In 1977-79, a newcomer to the USA, I went through a horrific divorce. My then-husband’s assertion in the papers he filed with the court was that I had “joined the liberated women” and therefore was unsuitable to mother our two girls, the youngest of whom was a newborn. He, who traveled internationally two weeks a month—and was rarely home the rest of the time—sought full custody.
I found myself fighting in court the entire range of feminist ideas which I had expressed—and to which my-not-soon-enough-to-be ex brought in a string of witnesses to testify. It included my male therapist because the judge evoked without precedent the patient-therapist confidentiality, decreeing that “the mother’s mental state is in question.” None of the witnesses had found fault in either my mothering or mental stability, only testified that I had said that men had it better in this world; that women were no less smart and capable than men; that women should have equal rights to men under both the law and social norms.
That’s it. A mother who decried to friends and the marriage counselor that women were underappreciated in our society must be unstable. The judge ordered a temporary support of $25 a month at a time when even welfare would have given me $300 for the three of us. He also warned my lawyer that if I took a job, I would not be able to claim to be the main caretakers to these babies. Any mother’s work-for-pay would level the playing field against a mostly absent father.
The father of my babies now had an excellent incentive not to settle. He could never get a better deal in a divorce than paying only $25 a month while he was traipsing the world. He hired a live-in housekeeper, forced me out of the house by violence, and for almost two years rejected a court date for a divorce hearing which he had initiated.
I did not yet have the lexicon of feminism, but I knew gross injustice and prejudice against me, formerly a career woman and now a full-time mother, studying for my Master’s degree at mostly night classes.
I called a local chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW), only to hear their phone recordings informing callers that they did not get involved in divorce cases. I showed up at anther chapter’s meeting, hoping to be directed to the right resources since divorce touched almost 50% of women—and my case must be of interest to feminists for its outcome would create a precedent in the State of New York. But NOW was engaged in the rights of gay women, a topic then-affecting 10% of women.
I was alone and at a loss where to find a feminist witness who would explain in court how normal were the sentiments I expressed. The influence of my worldview was not yet known since my daughters were still so young. That also meant that if I would give birth in the future to a third female baby, she should be taken away from me.
It took a barracuda lawyer and some dishonest maneuvering—as well as all of my parents’ savings—to grant me the divorce. The judge, enamored with the new concept of “joint custody,” imposed on me a partnership with a man who, failing to keep the court-ordered schedule of alternate days for the rest of my children’s growing years, terrified them when he showed up after an absence accompanied by a policeman.
Over the decades, as I matured to become an advocate for women’s issues and rights, my sensitivity to the plight of oppressed and disenfranchised women increased. Among the projects I tackled at the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing was helping Egyptian women develop a campaign against the legalization of clitoridectomy. Egypt, the most advanced country in the eyes of other African nations, was setting the tone for the others. The then-Egyptian Minister of Health, a gynecologist, held that the clitoris was a cause of driving teenage girls crazy, especially if they wore synthetic panties. Better nip it before it caused problems for all society.
I sought the support of feminist leaders who peppered the landscape of the conference. None was willing to get involved in “a religious matter.”
That reluctance to speak up against the oppression of women in Muslim societies—and fight for the liberation of women from laws that allowed husbands to beat and kill them, that barred women from schooling and work-for-pay, that stoned disobedient wives without a trial, that prohibited a woman from stepping out of her house unless accompanied by someone with a penis (even if that penis belonged to an eight-year old), became more obvious as world events rolled in, emblazoned with a backward time-travel. The Western feminist movement’s respect of Islam even in its extreme forms has trumped the ways in which that culture was inherently very bad for women’s bodies, mental health, and life.
What was the feminist movement engaged in during those passing decades? In 1982 we lost the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, never to be ratified nationwide since. Strides were made in removing open workplace discrimination, and shrinking the gap—not eliminating—the women’s work pay when compared with men’s. The portrayal of women in the media has improved greatly, albeit the objectification of their bodies in underground pornography exploded. Interestingly, the formerly reviled semi-clad models of the pinup calendars now took front news as female celebrities strut in insubstantial attires and make their public almost-nudity Politically Correct. Feminists claim that women could wear whatever they wish, even as it entices tweens to emulate provocative getups and moves. The onus is on men to not get sexually aroused.
One issue that I supported wholeheartedly was the freedom of reproductive rights. After the spectacular achievement of Roe vs. Wade, a couple of generations of women enjoyed the freedom to decide if, when, and how often their bodies reproduced. Sadly, attrition in the battle to reverse this right has shut down women’s health clinics by the dozens, until the movement lost the war. Licking its wounds, it may manage to regroup and strategize a comeback. In the meantime, I ache for my granddaughters’ generation.
The awakening of “MeToo” was the slow yawn of an hibernating bear. At Redbook magazine, where I worked in the early 1980s, we did a survey about sexual harassment in partnership with Harvard Business Review and published those findings. The issue went nowhere for a very long while.
Until it did.
Violence against women in all its forms is not OK, our feminist leaders have agreed. They have championed legislation against unwanted touching, verbal comments, locker-room atmosphere—and of course rape, also defined as exertion of perceived hierarchal power, even if no physical force is applied. Prominent men were finally dethroned from their lofty spots in media and corporations. Decades-old sexual exploitations complaints were won both in public opinion and in courtrooms.
The UN, a puppet organization that, on a rotating basis, has given the helms of guarding the rights and safety of women worldwide to countries such as Iran and Somalia, had long declared various “days” in support of women: International Women’s Day (March 8); World Population Day (July 11); International Equal Pay Day (September 18); International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25).
Then October 7 happened.
Hundreds of Israeli women were not “merely” gang-raped, but tortured by sex-crazed Hamas terrorists who broke their limbs, chopped their breasts, and shot nails into their vaginas. Women who survived and were dragged to Gaza, have been imprisoned now for five months, gang-raped and beaten daily, repeatedly, by porno-demented sadists.
The silence of the feminist movement—or whatever can be defined as such in the absence of outstanding focal leaders— about this extreme sexual violence has been deafening. In fact, many female activists have joined the ranks of pro-Hamas demonstrators, of useful idiots calling to “free Palestine” (which means in that vernacular the elimination of Israel and the genocide of its people), of anti-Semitic calls for “a ceasefire”—as if it wasn’t Hamas that had broken every ceasefire, including the one on October 6. As if Hamas couldn’t stop the war on October 8 or any time thereafter by releasing the hostages and surrendering. As if in this war between Israel, a sovereign state, and Hamas, a terrorist group, Israeli women’s tortures and rapes were an acceptable collateral damage.
Or as if it hasn’t even happened.
UN Women, in the meantime, was silent, as unresponsive as the strewn burned victims of the Hamas massacre to the prodding of Israeli women’s organizations, Jewish organizations, and people of conscience that demanded it to declare its disgust and to condemn both the massacre and the lingering inhuman treatment of Israeli hostages. NOW finally issued a neutral statement against using rape as a tool of war, without condemning—or even specifically mentioning—the brutality of Hamas against Israeli women.
On my radar screen, only one Second-Wave feminists, Phyllis Chesler, Jewish and in her 80s, has been excoriating the remaining feminists of her generation for their failure to condemn the atrocity visited upon Israeli women. Where are the younger feminists?
Last month, on February 12, I lit a yellow candle for the release of the young women hostages. I allowed myself the stabling pain of uttering their names—Agam, Eden, Doron, Shiri, Noa, Karina, Arbel, Liri, Amit, Carmel, Daniella, Naama, Romi—and imagining them being tortured and raped at that very same moment. I was certain that they were unaware that this date was the UN’s International Day for the Prevention of Violent Extremism as and when Conducive to Terrorism.
As was, so it seemed, the rest of the world.
About the Author: Talia Carner is a novelist whose heart-wrenching suspense and historical fiction expose society’s ills speak for those without voice. www.TaliaCarner.com
