Written by Hareem Hassan Khan.
‘‘When the West suddenly starts caring about some women, those women are about to get bombed.’’ This modern critique by social media of Western imperialism perfectly encapsulates the West’s justifications for waging wars across the world over the years. Only those frequenting secret islands to engage in cannibalism, rape, and ritual sacrifice can justify liberating women through bombing them and installing puppet dictators to govern them until death. As per the Western imperialists, a covered woman is an oppressed woman, and a brown man is clearly the oppressor. While it should be recognised that a woman being forced to cover or remove clothing is definitely being oppressed, the idea that a brown woman may choose to cover, or marry, or leave formal employment out of her own free will should also not be beyond comprehension. Concerns are often expressed in the Western world over women’s rights in the country about to be attacked, as the white man continues to present himself as a saviour of brown women, and the white woman upholds herself as the prime example of liberation and democracy.
However, women in the West continue to suffer from systematic and economic oppression, which can be exemplified through the increasing reports of gender-based violence, the gender wage gap, and reproductive rights restrictions. Hence, the West needs to lead by example by liberating its own women first, before bombing those who did not ever call out to the fictional white ‘saviours’ to save them from the ‘barbaric’ brown men. Thus, if the set path to freedom and democracy in the current century is through murdering and kidnapping leaders of sovereign states, then Western governments should be wise enough to also consider themselves in extreme danger.
Imperial feminism also extends to the dehumanisation of entire populations, mainly through the idea of women not being provided rights by the men of the specific region. However, the perception that women need to be granted rights by men, whether white or brown, highlights the sexist and misogynistic undertones of Western societies themselves. Feminist imperialism is one of the multitude of factors for why Palestine has suffered devastation since 1948, as the justification for such a brutal genocide is embedded in labelling the Palestinians as ‘human animals’. Such dehumanisation of the West Asian population in Western and Israeli discourse is only just being realised by the Western population, primarily through the efforts of the Palestinian journalists who risked their lives to broadcast Israeli inhumanity to the world. While the Global South has been justifying their right to exist, their humanity, and their civility for decades, it took a broadcasted genocide which has been ongoing since 1948 for just some Western individuals to start shifting their mindsets. Meanwhile, institutions continue to promote and use such degrading perceptions as justifications to wage war across the Global South. The brainwashing and propaganda runs bone-deep in the West.
It is also worth noting that such dehumanisation is further justified as a means of genocide and imperialism by reinforcing them through the US puppet regimes across the Global South. For example, the current Pakistani Prime Minister became a proud member of the USA’s Board of Peace after publicly declaring Trump as ‘the saviour of South Asia’. This puppet regime has completely disregarded the anti-American and anti-imperialist sentiments of the Pakistani public; hence, the brown damsel in distress in need of saving by the white man remains a tale as old as modernity, and as false as the belief that terrorists cannot wear tailored suits and speak English.
The USA’s and Israel’s war with Iran is the newest feather in the cap of Western imperialists. In an effort to liberate Iranian women from a dictatorship, America and Israel, seated on bloody thrones propped up by their self-built moral highgrounds, inaugurated the war with the murder of 150+ primary school girls in Iran. This was nothing new for the families of the millions of West Asians and South Asians murdered by the US and Israel in their wars across the world. The murders of the schoolgirls were shocking but not surprising. Just as were the murders of Hind Rajab and many others. It seems as if there is no woman more free and liberated than a dead woman.
The acceptance of West Asian and South Asian cultures and people by Western imperialists appears limited to fashion and food. The people are viewed with a mixture of scorn and pity, their culture considered as a valid excuse to engage in warfare, their existence a project to modify, and their puppet regimes the only civilised section of their societies. Using brown women as a means to justify the white man’s greed and colonial intentions is an unsustainable tool of brainwashing the Western populations. Villainising brown men and pitying brown women is simply a sheer veil between the Western imperialists and a mirror.
However, the fact that this article exists for everyone to read is a sign that perhaps perceptions are shifting, and the mirror is being unveiled. Women suffer everywhere, but exaggerating the suffering of women in certain deliberately dehumanised parts of the world, whilst disregarding the suffering of women in other parts of the world, simply as a means to garner support for genocide and colonialism, is perhaps one of the most dehumanising aspects of the entire discourse. Such propaganda never benefitted anyone, especially women.
I like ur points, I just think there is a lot of scope for development. Some of them are quite sudden. I personally would be happy if u make this a longer article as well.
I think the merits of your article at present, are some very impactful and powerful lines which are succinctly expressed, but your arguments dont flow or build very well? Maybe work on that?
