By Zainab Ibrahim
The majority of the public is preoccupied with women’s issues. Go to any social gathering in the Kingdom and you will know what I am talking about. In fact, these issues are debated all over the world. I do not understand why women’s issues are being exaggerated and in some cases blown out of proportion in many parts of the world. Plato, the great philosopher, equated women with slaves, evils and the mentally deranged, while Descartes described women as objects or substances.
Kant, one of the great philosophers of the West, described women as weak, especially in terms of intellectual ability. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said women exist to give birth to babies. Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychiatrist, said women are inferior to men and are not even close to men.
The above views are sexist and worrying. Women are described as if they were aliens from another planet. Are women not your mothers, sisters and friends? I am certain if a woman attempted to analyze men’s behavior and equated men with evil, she would be attacked by all the men of the world and her life would turn into hell. She would be described as an alien as well. Men cannot accept being criticized by women. The great Syrian novelist Ghada Al-Samman describes men’s behavior as backward.
In the Arab world, the criticism of women has increased and there are attempts to subjugate women to men and deprive women of their rights. However, Arab women continue to fight and to struggle against the attempts to enslave them.
These attacks on women remind me of the story of Picasso’s Guernica. The Spanish artist created the painting as a powerful statement in reaction to the devastation of the town of Guernica and the atrocities of fascism during the Spanish Civil War. A government official with regard to the painting once asked Picasso: “Did you do that?” The artist replied: “No, you did.”
