It was really interesting watching this video from Democracy Now detailing the experiences of Emily Henochowicz–she is an Israeli citizen whose father was born in Israel and whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors. She was doing a study abroad in Israel and attended a protest in support of Palestinian peoples/flotilla (remember earlier in the year?) and got shot in the eye by a tear gas canister. She lost her eye.
It was interesting to compare Emily’s story to this post by Wheel Chair Dancer about the recent photo on Newsweek of the girl in Afghanistan that was brutally attacked and had her nose and ears cut off by her husband.
In both cases, neither girl was directly a part of any war–and yet they were both connected to war, both girls faces were altered by violence, both girls became disabled through violence inflicted on them and in both cases–there seems to be a battle ground existing around their bodies, even in their bodies.
What would happen to the women if we left Afghanistan?
Who has a right to protest violence committed by the nation/state?
Each woman has gotten much different reactions to their disabilities. And each woman has reacted differently. While Emily has refused cosmetic surgery and instead opted to decorate her glasses or wear her hair over her eye–Aisha (from Afghanistan), has chosen surgery. And while Aisha is getting her surgery funded (i.e. for free), Israel has refused to pay for any part of Emily’s costs.
Aisha had to undergo a literal disrobing (she covers) to have her story told–whereas Emily sat on Democracy Now! with her hair over her eye–her eye protected from viewing, even as the darkness of her hair brought attention to her face.
When you look at how Aisha is represented–in the video that WCD links to, Aisha’s upper face is shown and accentuated in the first few clips of the video. *As if she were wearing her veil.* The image reminded me of the thousands of images I’ve seen since childhood that show the eyes of veiled women–suggestive, full of promise, mysterious, unknowable. Exotic.
And then the veil is gone. And the mysterious unknowable is revealed as brutalized and violated. Since we didn’t know what could be under there before (because as a culture, we don’t know the “other”, we aren’t familiar with her, we aren’t friends with her, she isn’t our sister or cousin), what we find goes against our expectations, shocks us, scares us. We want the beauty. And so we are outraged.
A feeling that stands in stark contrast to how we as viewers understand Emily’s injuries. Usually their narratives are the other way around. An abused woman is blamed, why did you stay with him? And a politically active woman is congratulated as fierce and mighty. Suddenly our consciousness is declaring the abuse victim “beautiful” and “strong” and we want to help–and the politically active woman is understood as a troublemaker. As somebody who maybe shouldn’t have been where she was. It’s sorta her own fault for showing up someplace where she knew there would be trouble. Right?
Does it make sense, given that cultural understanding of Emily’s story, given the way she has worked to redefine her disability, that we are less inclined to view her disability as tragic? As horrific? That we are less inclined to empathize with her, and want to help her?
Aisha’s story very easily fits into how we understand disability in the US–the nobel tragic victim that keeps going in spite of it all. The crippled person who doesn’t want to live like that. We wouldn’t want to live like that *either*. We understand and want to help. I sit not one iota of judgement on Aisha for wanting the surgery. I would want it too. What she wants is not really my point. It’s what we want *for her* that is my point. She *may* want surgery (i say may because her own feelings are really discussed in any great detail) because the surgery helps to hide the way “shame” was violently written on her body. Because first and foremost, that violence was done to shame. But our cultural narratives only let us *see* that she was probably beautiful and now she’s not. Let us help make you beautiful again.
With Emily–our culutral narratives see a woman that is in control. A woman who made choices. And continues making them. And so she is in control and so we don’t feel the same disabled “poor crippled girl” feeling when we hear about her. But I have to wonder how much of the way we look at Emily is due to the fact that the people she is standing in support of are also considered “in control.” Are viewed as making subhuman choices (like randomly deciding to become a suicide bomber) that creates *real* victims. Just as they are threats, so is she. And just like we as a nation/state hide and ignore and refuse to see very real violence inflicted on “the terrorists,” we are also refusing to see that there is nothing chosen about being assaulted by a nation/state. And that “it’s your own fault” logic being put forward by any nation/state is just as violent, just as much about *shaming* as individual men cutting a woman’s face is.
This is what happens to “good” Jewish girls that make bad fucking choices.
Let that be a lesson learned to all of you.
disability as a way to shame, disability as a way to “feel sorry for,” disability as a way to hide and cloak violence; this is what happens…there is no way to change it…you don’t want to be that, do you?
Disability as a threat–how do we confront that reality?
And how do we look at the faces of two different women–of all women–and see complication, nuance, interesting details, humanity–rather than women who deserved it or didn’t?
