Feminist group FEMEN is calling for a “topless revolution” in Tunisia after a Muslim preacher said he wanted a teen girl stoned to death because she posted a topless photo of herself on Facebook.
Amina Tyler, 19, posted a photo of herself without a top on and with the words “My body belongs to me” written in Arabic across her chest. The woman is a native of Tunisia.
Tyler is known to be a FEMEN activist. Reports indicate she might not have been in Tunisia when she posted the photos onto her Facebook.
Her parents have since taken her to a psychiatric hospital in Tunis.
Media in Tunisia claim that if Amina did post the photo in her home country, she might be punished for two years in prison and given a fine between £40 and £400.
In this country, a picture of a topless woman, while certainly scandalous and sinful to a significant minority, is not particularly unusual. After all, America can lay claim to being the center of the pornography universe, no?
In certain parts of the world, though, that same picture would be cause for all manner of consternation…or worse. And so it is in this case. But why is this the case? Should “cultural sensitivity” extend to giving a pass to social systems that define the distaff half of the human population as property? Or should a sense of shared humanity compel us to resist those who would perpetuate systems designed to define women as second-class citizens with no identity or rights apart from the men in their lives? Men who have the legal right to control every aspect of their lives?
It would be easy to see Amina Tyler as a modern-day Dorothy Parker, a woman who wanted, and chose, the freedom to chart her own course. The obvious difference, of course, is that Parker had no cause to live in fear of her own family or countrymen. She never had to worry about being disavowed and/or physically harmed for damaging her family’s “honor”. Then again, Parker never posted a topless picture of herself (NSFW) with the words “Fuck Your Morals” painted on her chest.
Following threats to stone Amina to death for posting topless pictures of herself online, Femen representatives said they had lost contact with 19-year-old and feared for her life.
Femen leader Inna Shevchenko last week told The Atlantic she had received reports that Amina had been “delivered by her parents to a psychiatric hospital in Tunis.”
Shevchenko also said she had been alerted to a video in which Amina’s aunt claimed her niece had “decided to kill herself and so posted nude pictures of herself online.”
On Tuesday Hmida told AFP: “I spoke to her yesterday, Amina told me she was doing well and would be going back to school soon.”
In an interview with Tunisia Live she said her client was not missing “and has never been in a psychiatric facility.”
It’s beginning to look as if the defining conflict of the 21st century will be over women’s rights. Time was when it was relatively easy for corrupt patriarchies to keep women under their thumbs (some in this country would have us return to that state of affairs). In the age of the Internet, though, it’s far more difficult to keep women down. All one needs to do is look at phenomema like Femen, Pussy Riot, and numerous other radicalized women’s right organizations and individuals to understand that women in developing countries are beginning to assert themselves and demand equal rights under the law. Yes, their numbers are small, but they’re growing- along with their voices and their ability to project themselves and their struggle worldwide.
That a Muslim preacher is called for the execution of a 19-year-old woman should tell you everything you need to know about how tightly some patriarchies cling to their power. If the attention-grabbing actions of a teenager can pose such a threat to male dominance that she’s been threatened with death, one might think the corrupt patriarchies feel threatened.
The Wahabi Salafi preacher Almi Adel, head of the almost comically titled Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, warned Tunisian newspaper Kapitalis, “Her act could bring about an epidemic. It could be contagious and give ideas to other women. It is therefore necessary to isolate [the incident]. I wish her to be healed.”
It’s tempting to mock the preacher’s words for the crude expression of fear that they are. If women begin to think for themselves and question their environments, they might then demand their own liberation from the kinds of patriarchal societies that empower men like Adel to wield control over them. Perhaps even more terrifying is the possibility that they might succeed.
Unfortunately, the consequence of men like Adel having power is that they do wield it. And his proposed solution to ‘isolating the incident’ is to execute Amina in accordance with his misreading of sharia law. “The young lady should be punished according to sharia, with 80 to 100 lashes, but [because of] the severity of the act she has committed, she deserves be stoned to death.”
The Religion of Peace ©, indeed….
It should be interesting to see what the months and years to come will bring to bear for women seeking equal rights. Some men fear the power of women…as well they should. Their time of unquestioned domain over the lives and bodies of the women in their lives may well become a relic of history before long.
I for one would welcome our new female overlords. We men have bollixed things up for thousands of years; it’s time to let the women have a shot at it, don’tchathink??
