The March of women: here and there, then and now

“I still struggle with visuals of my rape. I recall the words he used to break my soul and, although a year has passed, not a day passes without me feeling violated. It has affected my life and relationships as there is no retribution or closure in sight. I am expected to heal and continue my struggle against the state that conquered the revolution as they conquered our bodies and souls. I still see myself crucified naked in Tahrir, and people still pass me by banging their drums and hailing the one who crucified me. Recently, I made a conscious decision to not allow them to defeat me. I will fight. As a woman, I was born to fight a patriarchal society and I have already come so far claiming my place in my homeland. My fight continues against the trauma and the ones who injected it in me. Their actions were destructive, but I will assume a building role from now on. I will create from the rubble and the ruins all life and freedom.”

It is because of people like her that I prefer to use the term “survivors” of violence rather than “victims” to describe those who have been subjected to such violations of their body and soul. Although she will not be pressing charges due to a lack of faith in the judicial system and fear of social assassination, she is adamant to be a woman of this revolution. She continues to believe that we shall overcome. She awaits collective justice and freedom, just like the many women and men who have been violated.

The rape of women has been widely used as a weapon of war whenever armed conflicts arise between different parties. Whether the conflict is internal or international, women and girls are frequently victims of gang rape committed by men from all sides of a conflict. Their bodies are often times the battlefield. These crimes are mainly used to trample the dignity of victims, but are also a symbolic rape of the community, and the ultimate humiliation of the male enemy.

In 1944, Soviet men of the Red Army occupied Germany following the fall of Berlin and were responsible for the mass rape of German women. It is estimated that around one million women were raped in Eastern regions alone. In Silesia, Red Army soldiers raped 182 Catholic nuns and, in Kattowitz, the soldiers impregnated 66 nuns.

“The Germans have been punished, but yet not enough! Some have been punished, but not yet all of them,” Soviet writer and anti-German propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg told his soldiers. After years of fighting in the war, the soldiers believed Ehrenburg in that they were free to take “their rightful spoils of war”: German women.

A Woman in Berlin (1959), an anonymous memoir by a German woman, describes the widespread rape of women by Soviet soldiers. Her account of her own rape, and the morally questionable tactics she used to survive, confronted the world with a universal moral ambiguity that pervades every war, whether “just” or “unjust.” The Red Army troops who drunkenly raped even elderly women and children screaming in terror, were likely to be the same men who in that same year had liberated the Auschwitz death camps.

It seems that women are morally excluded from the right to dignity during wars, and pay with their bodies and souls for the liberation of their countrymen. The anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin did not only speak against the Soviet rapists but also against her own countrymen of the Nazi era. “The Nazi world,” she writes, “ruled by men, glorifying the strong man — is beginning to crumble, and with it the myth of ‘Man.’ That has transformed us, emboldened us. Among the many defeats at the end of this war is the defeat of the male sex.” Although, sadly, her optimism was premature, her words and story apply to women globally in occupied zones or areas of conflict, and even countries like Egypt struggling with internal conflict and polarization.

Hegemonic masculinity identifies the practices that promote the dominant social position of men and the subordinate position of women. It proposes an explanation of how and why men maintain such dominance and continue to violate women. Dominant masculinity suggests a number of characteristics that men are encouraged to internalize into their own personal codes. Masculine scripts of behavior include violence and aggression, courage, emotional restraint, risk-taking and thrill-seeking.

Hegemonic masculinity is one way to explain why women struggle the most during conflict and unrest. In addition to being the target of violence by whomever dominates society, they can be subordinated by their own, especially when men feel subordinated by the ruling class or invaders. However, one’s identity is not just comprised of gender, but many other categories that intersect to affect one’s experience of oppression. Intersectionality, a neo-Marxist concept, argues that forms of “inequality, oppression, and privilege” are shaped by interconnected axes of identity, and are mutually reinforced by social interactions and by social, political, and economic structures, such as capitalism, patriarchy, and institutionalized hegemony. Race, class, gender and sexuality work together to mutually reinforce one another, forming interlocking systems of oppression that can be seen through what is known as the “matrix of domination and oppression.”

Patricia Collins, credited with introducing the theory of “interlocking oppression,” argues in her work, entitled Black Feminist Thought (1990), that the experience of being a black woman must be understood in terms of the interaction between being black and being a woman, and that such an interaction makes these two independent variables reinforce each other. Although her focus was on African American women, there are many other examples that can be used to illustrate this theory, like the example of German women following the fall of Berlin and what happens with women in a subordinated society like Egypt. If we apply this matrix to the latter example, an Upper Egyptian, non-Sunni Muslim, lower class, uneducated woman is most vulnerable to oppression and violence in Egypt.

Systems of inequality and oppression interact positioning certain groups as particularly vulnerable to violence. Gendered violence takes place within a socially constructed power dynamic in which hegemonic masculinity creates a culture of entitlement, silence, and protection, which effectively normalizes violence against women and silences victims of violence. In Egypt, domestic violence, sexual harassment and female genital mutilation are forms of violence toward women that are palpable in Egyptian society, permitting and reinforcing state-sponsored violence towards them.

Our collective Egyptian conscience carries the shame of the “virginity tests.” On March 9, 2011, the army raided Tahrir square, assaulting men with tasers and performing virginity tests on 17 female protesters. The fact that no one was held accountable for such a severe violation adds salt to a deep wound hindering any prospect of healing. According to human rights organizations and as documented through Wikithawra, more than 235 women have been detained by the police and subject to various forms of torture and degradation, including rape. Hundreds of women have been sexually assaulted or raped during protests since 2013.

Ayat Hamada, a student who was sexually assaulted, told the BBC that the assault was meant to break her spirit. She mentioned how it was culturally very difficult for her to come forward, and that she could not disclose all the details of the attack. Nada Ashraf also spoke of her rape inside a police car in front of Al-Azhar university. She described being brutally raped by a police officer in the presence of a conscript. Mada Masr published the testimony of a secular female activist who was raped by state security forces, but could not go public for fear of facing a smear campaign.

The experience of women in testosterone-fueled hostile zones, whether Armenia in 1915, Germany in 1945, Bosnia or Rwanda in the 90s, or Yazidi and Christian Iraqi areas today, each comes with its own story to tell, one which is not the same as that of either the “conquering” or the “conquered” males. Women continue to feel, and indeed to be, dehumanized: “To the rest of the world, we’re nothing but rubble women and trash,” the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin concludes — despite the fact that Germany was rebuilt by those “women of the rubble,” who, although violated and humiliated, managed to clean up after men’s destruction and build their new Germany.

The Trümmerfrau (“rubble women”) were ordered to remove the rubble leftover from the bombing of Germany in 1944-1945. Buildings deemed unsafe were torn down and these women would transfer bricks to be cleaned, reshaped and ready to be reused. The unusable rubble was used to fill in holes, and still exists today in Berlin, creating many artificial hills, a monument to those who cleaned the blood and brought a nation back to life.

Although what the rubble women did for Germany is often forgotten, monuments and marks of respect exist in many German cities, including Berlin. Germany as we know it now would not exist without the Trummerfrauen, who cleaned after the nation using worn-out tools of their own compromised and raped bodies and souls. Germany was rubble and the women rebuilt it from ruins.

“A woman is the full circle,” Diane Mariechild says, “Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.” We celebrate Egyptian Mother’s Day the day we celebrate the birth of spring, on March 21. Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, a mother and a freedom fighter, was shot dead as she carried flowers and marched towards Tahrir to commemorate the fallen heroes of January 25. A women’s protest took place less than a week later and stood in defiance at the spot where the flower fell in her own blood, sending a message: The revolution continues in each one of us and we will continue to struggle with our very own worn-out tools, our violated dignity and our bodies.

In 1977, the Argentinian military waged what is known as the “Dirty War” against left-wing militants and political opponents of the regime. Many of the abducted, tortured and killed were young people trying to express their dissatisfactions with the regime. The government disposed of any records that would help families find the kidnapped, who were referred to as the “disappeared.” The Mothers of The Plaza de Mayo organized to try to learn what had happened to their disappeared. They began to march in 1977 in front of the presidential palace, in public defiance of the government’s state terrorism.  

The mothers’ nonviolent expression of truth to power eventually drew international attention. Human rights groups arrived to help them open up an office and publish their own newspaper and have a presence, despite their continued harassment by the police (the early founders, in fact, “disappeared” themselves). It became more difficult for the government to ignore the moral presence of mothers standing witness to the illegal and brutal acts of the regime. As mothers, they presented a powerful moral symbol which, over time, transformed them from women seeking protection for their children to women fighting to transform the state so that it reflected maternal values. Their statements became revolutionary and they were a strong opponent to the military till its fall.

Standing where Shaimaa died, I could not help but imagine the possibility of a movement of the mothers of the Egyptian revolution. A movement built on the strength of those standing outside court houses vowing to fight for their children’s rights to freedom and dignity, the pride of those who lost a child to the revolution, and the devotion of those searching for the disappeared. Such devotion and sacred social status could be what our revolution needs to be reborn. After all, Argentine mothers managed to defeat a very similar and equally brutal militarized regime.

I have a tattoo on my back which reads, “Thoory ya Baheya” (“Revolt, Baheya”). “Baheya” is the feminine and nurturing Egypt. Baheya is every woman and mother of a spring and path to freedom. March is the month of every Egyptian Baheya, who continues to march towards liberation. Born to fight this dominant masculine world for her rights, she endures dehumanization and shall one day overcome. In all grace, dignity and bravery she continues to speak the truth in the face of the tyrant, as she builds greatness from the ruins and rubble.

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