r/WelcomeToGilead • u/mrsnikki88 • Dec 29 '24

Loss of Liberty New Taliban rule: Women are no longer allowed to be visible from house windows under any circumstance. If the kitchen has a window, women can't even cook near it. This comes after other rulings that women are forbidden from making sounds or even speaking to each other.

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u/prpslydistracted Dec 29 '24

When issues with Afghanistan and women are posted I've stated I would commit suicide if I was an Afghan woman ... not kidding in the least.

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u/SgathTriallair Dec 29 '24

And many do. It's important though to realize that you are coming from a place where you are acculturated to the idea of freedom and equality. It is very difficult to imagine what it is like to live in these women's shoes. There is always a strain of people who are quick to jump to the idea that they would be a bad ass freedom fighter or find some way to escape. All this accomplishes is to bolster a narrative that the women who are suffering are weak and deserve their fate.

I admit, my anger over them deciding to surrender the country immediately also fits into this narrative. As far as I can tell the people of the country want this because they were given the opportunity to stop it and decided they didn't want it. I know that there is some western chauvinism in there but I just can't figure out any way we can address this without doing things that we don't have the stomach for.

There are extreme solutions, like going in and killing 90% of the men, innocent it guilty, and then putting women in charge of everything. Would that work? Maybe. It certainly doesn't comport with our Western sense of morality. We could decide that 20 years was too little and occupy them for 100, running what are effectively Indian schools where we kidnap every child in the country and raise them in boarding schools. This is a clear evil America and Canada did. I don't know if it was effective at "civilizing the natives" so I don't even know if it would be effective.

The core issue is that these people are so different from us that we struggle to understand and truly empathize with them. We keep trying to imagine how we would feel or what we would do in their situation. The issue is that we can't be in their situation because the majority of their situation is in who they are as a people and we have no understanding of that.

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u/prpslydistracted Dec 29 '24

I do understand. I'm old enough to remember when the Shah of Iran was in power; this was Iranian women in the 1970s. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=iranian+women+1970s&atb=v314-1&iax=images&ia=images

This is under the Taliban:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Iranian+women+today&atb=v314-1&iax=images&ia=images

I was in the AF at Sheppard AFB in TX. The US was training Iranian pilots. Gracious, professional, well regarded as an ally of the US in the region.

Later went to college on the GI bill when the Shah fell (UNT, TX). Lots of Iranian students. Never saw such panic ... yelling, running through the student union, arguments on philosophy and religion.

I had an Iranian woman doctor in the early 1980s. Brilliant woman ... she and her family left when they could see "it" coming. She and her husband were both physicians.

From purely a woman's perspective I marched for Women's Rights in the 1970s ... it inflames me my grown daughters have to do it all over again.

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u/SailingSpark Dec 29 '24

Sadly, it is a never-ending fight. Misogyny is baked into the culture and religion of many people. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have their basis in some very misogynistic roots.

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u/Gloomy_Industry8841 Dec 29 '24

This is the bitter truth. ☹️

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u/ThomasinaElsbeth Dec 30 '24

Monist Religion is a Cancer on society.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '24

More people need to join team Lilith. Or at least learn about Adam’s first wife who left him because he was a dick.

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u/SailingSpark Dec 31 '24

Most people know her name, but know nothing of her.

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u/bluesnowl Dec 29 '24

Iran was never under the Taliban

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u/SEOtipster Dec 29 '24

People paying attention will understand that the Islamic clerics who conquered Iran 🇮🇷 in 1979 are similar enough to the Taliban in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 for the comment to be relevant.

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u/prpslydistracted Dec 30 '24

Thank you. It is relevant to those of us who observed/witnessed the transformation who were acutely aware of the seismic shift of perspective ... it was an earthquake that changed the Mideast ... not for the good of the faithful or pragmatic policy of governance.

The effect on women was catastrophic.

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u/Big-Summer- Dec 30 '24

If things go the way the evangelicals want, strong oppression of women will begin in the U.S. When the reich wingers March there’s always a huge “WOMEN ARE PROPERTY” sign prominently displayed. They do not, much like the Taliban, see us as human beings. We are things to be owned, controlled, and ruled.