnant (Fausto-Sterling 58-59). These parents’ refusal to raise their children who looked male, but really had viable female reproductive systems, as daughters instead of sons proves how culture influences how people view gender. These parents were programmed by the society they lived in that men are worth more than women since men have much more freedom, so they also were programmed to want sons over daughters. A son can take care of his parents, go to school, get a job, and bring money into the house; a daughter would only be a drain on income because she could not go to school or hold a job and when she gets married, her parents have to pay a dowry. Having a daughter means worrying about and strictly guarding her virginity until her marriage because if she does have sex beforehand, her only value as a potential wife is gone and shame is brought upon the family. The doctors hit the nail on the head when they commented that this refusal “‘was resisted on social grounds…This was essentially an expression of local community attitudes with…the preference for male offspring’ (Fausto-Sterling 58-59).”
One way that Middle Eastern culture controls women’s actions are the severe punishments women must face if they do anything considered inappropriate, out of line, or “shameful” such as having premarital sex (whether it is consensual or not) or being disobedient to their husbands and fathers. Because these punishments of torture, death, and beatings would not be stopped but rather encouraged by these women’s communities and own families, many women act as they are expected to so as to avoid these punishments; these consequences seriously limit women’s freedom, thoughts, actions, and communication by using fear as a weapon. The fact that these punishments are meted out often and usually in public constantly remind women that they hold no power, which reduces their ability and determination to challenge the system. Every aspect of their bodies and lives are controlled by this patriarchal society which will not hesitate to stigmatize, criticize, and even kill them if they dared to break free or speak out. One of these punishments – honor killings, or the systematic killings of women who have overstepped their boundaries in order to preserve their families’ honor – is a major rung in the female birdcage that traps and prevents Middle Eastern women from speaking out and changing their society’s attitudes about femininity and women’s rights. Honor killings suppress women in two main ways in that they take away women’s right to make their own decisions through fear and set up bars to keep women from speaking out against injustice.
One such honor killing that silences all Middle Eastern women both overseas and in America is the murder of 20-year-old Noor Almaleki, who was killed by her father for being “too Westernized (Fox; Marie Claire).” She was a fun-loving woman who was just like any other young adult – she went to the mall, hung out with friends, played sports, had a boyfriend, and went to school (Marie Claire). However, her cheerful and carefree outward demeanor hid her strict, oppressive family life – she “lived a life of subservience, often left to care for her six younger siblings (Marie Claire).” Unfortunately, her American life eventually led to her violent, senseless death at the hands of her own father.
Her controlling, overbearing father Faleh Almaleki did not approve of his daughter’s lifestyle; he did not want her talking to any men, wearing Americanized clothing, or going on the internet because he believed that she should follow what her Middle Eastern culture prescribed for her – obey the men in her life “or risk a beating (Marie Claire)” and ultimately be a good wife and mother in an arranged marriage. Noor defied her father’s wishes, which he perceived as her bringing shame upon him and his family (Marie Claire); to preserve his and his family’s honor, Faleh first rammed his Jeep Grand Cherokee into his daughter and her boyfriend’s mother when they were walking in a parking lot to have a lunch date, throwing them into the air (Marie Claire). He ran over his daughter to finish the job, fracturing her face and backbone (Marie Claire). He fled the scene and was later apprehended (Fox). Noor died of her injuries a week later while her boyfriend’s mother survived with serious injuries (Associated Content).
Honor killings are a particularly violent way that men oppress women, to force them to act the way men have deemed appropriate, natural, or normal – a male-determined sphere of “appropriate” female action that women did not agree to follow and had no voice in creating, but one that they must adhere to at all times. When women act in a way that is contradictory to this “normal path,” men use this transgression as cause for reprimand or punishment in order to keep women in the sphere men has assigned to them. They prove that Stanton and Mott were right when they asserted that “[t]he history of mankind is the a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her (Seneca Falls Declaration).” Faleh Almaleki had established “an absolute tyranny” over his daughter Noor, going as far as beating her when she did not obey his orders because she was not acting in the way culture deemed appropriate for her sex (Marie Claire).
He forced her to act in ways that she did not want to, to loyally and completely follow the customs of a culture that she did not feel connected to, and to unquestionably submit to these rules which she personally had no say in making; in other words, he “compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice (Seneca Falls Declaration).” Her father was going to pick the man she had to marry instead of her being able to marry whom she wanted – Faleh and her eventual husband would have also “made her, if married, in the eyes of the law, civilly dead (Seneca Falls Declaration)” because she would have no right to speak her own mind and contradict her husband if she wanted to. If she married, she would have had to obey her husband without question – “she [would have been] compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master – the [cultural] law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement (Seneca Falls Declaration).” Noor had no way to escape this stifling, misogynistic culture except by speaking out, of trying to hold on to her American identity.
Her death is a striking example of hitting the walls of the very real birdcage that Marilyn Frye claims entraps women into a limited set of acceptable behavior (Frye). Because Noor grew up in a culture that openly values men more than women, her birdcage was even tighter and smaller than the birdcages felt by “liberated” American women; she couldn’t marry whom she wanted, she couldn’t have internet freedom, she couldn’t wear certain clothing like other women in other cultures can. When she tried to dodge these bars and escape her cage, she was immediately dispatched; her death was symbolic of the birdcage because she had hit the walls of it, she could go no farther, and when she tried to go farther, she paid the ultimate price for her transgression – her own life.
She was a bird, like all other women are birds, that was “surrounded by a network of systemically related barriers, not one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon (Frye).” The rules she had to follow by themselves are individually navigable. If she couldn’t wear the clothing she wanted, she could work around it. If she couldn’t go on the internet, she could find other ways of getting information. All the cultural rules combined together, however, bound her into a very narrow set of things she could do. When she dared to do otherwise, she was killed for it. Honor killings are one of the major backbones of Middle Eastern women’s birdcages because they could really happen to them. Honor killings stop women from even trying to venture out of their cages; they stop women from even thinking about daring or challenging their culture. When women cannot afford to dare, they will continue to be suppressed – like Middle Eastern women have been suppressed up until today.
Honor killings’ sheer number of violations of the rights all women are entitled to cannot be countered because of the fear they instill in women, which forces women to choose between survival and death. Until Middle Eastern women feel safe to speak out against these horrible forms of oppression, this cruel form of patriarchy will continue to terrorize and silence women everywhere.
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