I Am Woman Hear Me Tweet, Post, Like…You Get the Drift

On Monday Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, announced that women should not be allowed to laugh in public or discuss unnecessary things on their cell phones like recipes. I don’t even know where to start on this one because it’s so absurd and frightening all at the same time.

In response, Turkish women have taken to social media posting pictures of themselves laughing and smiling in public. It brings to mind one of my favorite Facebook pages that I’ve been following since  earlier this summer called My Stealthy Freedom. My Stealthy Freedom is a Facebook page dedicated to Iranian women posting photos of themselves without their mandatory hijab. I find this page fascinating and I try and like each and every post because what they’re doing is so incredibly brave. Women in Iran face jail time and fines if they’re caught in public with their head uncovered. These women simply want the hijab to be a choice like it was before the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

If you haven’t seen this page go and check it out. There’s of course the usual crazy postings about how the women will be killed or by uncovering their heads it will lead to rape, but for the most part the tremendous amount of support they receive is overwhelming. What’s happening in Turkey now is another example of how women all over the world are using social media to fight for their rights.

I know how incredibly blessed I am that I live in the United States and as a woman I am free to speak my mind, get an education, dress the way I want and the list goes on. Things aren’t perfect here either when it comes to women’s rights but at least we can fight for those rights without fear of persecution or death.

As women we should work to uplift and support each other instead of tearing each other down. Dr. Rick Halperin who I have the pleasure and honor of studying with always tells us that the biggest problem in human rights today is men. The first time I heard him say this I was a bit shocked but I understood what he meant. He doesn’t hate men, I don’t hate men – he simply means that the majority of the wars, rape, laws etc in the world are controlled by men. So ladies that means it’s up to us to change that and these brave women in Turkey and Iran are a great start.

Perched on a slippery slope.

I was supposed to be writing this blog in Israel as credit for my masters. I was going to travel with the SMU Embrey Human Rights Program and spend two weeks meeting with Israeli and Palestinian NGOs as well as seeing the historical sites.  As I’ve watched the events unfold these past few weeks I have found myself growing increasingly concerned for my Jewish friends.  Europe has seen a drastic rise in antisemitism in the past few weeks – Newsweek’s Aug. 8 cover story is called Exodus. It does no good to attack innocent people whether they are Jewish or a Palestinian Christian or Palestinian Muslim, many of these people disagree with what is happening in Gaza but they should not be paying the price. Anyone who knows me really well knows how much I love the Jewish people, as my friend Monica, who is Jewish tells me, I am an honorary Jew and I thank her for the title. I fell in love with Jewish people when I saw Yentl in 1983 and then when I stumbled into the den one afternoon when I was 8 years old and my Dad was watching a movie called: The Hiding Place. That afternoon was the first time I learned about the Holocaust as I watched the story of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian whose family hid Jews and Dutch resistance fighters. Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany – the only female only camp. Betsie would die at Ravensbruck and Corrie went on to become a famous Christian writer. From that afternoon on I spent most of my adult life studying the Holocaust (I’m still doing it to this day and will be starting a new class in the fall). Fighting violence with violence isn’t the answer. We are more alike than we are different and we are bound by our common humanity and this must stop. The world is perched right now on a very slippery slope.