Anger
Imagine you’re a woman, married, with children, living with your in-laws in a small apartment.
Imagine that whenever you decide to go somewhere or to visit someone, for example your own mother, you have to ask permission first from your husband, then your mother-in-law then the rest and most of the time the answer would be no, because …there is always a reason or no reason it doesn’t matter at the end.
Imagine always having a big fear to voice your opinion even on simple things, fearing the worst…
Imagine that one day you had enough of all this and you decide to get help to leave or to change your situation…
And then imagine that there is nowhere you can go, that the whole thing is a big conspiracy against women and that the police will most of the time mock you for exposing your family life and problems to everyone…or the only Women’s Shelter for battered women will tell you that they are “sorry but the shelter is closed for lack of funding and empathy” or the help-hotline not answering your call for technical problems (the lines have been cut because of change of address for unlimited time).
Imagine all the looks, all the judgments and prejudice against you; in you own family, in your work place, at the market, from the neighbors…
Imagine a husband threatening you to take your kids away, and you are almost sure he will since it is possible to find a way to bribe the judge…since you don’t have more money to give a bigger bribe.
Imagine you are the director of a Women’s Center in Armenia and you meet women in these situations more and more and you feel completely helpless and most of all angry because you feel that what you are doing is not enough.
That is how I am feeling these days. I need to do something about it; we all need to do something about it…
Happy New Year!
Imagine that whenever you decide to go somewhere or to visit someone, for example your own mother, you have to ask permission first from your husband, then your mother-in-law then the rest and most of the time the answer would be no, because …there is always a reason or no reason it doesn’t matter at the end.
Imagine always having a big fear to voice your opinion even on simple things, fearing the worst…
Imagine that one day you had enough of all this and you decide to get help to leave or to change your situation…
And then imagine that there is nowhere you can go, that the whole thing is a big conspiracy against women and that the police will most of the time mock you for exposing your family life and problems to everyone…or the only Women’s Shelter for battered women will tell you that they are “sorry but the shelter is closed for lack of funding and empathy” or the help-hotline not answering your call for technical problems (the lines have been cut because of change of address for unlimited time).
Imagine all the looks, all the judgments and prejudice against you; in you own family, in your work place, at the market, from the neighbors…
Imagine a husband threatening you to take your kids away, and you are almost sure he will since it is possible to find a way to bribe the judge…since you don’t have more money to give a bigger bribe.
Imagine you are the director of a Women’s Center in Armenia and you meet women in these situations more and more and you feel completely helpless and most of all angry because you feel that what you are doing is not enough.
That is how I am feeling these days. I need to do something about it; we all need to do something about it…
Happy New Year!
posted by Lara A. at 4:46 PM
11 Comments:
another one of those I love being Armenian moments.
Sometimes it's more frustrating to be away from Armenia and hear these stories. I guess the good side is that you can personally try to help these people so that eventually we stop hearing these kind of stories.
I believe that these next few decades are a huge challenge for Armenians everywhere, and those in Armenia now are playing a vital role in creating a future for all Armenians. I reckon there will come a time when we all have to look back and think about the part we played, and I hope you will feel that your part was an important one.
Here is a related TED talks clip given by Chilean novelist Isabel Allende which is pretty inspiring:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/204
To all the wester feminists- please leave Armenia alone. This looks like one of those moevements that angry feminists are going to undertake and take it to an extreme, at the end destroying the Armenian family structure. The syptoms you speak of is socio economic please concentrate on that if you would like to hel these people. Do not segregate and demonize the Armenian man. This is something you will not find in your own country so you have no right to judge. If you like to help Armenia help the socio economic needs of the family not just the women, otherwise all you will get is next generation of feminized culture and bitter and angry females. All you feminist from the west give the diaspora a really bad name LEAVE ARMENIA ALONE- PLEASE!!!
Hey Gago, what is the address of your cave? You seriously believe an adult should need permission of another to go wherever they please? Man, what are you going to do when the courts stop taking bribes and "your" women have the full rights of other human beings in Armenia?? Where will you go then?
How nice for you that you don't want "western" feminists - of course you don't want your master/slave relationship disturbed.
Why don't YOU please leave Armenia alone? The dark ages are over, and your cave man mentality has no place among us any longer.
Raffi,
Take the anger down a notch, I really didn't mean to offend anyone.
My address is in Yerevan, but I travel a lot between Yerevan and Palo
Alto, CA (bay area) so I do see a big contrast of cultures and I have
chosen to embrace and protect mine. I am married to a Jewish American
women (baptized) who travels with me back and forth and I think she
might disagree with your characterization of master/slave relationship
of our 5 year old marriage.
All I was trying to explain is that if you were to change the socio
economic factors of those families you will see how the dynamics
change. You have to help the family as a whole and not break it up
because you disagree with a family structure (regardless of how
flawed) that has existed for 1000's of years. The world is not as
black and white as you choose to see it. The changes you propose will
happen, but this will take time, don't force your morals on these
people because you will wreck their families. Please think about the
children of these families, let them be the change.
I do not like the feminists brushing the rest of the world with the
same ethical brush. There is cultural relativity that should be
respected specially by people who do not understand the culture.
Anyways, I am all over the map with this. Sorry if I am not as
coherent as I like to be, but please read some Hrant Matevosyan and
rent Ashnan Arev this will really help you understand the Armenian
culture and maybe you can see my point of view.
Thanks for not blocking my comments.
I'll be happy to tone my anger down, if you tone your oppression down.
YOU need to see what this oppression is doing to women, like Lara sees every day. You need to read what she wrote and try to understand what is happening to human lives, before you worry about labels like feminism and you need to stop hiding behind a useless word like tradition which is being used to subjugate women. You may or may not practice it, but advocating it is to me, quite offensive.
If you're trying to say something else, if you think the solution to the oppression is socio-economic at this point, these are separate points you can make, without judging someone who is so involved in this subject you can never imagine.
I suggest you meet Lara for lunch one day, and learn a lot more about the day to day reality of these women's lives. Seriously. Take your wife with you.
I love and respect all the Armenians who did not grow up in Armenia but came back to help, I know your hearts are in the right place.
My mother was one of those women described by Lara, but she did not leave my father and that paved the way for me to create a healthy family without the flaws of her family. Today she has two beautiful grandchildren to show for it.
As far as lunch goes, I'll mention it to my wife but Armenia has bigger problems I rather focus on like the big business-gov't. corruption.
GOD BLESS ARMENIA-Ketse Azat Ankakh Hayastan!!!
1) Thank you :-)
2) I would like to hear why you think your grandmother needed to live like a second class citizen in order to have two beautiful grandchildren.
3) I would like to hear why social diseases like sexism can't be addressed at the same time as corruption.
4) I would like to hear how you are focusing on corruption.
Let us bless Armenia, and leave god out of this, he's done quite enough "for us" already.
1. You are welcome
2. Life is not fair
3. Gender equality is a myth and unnatural just like corruption in the free market :)
4. I am a partner of an anti fraud, internal audit and internal controls consulting firm based out of San Jose CA. We just registered our office in Yerevan and we are currently training Armenian professionals in the States. Our team in yerevan will begin Sarbanes Oxley/internal controls consulting in Armenia in the near future. All our operations in Armenia will be funded by our office in San Jose if everything works out as planned. The plan is to work pro bono with NGO's and non profits and penetrate armenian business culture. This is a very long term project.
The biggest problem in Armenia is the ties between big business and the governtment and the corrupt culture they have established.
Can we set up a hotline for this? Where can we find the whistleblowers in Armenian corporations and the Gov't? What do we do with these whistle blowers? These are the real tough questions that threaten the future of our country.
2) You did not answer the question.
3) You are living in a sexist fantasyland.
4) Believe me, human rights - of which womens rights is half of - threatens the future of our country just as much as corruption. If you think that having to ask permission - and face being denied it again and again is ok, I think locking you up for a few years is about the only way to impress upon you how wrong it is.
Conversation over.
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