The Day Has Come

If you were given a penny for every woman being beaten up at home, you’d be rich. And this home we are talking about, where she comes every day to sleep, to cook, to do her second full time job, which is a mum or a wife, this home would be built on her economical and emotional contribution.

Women on Sunday the 8th of march would be celebrating IWD "International women’s day" and while some women in far some place are celebrating this day, others are being beaten up until they bleed at home, being raped in dark alleys. Posters and billboards objectifying women’s bodies are all over the roads from Jounieh to Beirut to somewhere else in Beirut, to Tripoli, to Saida, to Sour, everywhere in Lebanon.

To fathers that make there daughters get married to their rapists, for Honor, in what world is that fair? And what honor is that if I may ask? What is honor? Define it for me, and what definition allows another human to kill for it. Honor, honor was made for humans, what is honor next to death? Next to losing a daughter, a sister or a wife.

I still remember when I first discovered this awful fact, and I couldn’t believe it, by logic, if a guy shoots your daughter and stabbed her, would you make him marry her, to hide the shame. And what is shame really next to a lifetime scar and billions and trillions of psychological problems. So now let me get it right, why can’t every man who wants a woman and she didn’t say yes, rape her simply, and yah take her sister too, it’s a garage sale, rape one get one free.

Am not so fond of statistics but by logic I can say that our economy and it’s a new trend, is based on Botox and beauty products, loans for plastic surgery, little girls buying barbies, and tell me why barbies can’t stand on their feet? I’ll tell you why, because it’s a subconscious message for a little girl since she is 1 that she can’t stand up alone, she always needs a man to help her up,
but look at me, look at us, women, we go to a fulltime job, we come back home to the other full time job, we raise kids, we do stand up while we carry babies inside us, and we stand up for 9 month. We are actually standing up, ON OUR OWN. Fairytales are over, no prince charming anymore, there are women in the world and women can manage homes, and can run this freaking world, get over it.

Yesterday was the 8th of March 2009. A lot of women went down to the streets to ask other women what they think of woman’s rights, a lot said: “in my surrounding there is no violence. I am not concerned”. If you saw some of these women, please a message from me, tell her, wake up, not for you, not for me but for my nieces, for your daughters, for your sisters, and even your own mothers.

After Sunday the 8th of March 2009, for every woman I mentioned above, we went down to the streets to rebel, with signs and voices that cannot be shut down anymore. God know I’ve been waiting for this day, and the one after it, and after it. That day HAS come.

Maya