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During the lockdown in Germany, we entertained no houseguests. As restrictions eased, we emerged from isolation, but for a time every discussion stood out as exceptional. A case in point: two weeks ago, a friend who collects unusual things had just purchased a dagger from Sotheby’s, showed us a photo, and praised the item’s bejewelled, curved and polished handle which shone, indeed, with exquisite grace. Normally, I would know nothing about daggers, but for my speech for the Commission on the Status of Women on 15 March 2022 I had read a book in which these rapiers play a significant role. The (auto)biography of Yemen’s first successful suit by a ten-year-old divorcée — I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced (1) — taught me to distinguish social classes by the materials in dagger-handles. On seeing our friend’s, I guessed it was the most noble substance, ivory, as Nujood had informed me. Wrong. “The best,” he told us, “is rhinoceros horn.” (No matter which, of course, both are forbidden under endangered species rules.) Since our friend’s purchase predated wildlife protection — it was an antique — and would be displayed out of the reach of children, we let the possible violation pass.
The subject remained the weapon, however, which, with varied handles, adorns the outfits of Yemeni (and Omani) gentlemen, even today, and even if mainly symbolic, the symbolism is unequivocal. The scabbard, another word for sheath, which in turn is a vagina, brings into view human rights and gendered implications of such tools. Google ‘etymology of the vagina’ and what do you find? “LATIN. Sheath, scabbard. Late 17th century.” Or, as even more precisely defined at http://www.etymonline.com, vagina (n.) marks the “sexual passage of the female from the vulva to the uterus,” 1680s, medical Latin. As the possessor of such a passage, I found this definition startling, because in my mind’s eye, the corridor leads from the cervix into the world and serves to conduct an infant outward, not an invader inward. But given the dimensions of a ten-year-old’s entryway, martial iconography suits the theme.
The question no one is asking about societies that habitually practice — and have normalized — child ‘marriage’ (i.e. rape) and FGM (i.e. torture) is how the perpetrators of these crimes can fail to feel ashamed but, instead, experience pride in conforming to patriarchal standards. Yes, these violations occur in high context cultures with certain mores to be praised, as Berhane Ras-Work from Ethiopia, founding president and leader of the Inter-African Committee for a quarter-century, announced in the introduction to an IAC film from the early 1990s, Beliefs and Misbeliefs. Denouncing female genital mutilation, — the term chosen because, from a medical perspective, mutilation is accurate–, Berhane wishes to ensure that differentiation among positive and represensible habits remains clear. Africans, she states, offer the world examples of beneficial behaviors such as infant massage and extensive skin contact between the small child and its mother who transports it on her back or hip. Responsibility for extended family members is also exhibited in remittances from the Diaspora to the home village. But extirpating pleasure points isn’t among the good. Nor is the custom that allows mature men to take child brides.
UnCUT/VOICES’ author, Kameel Ahmady, whose book In the Name of Tradition. Female Genital Mutilation in Iran (2016) pioneered the epidemiology of excision in his homeland, followed with a second volume, Echo of Silence. A Comprehensive Research Study on Early Child Marriage (ECM) in Iran.
Ahmady also contributed a chapter to Behnaz Hosseini’s anthology, Temporary and Child Marriages in Iran and Afghanistan, Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Issues. There we learn that 17% of weddings feature underage brides; that most child marriages take place in Mashhad; and that the nation is home to 14,000 teen widows. This vulnerable population, even before the pandemic, experienced emotional and psychological violence with measurable negative ramifications on health and development, the latter decelerated as girls left school. Lockdowns and impoverishment, diminution of services, and reduction in governmental and non-governmental interventions to increase marriage age and protect young females from use as pawns for patriarchal gratification – all resulted from the pandemic.
Although most articles are in Farsi and hence inaccessible to me, a glance at translated titles Ahmady provides suffices to reveal a human rights abuse. “Marriage in Childhood, Divorce in adolescence” (Shahrvand Newspaper); “Child Marriage, childhood dreams in the adult world” (IRNA); “Childhood Spouse in Iran has quadrupled with increased marriage loan” (VOA); “Fear of the Internet as a reason for young girls’ marriage in Iran!” (Keyhan London); and “Warning over high divorce rates and thousands of widows in Iran” (VOA). (I am indebted to Kameel Ahmady for this list and items in the subsequent paragraph.)
The first two headlines presuppose a readers’ disposition to condemn the custom. Finding the words ‘child’ ‘marriage’ and ‘adult’ lumped together sows discomfort; cognitive dissonance ensues, assuming of course that the reader is an outsider to the culture that approves of adult males taking pubescent and even pre-pubescent girls to bed. Regarding the last three headlines, these reveal motives: increasing the marriage loan incentivized the pre-existing financial transaction; fear of the internet exposes patriarchal strictures on females’ sexuality as does the warning over high divorce rates, divorcees viewed as femmes fatales or women with ‘experience’.
Happily, additional titles expose opposition (and remember, these are all translated from the Persian): early, child marriage is labeled “a form of child abuse” (Hrana); with “One million children as wives in Iran … the phenomenon [is named] child molestation” (Online news). Pulling no punches, the custom is the “Slaughter of a child in domestic slavery!” (IRNA); “35% of marriages in Khorasan Razavi are for children” (ISNA). First person narrative underscores maltreatment: “At age 13, I was forced to marry my cousin” (ISNA); “Little girls say goodbye to school” (Hamshahri Newspaper); “Child spouse, widow and prostitute” (Entekar Newspaper); “Poverty, a key factor in early child marriage” (Health News); “The phenomenon of child miscarriage” (Safe House); “In some provinces, we are faced with the purchase of childhood” (Law Newspaper); “Marrying a 6-month-old in her mother’s womb!” (Borna); “Child marriages are rape of children” (Health News); “Widowed children in second marriage also have no authority to select the second marriage” (Shahraara Online).
Because they reject principles that make child marriage possible, these headlines permit optimism. Yet the custom’s entrenchment emerges from the following revelations. “The legal age limit for marriage in Iran is currently 13 years for girls (and 15 for boys), but the law has many loopholes, such as the father of the bride’s consent or a court order.” Alas, exemptions are widely abused. One headline Ahmady quotes asks, “Why doesn’t the Spouse Child Prohibition Bill” pass into law?
He may as well be asking “why hasn’t FGM already become history?” as leading scholar Hilary Burrage might phrase it. The generic reason? Patriarchy reigns.
NOTES
- Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui. I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced. Trans. Linda Coverdale. NY: Broadway Books, 2010.
- igs-exhibition-report-fgm-final.pdf. Accessed 25 March 2022. https://oxfordfeministepress534941118.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/igs-exhibition-report-fgm-final.pdf