Saturday, February 8, 2014

Arab women: beating is what we deserve

Source: here

A couple of days ago, I was looking for a specific ad online and I stumbled on this page. A link for "Majalatouki" a online magazine that cater to Arab women (actually its motto is "the website for Arab women par excellence"). Then the following opinion poll stopped me dead in my tract (I visited the site today to see the change in numbers and here they are):
"The marital physical abuse inside the Moroccan family is due to:
Men's mentality 48%
Financial problems 29%
Women's character 13%
Other reasons 11%"
I shall not go into how financial problems make men physically abusive as even the presence of this option is a little far fetched as a cause-effect to physical violence, and the "other reasons" is also something I am not too savvy in understanding. The option "men's mentality" is the obvious one and garnered 48% of the votes, but it is the fourth option that is most scary: Women's character.
It seems 13% of the respondents thought that women brought it on to themselves (being physically abused) because of their own character. The figure itself is alarming but what is even more scary, is that is is a women's forum, meaning - in most likelihood - the respondent were either all of them women or with a very high predominance of that gender (I am trying to be scientifically accurate and giving the benefit of a doubt that there could be some males who answered the survey).
So in practice, and in all statistic likelihood, 13% of women think that they deserve the beating because of their "character" (were they: Too stubborn? Too inquisitive? Too curious? Too liberated? Too open-minded? Too social?).
The women who answered were women who were educated enough to know how to access such a website, affluent enough to have the ability to access the internet (I am again, giving the benefit of a doubt that they did so through internet cafes or whatever and not just through personal home connection), literate enough to understand the options and analyse them - and STILL thought "it was all their fault".
It think this is sad, very much so.

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