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Daughter Offered to Iraqi Shoe-Thrower

Cara

I’ll be honest and admit that I’m not entirely sure what to say about this, what with the fucked up-ness seeming so obvious. But for the sake of completion, since Feministe did cover the shoe-throwing incident on multiple levels, I felt obligated to put it up.

Last week, an Egyptian man offered his daughter to the Iraqi shoe-thrower Muntazer al-Zaidi.

An Egyptian man said Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad Sunday,

The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honour me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she told Reuters by telephone.

Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi’s brother, to tell him of the offer. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,” he added.

Aw, look!  See, he thinks is daughter is valuable! Isn’t that sweet?

Uh, yeah, sure it would be, if “value” wasn’t so closely equated with “ownership” — and property is exactly what the daughter is being treated as.  I am not going to get into sticky questions of the woman’s agency if she says that she’s fine with the idea — frankly, I’m shocked that anyone asked for her opinion at all — since we have no way of knowing how she feels other than to ask her, and we have no way of knowing how honest she would be in a public statement to the international press.

What we can say is that with her father doing the offering, with her permission and blessing or not, she’s sure as hell not being treated like she has any agency.  So let it suffice for me to loosely quote Haley, of Egyptian background herself, from the email she sent me with the link for this story: “Yay for women as property!” — not to mention prizes and rewards.

12 thoughts on Daughter Offered to Iraqi Shoe-Thrower

  1. I always did think that Lot’s story was the creepiest of the biblical stories…

    I can’t help think of that story in the freudian terms, like the fantasmigorical spanish movies similar to Pan’s Labyrinth.

    I don’t particularly worry about the kind of stories up above. Part of the stench of reality, and most women in that position don’t have an opportunity to get their wish fulfilled. Probably a good thing. Can you imagine Che being a gentleman in the sack?

  4. “I could only guess…”

    Well, given the expectations, I’m sure he was a disappointment. Which may explain Prager’s recent columns (the old salesman’s adage: promise less…)

  5. I’ve been reading In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta Ahmed who lived in Saudi Arabia for a while. One particular part stood out to me. A friend of her’s a doctor is invited for a fellowship in Toronto but her father says that she cannot go unless she is engaged. Since his permission is necessary for her to go to the fellowship she agrees. Her family then picks out a guy and she is thus engaged. The odd thing was that after they threw a party and she met the man she and a number of other women were in the author’s view acting like sixteen year olds, giggling about inane aspects of the evening.

    It struck me that part of what many men complain about women, infantile behavior, over emotionalism, and such may in fact be a product of the patriarchial society that they live in. There are so few opportunities to engage members of the opposite sex in Saudi Arabia that women who are twenty to thirty may not have the experience necessary to not act like a 16 year old. (She also notes that there is a childishness about the men which is also probably a product of the same thing)

    This girl may be excited, what girl wouldn’t be excited to be attached to a hero. The issue is that no matter her age she may be a girl and not a woman.

  6. “into sticky questions of the woman’s agency if she says that she’s fine with the idea — frankly, I’m shocked that anyone asked for her opinion at all — since we have no way of knowing how she feels other than to ask her, and we have no way of knowing how honest she would be in a public statement to the international press.”

    Please read Laila Lalami’s essay, “The Missionary Position”. (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060619/lalami)

    I am sorry you felt the need to ignore the fact that this woman was fine with the marriage and that made this a “sticky” question. Why are you “shocked” that anyone asked her for her opinion? (since they did.) And why don’t you have any way of knowing how she feels (since she states how she feels)?

    I wish feminists would stop simply assuming that women who do not do all the “correct, feminist, politically correct” things are not really saying what they mean. They possibly couldn’t. The condescension is nauseating. And no, it’s not a coincidence that this sort of patriotism is usually reserved only for those brown women who apparently are all 16 year olds, and don’t understand male-women relationship as well as we do here in America.

  7. I am sorry you felt the need to ignore the fact that this woman was fine with the marriage and that made this a “sticky” question. Why are you “shocked” that anyone asked her for her opinion? (since they did.) And why don’t you have any way of knowing how she feels (since she states how she feels)?

    I’m shocked because they usually don’t.

    And my point was simply that if she didn’t have a choice, she wasn’t exactly going to state any differently to an international newspaper, now would she? But she could perfectly well mean what she said. Which is why I said that I wasn’t going to get into it. Because we don’t know. She’d say that if she meant it; she’d say it if she was under duress. As would you, or me, or any of us.

    And no, it’s not a coincidence that this sort of patriotism is usually reserved only for those brown women who apparently are all 16 year olds, and don’t understand male-women relationship as well as we do here in America.

    I’m being accused of patriotism? Well, there’s a first time for everything. No, I don’t think that all women of color living in other countries don’t understand male-female relationships as well as “we” do in America. I think that women are living under duress all over the world. I think that a woman whose father openly offers her to another man as a piece of property is being treated as though she has no autonomy, as I said in the post. If she’s okay with the idea of marrying this man (assuming he were to say yes) then fine. I’m still concerned with her father’s patriarchal and misogynistic behavior, which is what this post was about.

  9. Sonia, while I still disagree with your characterization of my comments, that does make a lot more sense in the context of your argument.

  10. Hmm, so we have your honest male-hero type (really, he must have known he had a 50% chance of death after the first shoe, reminds me of that Chinese tank dude.)

    Did the girl say “that’s the kind of guy I want to marry?” and Dad communicated the ofer? Or do we have a dad treating his daughters like property? Beats me, not enough info here.

  11. I work for Reuters in Brazil and I had to translate this story last week. Even though I knew this kind of thing happened in Egypt, I was so disgusted.

    But what made me even more mad was the fact that my co-workers (most of them are male) LAUGHED at this. They thought it was funny that a father would consider the journalist a good husband just because he threw his shoes at Bush.

    And when I decided to say something about the situation of the girl and how bad it actually is, one of my co-workers said: “well, it’s an exotic place. They do that. My sister went there with her husband and a guy approached him and said: i’ll give you two camels for your wife'”. And after he told that, he laughed. As if the situation was oh so fucking funny.

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