The real war against women

Home Opinion The real war against women

Combine Rush Limbaugh’s inflammatory comments about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke with the GOP’s reaction to recently proposed contraceptive mandates and you have the perfect media storm. Headlines across the country described the Republican “attack on women” as an attempt to undo the sixties, or worse, as a horrifying blow to women’s rights.

Yes, there is a war on women. It is one of the most abhorrent aspects of the 21st century. But this war touches women across the world in ways Sandra Fluke has never experienced. The supposed war against women in America pales against human rights violations inflicted upon females across the globe.

Women in many countries are subjected to female genital mutilation, arguably one of the most painful, degrading acts of violence against women imaginable. FGM is a broad classification of multiple acts, but essentially, it is the mutilation of a woman’s sexual organs that leads to pain through recurring infections, agonizing sexual intercourse, and extreme difficulty in childbirth. It is one of the most violent, anti-female acts imaginable.

The World Health Organization reported that 140 million women live with the consequences of FGM. In Africa, some 3 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM every year.

Where is the outrage over the horrific violation of millions of young women’s bodies? Have women activists across America protested en masse?

Feminist organizations and liberal women who claim that withholding contraceptives is an attack on women have thoroughly misguided perceptions on what an attack on womanhood really is.

Withholding contraceptives does not involve a rusty knife. Young women who undergo FGM can hardly even have sex — much less have sex with a condom — because their bodies are so thoroughly mutilated. Yet, there is no national media campaign on their behalf.

What makes the plight of 12-year-old girls facing scissors less noticeable than the cry for contraceptives?

The real war on women is even greater than just FGM. Why does the National Organization of Women obsess over abortion rights when women in Afghanistan are sometimes stoned after being raped? Has NOW condemned the radical Islamic misogyny that rapists use as justification for their crimes? What about the 5,000 women the U.N. estimates are killed annually by Middle Eastern men over “honor”? Where is the outrage over the 4 million women and children the U.N. estimates are trafficked for sex or labor annually?

American feminists focus on abortion and contraceptives because those issues affect women that are like them. The third world is far away. It doesn’t touch Georgetown University law students. They want their daughters and sisters to have what they want. They stand for their own, not women in general. If they did, they would speak out against misogyny across the globe.

Imagine what would happen if the outpouring of passion over protecting women’s rights refocused on the voiceless, nameless girls across the world held in bondage by truly misogynistic traditions. Perhaps real male-dominated societies, where women experience atrocities beyond anything the average American woman can fathom, would change under intense international pressure. Perhaps nothing would change, but at least the women would have a voice.

The war on women transcends party lines. Republicans and Democrats alike should stand galvanized against the mutilation, murder, and molestation of women from Cairo to Nairobi to Baghdad.