How can you properly describe - including for the sake of a precise police investigation - when you are missing the proper terms for an authentic account? In such situations, unpriviledged social and religious/cultural groups - at the intersection of which women found often - are twice the victims, of the perpetrators and of their precarious background.
Women Talking by Miriam Toews, built as a dialogue between women victims of sexual abuse is based on rough facts. Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia girls and women will wake up with bruses on their body. Initially, they attributed the incidets to ghosts and demons, but the truth was that men from the colony used repeatedly anaesthesic against the women in order to rape them.
Among the women portrayed in the book belonging to the community of Molotschna, the incidents are called ´the mysterious night time disturbances´. The rapists are gently called ´the unwelcomed visitors´. The dialogue in general has a predominant religious content based on the everyday practice and belief of the Mennonites.
The dialogue that takes place is recorded in writing by August, a male member of the community with a family story of dissent against the strict Mennonite rules, but who returned to teach in the local schools. The women are illiterate but their awakening and acknowledging of their situation and the facts is taking place progressively and every stage of the revelation is marked by outbursts against their weakness. ´Should the women avenge the harm perpetrated against them? Or should they instead forgive the men and by doing so be allowed to enter the gates of heaven?´
On the other hand, the men narrative is acknowledging the attacks either as a ´punishment from God, that God was punishing the women for their sins´ or by denying it completely and labelling it as the result of ´wild female imagination´. Mennonite are a religious group that rejects any violence, however they don´t have any second thoughts when it comes to slapping a woman.
The fate of the women from Molotschna is in fact the fate of women forced to follow the life narrative imposed by men, although under a religious argument. The women are just the recipients of the religious interpretation as they are not allowed to think by themselves. By ´allowed´ it means also that they are not offered basic education and access to sources of knowledge other than those controlled by men.
Unfortunatelly, this is what happenes to women everywhere in strict religious communities - no matter the denomination. Willingly, they are forced to submit and follow and refuse to acknowledge abuses outside the community. When this happened, the victims are under double pressure: on one side, it is the trauma they deal with silently, on the other the community - including other women - accusing them of disturbing the group coherence. They are expected to keep silent and eventually, to leave the perpetrators continue their abusive behavior.
In Women Talking, the brave women having enough of being told their story, decide to leave.
Rating: 3.5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment