After snatching the remote control from my niece yesterday, I managed to catch the news headlines on Channel News Asia and there was a report on a rising trend in women in Afghanistan burning themselves to escape from their husbands/marriage.
I mean, BURNING!!!!???
You can sense the level of desperation that they resort to such a painful method right?
I mean, what else to capture the world's attention?
Oh, burn myself. That way we'll be noticed for being abused by my husband and his family.
AND OUR CUSTOMS!
And burning myself is a much better fate than being trapped in a family like that.
One of the girl was so severely burned that her face was like those burnt corpses! It was quite frightening. For a moment it looked like one of those mummies you see in the Cairo Museum coming to life, talking to the camera with her head all bandaged up.
I might sound like I'm joking, but I am not. In fact, I am feeling very angry.
When I watched it I was so horrified because one of the girls said that she was married at 7 and has 2 children already.
Another was married at 12, and now is 20 and she has 4 kids.
My god.
Their religion/custom says so.
Do you believe it?
I mean, no offense to religious people who actually reads my blog, but which God would dictate that girls/women have to empowered by men, treated like slaves within the hierarchy of the family structure, especially to their husbands and oh, the ability to give life is our responsibility to men?
And men can be allowed to spread their precious semen/sperm or in a less vulgar term 'seed', to as many women as they can? And have a harem of wives?
Hmm.
And at the tender age of 12, or below?!
What was I doing when I was 12? Preparing for stupid PSLE!
Now, I'm 21 and what am I doing? That poor girl has 4 kids and is abused by her husband, not to mention is in excruciating pain because she burnt herself, and what am I doing?
Trying to mug for exams.
I appreciate my life, I really do. Don't say I don't because it is very unfair to those girls.
They say, it's our tradition and custom, or religious beliefs? I say SHUT UP.
You thwart your so-called values to suit your own needs and pleasure. And the women are not allowed to have education and in turn, not know their rights!!!
Some things can really make me pissed, and hate men much much more. I mean, isn't it justified?
You should know it was actually men that wrote their religious rights that was stated by their 'God' in a book right?
In case you suffered a brief bout of dyslexia when you were reading the previous sentence, I did mention 'men', not women. And did women have any allowance to contribute to the Godly scriptures? No.
And therefore women have suffered a fate so bad in the ensuing centuries after that.
You say, hey! We're not like that.
Sure. Wait til' you get reborned into the next life, if you believe in reincarnation and you're some guy in Afghanistan, grown up with your beliefs taught to you by your parents that women are the slaves to your needs, won't you be like them??
Don't say, hey! That's not my fault!
That is as much your fault as the amount of Carbon Dioxide you are contributing the Greenhouse Effect now. Which, if you don't get what I meant, is still your fault.
I mean, no wonder there are so many feminists today.
Or maybe, you can say that those are the men that thwart the values of their God and shall suffer karma in Hell? What about the women?
Reborn into a life and luxury in their next life? Eternal bliss in Heaven?
Oh, that is sooooo much better than when your body was badly burnt and the rest of our life facing ridicule/humiliation by your society and sometimes even get killed for it.
I'm sorry, but in what way is that better?
This is why I really hate men, who still expect women to have to do chores in the home today, even when both of them are the providers to the family income. Equal rights? Ya, wait til' you get your husbands to vacuum the floor too. Or at least iron their own bloody shirts they wear to the office and flirt in it with their secretary. Or, simpler yet, do the laundry and wash their OWN underwear!
Or feel that it is the woman's job to cook for the family. I cook instant noodles for you, k? And throw the pot over your head, see whether you like it!? Then you'll actually know how the poor girls in that hospital in Afghanistan feel.
