Ministry for the Oppression of Women

The Taliban's latest strike against the women of Afghanistan and US anti-abortion legislation remind me why The Handmaid's Tale chilled me to my core.

Media coverage of the war in Ukraine has been extensive. We sit in our lounges and watch in disbelief as a country is invaded and lives destroyed. A madman is at the helm and no amount of visits from other madmen have made a difference. I watched Boris in his blue suit, surrounded by a security detail, pop in on Putin and then pop out again. The war continued.

The terrifying accounts of our Ukrainian friends took centre stage until it dawned on me that I had started to forget about our Afghan sisters. The media no longer seems interested in how awful it still is in Afghanistan. My usual morning scroll on Aljazeera over the weekend finally delivered (I would be the first to receive it according to my algorithm profiling), and TVNZ dedicated a few minutes on the 6 pm news. The so-called Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has issued a directive for all women to wear face coverings in public. They also have to be accompanied by a male chaperone if traveling further than 45km or accessing health services. This follows recent backtracking on allowing girls to attend school. Our sisters have been robbed of their dignity and had basic human rights denied them. They have lost their jobs, homes, and access to education and health. Now they must cover themselves as though they never existed.

The far-right presidential candidate for France was apparently going to ban wearing burkhas if she had been successful in her bid for the country’s leading role. This was met with outrage by the left-wing because “People should have the freedom to choose how they express their faith.” The very opposite of this is happening in Afghanistan and I’m more than outraged, I am apoplectic and mortified. I am intensely saddened by the prospects of the human race - we are returning to the dark ages on a planet that has very few breaths left.

Pan out to middle America and the anti-abortionists are celebrating reconstituted control over women’s bodies. And there are some women who are shamefully complicit in this misogyny. Women who harm other women by supporting toxic patriarchal objectives are deserters and deserve to be tried as such by the Wiccan Council. I listened to a hysterical female Trump supporter during Trump’s last campaign and was overwhelmed by how much she was letting ‘Team Woman’ down. I may sympathize with a case of ‘Stockholm syndrome’ but failing that I would vote to ban all access to the inner circle of feminine power, had I sentencing rights at the trial of these women.

We were all morbidly fascinated by June’s plight in Gilead, the resonance was deafening. We spoke in low voices while discussing the obvious parallels that have been playing out all over the world, forever. Right now in fact, in Afghanistan. What are we doing about it? Withdrawing military forces that helped mitigate some of the violent misogyny? Why? Apparently, we have to let a country get on with it. We become that neighbour who turns a blind eye to the violence happening next door. How do we carry on as though nothing is happening?

Glennon Doyle and her sister Amanda discussed burnout on their podcast We Can Do Hard Things (WCDHT) last week. They talked about the multiple calls to action that exist around the globe currently and how our limited capacity to respond is contributing to modern overwhelm. Amanda made an interesting observation about how humans were only designed to cope with the demands of the small community units they were born into. Those that hunted and gathered nomadically for centuries before the population boomed, industrialization took over, and technology exploded.

We hear about all the terrible things and we have no idea what we can do to help. Some things upset us more than others. I am devastated that women who happen to live somewhere different than where I do are facing a lifetime of oppression. They will be raped and silenced and covered up, and I can’t help them.

We have become flippant with our use of the word privilege but for me, it means not being born female under a Taliban regime, and we should be using our privileged voices loudly to advocate for those who have been.