Saturday, July 16, 2011

Of Monoliths, Monthlies and Mosqueterias

A dude named Mohmamed (who seems to know an awful lot about the mechanics of periods) lambastes the Toronto Star's Heather Mallick for expressing dismay over bleeding girls forced to sit at the back of the public school mosqueteria (behind the other girls, even):
...Feminism is a spectrum, not a monolith. Not all women feel compelled to publicly advertise that their vagina is pouring blood, or find reason to celebrate the sloughing off of their uterus. Even less women find the matter sexy. But that does not make them any less feminist than Mallick.
Furthermore, how could she claim to be empowering these young women, when she seems to have convinced herself that these “shy girls of tender age” are so pathetically weak and dependent that they are in need of someone, even a man, to “please stand up to defend [them].” Apparently, the irony in these statements seems to have escaped her.
If she is so concerned about the six girls in this photo, why did she not speak to them directly? Why did she not attend their Friday prayer to see that no one is pointing at anyone and laughing, no one is dying of embarrassment, and no one’s self-esteem is being compromised in the least?
Instead of reacting emotionally to facts that you created, why doesn’t she ask these girls if they find mutual support with their menstruating peers and if they feel relieved, even by something as minuscule as having the opportunity to get hygienic products (in case they ran out) from their sisters in faith? Most importantly, why doesn’t she ask them about their views on women’s rights and social justice, and how they hope to contribute to the feminist movement?
Feminism may not be a monolith (heck, these days, with multiculti all the rage, it's hardly even a grouping of one-room shacks), but sharia sure is. And under its terms, chicks are decidedly lesser than dudes. Period (pun intended). As for not "advertising" their vaginal/uteran business, isn't self-selecting and sitting at the back of the room in the bleeders' row doing just that? And since the rules say that chicks, being chicks, aren't required to say prayers--and since bleeding chicks can't say 'em--why are these girls, who need to huddle together for sisterly support and who at any moment may have to race out of the room for a "hygiene" run, even doing there? Shouldn't they be back in class with the other kids, learning their lessons in "diversity" and the three "R"s (reduce, reuse, regurgitate)?

It can't be that they're stuck in the back of the mosqueteria because some sort of "monolith" (say, the "monolith" that's but a stone's throw from the school, the one whose name refers to the state of affairs that will pertain worldwide when Islam is finally and fully in charge) is demanding it, can it?

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