Today a young teenager died for adultery (also known as premarital sex). Her name was Rokhshana and she was stoned to death by her village and family. The video speaks for itself. I could go on about how her “crime” was to fall in love with someone and want to choose her own husband but, really, I can’t seem to care. All I see is the physical manifestation of all the hate spewed by the conservative right. Oh, that and a young woman being snuffed out by what, I assume, are inbred men hiding behind the norms of a society we legitimize.
We, as a nation, sit back and tut about videos like this. What an outrage! Right? Then we go back to agreeing with the TV personalities who say a woman’s body isn’t her own. Abortion is killing. A woman’s body belongs to God. God has ordained that marriage and love can only be between a man or a woman–watch out if you don’t agree! We’ll send you to Gay Exorcism camp!
I guess the take away from all of this is that I’m tired. I’m tired of having our troops die for the freedom of others. I’m tired of having them come home in body bags because, obviously, the Afghan people want Democracy. Democracy and Freedom, right? Freedom to do what? This is what we fight for?
Are honor killings even about Adultery?
When writing this, it came to me. We really are fighting to make Afghanistan become just like us. The only difference is that they are way better at the game than we are. They take our rhetoric of hate and express it directly in the physical world. I’m sure some NRA nut job will say “If she had weapons!” Think about that. Does it look like the war zone is short any weapons? Is the reason why we are so repulsed by stonings like this–and others, oh boy, believe me there are no shortages of honor killings by a group of empowered men against a defenseless person (514,000 results on the topic in the news don’t lie)–because it demonstrates the evil of human nature?
Or is it because maybe, just maybe, it reflects our own hate-twisted image back at us? After all, if you listen to the rhetoric by the conservative “Christians” in the past few years, doesn’t this sound a bit like the physical manifestation of what the narrow-minded crew spews forth every week?
Oh, and if you were wondering what punishment the guy she had sex with got? Lashes. Didn’t I tell you this had nothing to do with the offense and everything to do with the way the world (including the US) sees women?
