Thirteen years after they joined the revolutionary wave sweeping throughout the Center East and north Africa, Syrians can say they’ve consigned the identify of Bashar al-Assad to the historical past books alongside Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. However because the previous 13 years have proven in all these nations, liberation requires greater than eradicating one man from the presidential palace. We girls, particularly, know that.
As we speak I’m pondering of Razan Zaitouneh, a Syrian revolutionary who together with three of her comrades, collectively generally known as the Douma 4, disappeared in rebel-held territory on 9 December 2013 – 11 years much less a day earlier than Assad was toppled. Zaitouneh’s revolution focused everybody: the Assad regime, insurgent teams and Islamist militants alike.
“We didn’t do a revolution and lose 1000’s of souls in order that such monsters can come and repeat the identical unjust historical past,” she wrote to her buddy and fellow human rights activist Nadim Houry, in an electronic mail dated Might 2013. “These folks have to be held to account identical to the regime.” What good wouldn’t it do to exchange one oppressor with a distinct one?
In my work as a journalist I’ve interviewed girls from Tunisia, Syria, Libya and Egypt about their experiences with well-liked uprisings. For girls, there have all the time been two revolutions to undertake: one fought with males in opposition to the regimes that oppress everybody, and a second in opposition to the regimes on the road nook and within the bed room that, along with the ruling regime, oppress anybody who isn’t a cisgender, heterosexual man. It’s a reckoning with our tradition and faith, with authoritarian rulers and Islamists – two sides of the coin of authoritarianism. Such a reckoning is actually a feminist one. And it’s what’s going to ultimately free us.
It ought to drive us all past rage that revolutionary imaginations nearly all the time cease exterior the house. “All these compañeros [male comrades], nevertheless radical they might be in cafes, unions and even affinity teams, appear to drop their costumes as lovers of feminine liberation on the doorways of their houses. Inside, they behave with their compañeras identical to frequent husbands,” the Spanish anarchist and resistance fighter Lola Iturbe wrote in 1935.
I need us to take away Assad not solely from the presidential palace, however to overthrow him from the road nook and the bed room. I need each revolution to topple not simply the statues of the tyrant, however what I name the trifecta of patriarchy – the tyrant who lives within the state, the road and the house. And the toughest revolution of all of them is the one at dwelling, as a result of all dictators go dwelling.
As jubilant as we needs to be to see dictators toppled, and as thrilled as we’re to see these nations stumble in the direction of liberation and justice, nevertheless clumsily, I’m painfully conscious that though girls might have been on the barricades beside males, post-revolution, they’re at risk of shedding the rights they do have.
It was all effectively and good to march collectively, to threat our lives confronting the regime, however what occurs after the protest is over? What good is the revolution in opposition to the state, when the house stays probably the most harmful place for ladies and women around the globe, together with in Syria?
The ladies in Syria celebrating the destruction of jails and dungeons that for many years held 1000’s upon 1000’s of political opponents should be questioning when the prisons of patriarchy will even be destroyed. Ladies indoctrinated together with generations of different Syrians on the infallibility of the 53-year-old Assad dynasty, solely to see its collapse, should be questioning why “it’s our tradition” or “it’s our faith” or no matter different excuse is given to decide what they have to put on, restrict their potential to maneuver freely, or coerce them into early marriage, can’t even be dismantled.
Queer Syrians watching what they’ve lengthy been advised was unimaginable changing into potential should be questioning why their liberation from homophobia or transphobia should stay unimaginable.
Am I being too far-fetched? Have I let freedom go to my head? No, that’s precisely the place freedom ought to go, as a result of the battle over girls’s our bodies might be gained solely by a revolution of the thoughts. Too typically, girls are scolded for daring to convey up id politics, and are urged to place apart girls’s points for the bigger purpose of solidarity or constancy to the revolution. This can be a mistake. It’s precisely now, as the chance to remake and reconstruct is earlier than us, that we should tenaciously insist on liberation for all. It’s when the whole lot is up within the air that we determine what to catch.
For the revolution to liberate us all, it should be rather more than regime change. I need a revolution that’s way more bold than that. Goal greater! Demand the revolution that modifications folks.
Revolutions have lengthy been about males – what they need and the way they get it – as a result of patriarchy determines the phrases we use and the methods we see. The legal guidelines and lexicon of human rights don’t recognise that intimate companion violence is a type of torture, as a result of it’s only what the state can do to males that’s taken critically – and what males do to girls is simply “home violence”.
Equally, revolutions are hardly ever counted as a hit except males can say they modified the regime – that’s, snatched a few of the energy of the state for themselves. We’re advised the “actual” revolution, the one which media and historical past books file, occurs on the market in opposition to the state by males and for males, and except we alter the regime, nothing has modified.
Once I was writing Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Center East Wants a Sexual Revolution, I’d hear from some males that it “wasn’t the time for feminism”. “Males aren’t free both, you realize,” they might inform me, with out irony or a whit of understanding of patriarchy’s harms to them.
And my reply would all the time be: “Certainly, the state oppresses us all, women and men. Nonetheless, collectively, the state, the road and the house oppress girls.” It’s the revolution in opposition to that trifecta of patriarchy that may liberate us all.
The actual revolution, the actual battle, is between patriarchy and girls and women. Till the craze shifts from the oppressors within the presidential palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our houses – except we topple that tyrant in our minds, our bedrooms, and on our road corners – our revolution has not even begun.
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Mona Eltahawy is the writer of the Feminist Big publication. She wrote a number of articles from Syria for the Guardian in 1999-2000, together with a report on the funeral of Hafez al-Assad
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