The Difference Between Men and Women (Probably Rated R)

I’ve been trying to figure out how to broach the subject that Esman and I have been discussing over the past few days. It is, gulp, the relation of men, women, and sex, and I will be bringing some highlights of our discussion to you over the next few posts.

The reason we began talking about it is because some of the cases he is translating from Dari to English, and then I am correcting and editing, have to do with adultery, initiated (attempted) adultery, violence against women, and “running away.” I struggle to understand the way the law works, and why it works the way it does, and he is kind enough to explain it to me. Many of the cases we delve into have to do with actual laws that do their best to do what we in America would call “legislate morality.” In Afghanistan, it is a crime punishable by time in prison to have sexual relations outside of marriage. It is a crime punishable by time in prison to be in a situation that MIGHT be interpreted as attempting to commit adultery, such as a man’s being in a woman’s house without any supervision. It is a crime to force a woman into a marriage that she does not want to enter; however, such a thing happens routinely, and no one is punished for it. It is not a crime, however, for a woman to leave her home – either her father’s home or her husband’s - and yet my friend Rhonda, who is a prison guard in a smaller region, says that most of the women in her prison are there for running away – and their children are there with them.

As we discuss these cases and the plight of women in this country, the common denominator seems to be the religion’s, and therefore the society’s, view of women and sex.

Here, women have few opportunities, but they seem to vary according to the great divides, just as in America – economic standing and level of education. For instance, women generally do not drive cars, but the woman with whom I work drives a car. Neither Esman’s nor Hasat’s wives drive cars. In rural areas, women go out of the house only when necessary, and it is often necessary for them to work in the fields alongside men. Here, I have seen women everywhere I have gone, although not alone. However, Esman says that women here do go places alone, such as shopping and to school.

When women do go out, they must be covered up lest some man look at them in an inappropriate way, which, I believe, is in a way that appreciates their beauty. By the same token, it is not a good thing for women to “show” even their clothed bodies if those clothes are form-fitting, lest they are “sharing” a view with someone not their husbands, thus the justification of the cultural and not religious requirement of a burka that covers even a woman’s face. So while a woman’s body and face may not be bad things, for a man to look upon them is.

A woman may not be alone with a man anywhere unless that man is her husband or someone in her family who is considered an appropriate chaperone. Many women have not been to school and are uneducated, but I think Herat has a lot of educated women. Of the group of uneducated women, many are promised in marriage by their families without their permission or approval, which is both illegal and not what the religion requires (the religion gives the girl the opportunity to accept or not accept the arranged marriage), but what culture demands. I have read cases about women who are abused, both verbally and physically, by their husbands and their mothers-in-law, and I have read cases about women who are sold to men by their fathers and some who are kept from their rightful inheritances by their brothers. It is not uncommon for a woman to set herself afire or to ingest rat poison after a violent exchange (to be fair, Esman says that self-immolation is a common method of suicide regardless, that he knows of a woman who set herself afire because her fiancé could not afford to hold their wedding in a large hall).

Generally, women are held to a very strict standard regarding their lives, and I think that is both cultural and religious. I think it’s fair to say that being a man in this society is more beneficial than being a woman.

Because sex outside of marriage is both a crime and a violation of religious law, and because families can promise their daughters in marriage to a man the family likes, but the girl has not met or does not know well, girls in their teens may be promised and then married to men in their 50s. When they are experiencing what we in the United States know as a heavy-duty crush in high school, and their parents promise them to another man, many girls run away with their crushes to be married. Unfortunately, however, they rarely marry – they simply run away together, and then are found, and both are charged with crimes, maybe of adultery or attempted adultery. What is worse, to decide upon the appropriate charge, girls are subjected to “medical exams” to determine whether they are still virgins. If they are not virgins, they are charged with adultery. If they are still virgins, they are charged with attempted adultery. The boys are charged with either adultery, attempted adultery, kidnapping, or “de-flowering” a woman, among other possibilities. And of course, there is no test to determine whether a male is a virgin.

I asked Esman if the medical community here, and therefore the legal community, was aware that a woman’s virginity might not be able to be determined by a medical exam. He simply shook his head and told me that no matter how much medical information the law enforcement community has regarding the fact that not every young woman has a hymen, the test is still done, and the test is the determining factor.

And more: When the girl returns from her running away episode, even if she has been charged with nothing, if she has been found to have been kidnapped or raped, her reputation is ruined, and no one will marry her.

Running away carries such a stigma that should a girl run away with a boy, her family will protest that she has been kidnapped so as to save as much of their reputation as possible. And if a girl is found to have sexual intercourse with a boy, the girl’s family will say that she was deceived by the boy – that he lured her to sex with the promise of marriage. And that is illegal.

I wonder about where these rules come from, and Esman and I have talked about the fact that young people here are not allowed to touch, to kiss, to hold hands, or to express any kind of physical sexual desire; therefore, when young kids feel those stirrings, those natural stirrings, they know that they must get married in order to act out on them – even if the only thing they want to do is kiss the object of their desire.

Esman explained to me that not all these rules come from religion, although some do. Some, like the addition of a burka, come from local culture. In the instance of a family’s arranging a marriage, for example, most of the young people Esman knows have arranged their own marriages – not by proposing or dating or anything like that. They have made their desires known to their families, and their families have taken the lead. If a girl expresses to her mother her own desire to marry a specific man, her mother, in consultation with her husband, will arrange for a surreptitious notification to the boy’s parents. If the boy is interested, his parents will then approach the girl’s family. If the boy is not interested, the girl is allowed to save face and no one is the wiser. If the boy expresses the desire, his parents are in touch with the girl’s parents, and, if the girl approves, the engagement is made known at the appropriate time.

Should the couple become engaged, the families will arrange for a nekah, what would be like our engagement party, but what is actually a wedding without the hoopla. The families will have a party with a mullah present, and in front of all the witnesses at the party, both the fiancé and the fiancée will say three times to the other that they accept each other in marriage. The mullah then blesses the engagement, and after that, the boy may spend time with the girl at her family’s home, even going so far as to spend the night. Some families even build a room for the boy to, in essence, move in during the engagement, as the engaged couple is permitted to have physical contact – short of sexual intercourse. Esman says that most people who get to this point in the engagement will have a marriage ceremony, although he has known a few people who have ended the engagement without going through with the wedding ceremony.

Sometime after the “engagement party,” maybe up to two years after their new relationship involving physical contact, the couple is actually married in a ceremony that I have described before as a “big deal,” where the groom pays for the entire shebang, and everybody and his brother attend, even people who are friends of friends of the couple but who do not themselves know the couple.

These kinds of relationships, though, from what I can determine from my conversations with Esman, happen in more educated, more well-to-do families, and are not the norm in small villages outside cities, where more girls have no say in selecting their future husbands.

I will tell you more as I delve further into the next part of our discussions.