‘Peoplekind’ has done a disservice to the brave women of Iran.
HOW ‘PEOPLE KIND’ HAS DONE A DISSERVICE TO WOMEN
The White Wednesdays protests began last May, in the streets of Tehran, and every Wednesday ever since, women across Iran have been posting pictures or videos of themselves wearing white hijabs, or walking unveiled while holding white hijabs aloft, or just wearing something white. The point is to offer up some gesture of resistance to the gender apartheid women have endured in the Islamic Republic ever since the Khomeinists came to power in 1979.
I’ ll get to what this has to do with the term “peoplekind” in a minute.
Following the spontaneous workers’ uprising that swept across Iran in the final days of December, the White Wednesday protests have taken on a more defiant tenor. Women have taken to standing in prominent places, on street corners, on walls, in front of mosques and even police stations, unveiled, holding their hijabs aloft, on branches or sticks. When they can, they post photographs online. Women around the world are now doing the same, posting photographs of themselves with white cloths held aloft on branches, in solidarity with the women in Iran.
You could say the first of these protests was the mass demonstration of March 8, International Women’s Day, 1979, in Tehran. At least 100,000 women took to the streets that day, unveiled. But the Iranian women’s movement was put down, and the repression that followed was codified in a variety of ugly laws. Sex outside marriage is punishable by stoning. Women are segregated away from much of public life in a complex system of discriminatory rules, to the point of denying women the right to attend soccer games. The wearing of the hijab is compulsory.
It’s also true that White Wednesdays are occurring every day of the week now in Iran, and that the protests can be seen as an outgrowth of My Stealthy Freedom — a movement launched three years ago by the Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who launched a website allowing Iranian women to post “stealthy” photographs of themselves, unveiled, often in the safety of out- of- the- way places. The difference is the protests against compulsory hijab — the most visible symbol of the Khomeinist oppression of women — are out in the open now.
At least 29 women have been arrested over the past five weeks. They face jail terms for having presented themselves in public without wearing hijabs. They have come to be called “The Girls of Revolution Street.” They are being joined by men, who stand on corners holding hijabs aloft, and also by veiled women, who may be more religious, but who nonetheless oppose laws forcing their more secular sisters to wear hijabs.
There is a disturbing sort of irony in the way White Wednesday was, as usual, not noticed in Ottawa this week. Instead, there was an i nternational hullabaloo swirling around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, world famous for his claims to be a feminist, and for ordering a gender- balanced cabinet, and for winning the 2015 federal election at least in some small measure on his passionate insistence that women should never be forced to dress in any particular way — and Muslim women should not be com- pelled to remove face- veils and niqabs in citizenship ceremonies.
On Wednesday morning, on his way into a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill, Trudeau took a moment to speak to a hubbub that captured headlines across Canada, the United States and Britain. It involved a weird thing Trudeau had said at one of the town hall realitytelevision events he has cultivated a habit of hosting, this one at a university in Edmonton. And it had set off the usual shouting about political correctness gone mad that we’ve all become accustomed to hearing from Fox News and such sources as that.
There was a meandering question from a young woman who associated herself with a kind of schismatic feminist evangelical Christian church based in South Korea, and the woman used the term “mankind.” Trudeau interrupted with this: “We like to say people-kind, not mankind, because it’s more inclusive. We can all learn from each other.” There was, of course, a video, which went, of course, viral, and everyone, of course, started shouting.
In the British tabloid The Daily Mail, the infamous windbag Piers Morgan, who even at the best of times comes over as the worst kind of hectoring, bully- pulpit smartass, dripping with virtuous self- aggrandizing sanctimony, wrote: “Trudeau comes over as the worst kind of hectoring, bully- pulpit smart- ass, dripping with virtuous self- aggrandizing sanctimony.” Morgan did, however, have something of a point.
Anyway, there was Trudeau, on the morning of White Wednesday, on his way i nto a caucus meet- ing on Parliament Hill, and he stopped to make a brief statement to reporters: “You all know that I don’t necessarily have the best of track record on jokes,” Trudeau said. “I made a dumb joke a few days ago that seems to have gone a little viral, in the room, on the ‘ peoplekind’ comment. It played well in the room and in context. Out of context it doesn’t play so well and it’s a little reminder to me that I shouldn’t be making jokes even when I think they’re funny,” he said.
Fair enough. In the absence of further headlinegrabbing developments in this story, we’ll all just have to take his word for it, more or less, at least those of us who aren’t possessed of the gift of clairvoyance. A “dumb joke,” then, and not an instance of high sarcasm and sharp wit that everybody was too dull to appreciate. It turns out that those of us who hadn’t laughed out loud are neither humourless nor merely ill- prepared to appreciate Trudeau’s talent in the arts of nuanced, self-deprecating irony. It was just a dumb joke. The point is, this is what it has come to.
Canada is reduced to the butt of jokes, the world round. Maybe it’s not fair, but it is a fact, and on White Wednesday, i n what you could call a debate that touches upon gender equality and the emancipation of women, we’re all reduced to arguing with one another about whether one of our prime minister’s town hall events most closely resembled a rerun of an old Jerry Springer episode, or something from the heyday of The Phil Donahue Show. Or maybe something from Doctor Phil.
It is also a fact that even if it were something as effortless as a strong and stern public statement warning the ayatollahs that we are all watching them, or some small gesture of affection and encouragement t he House of Commons might make toward the Girls of Revolution Street, we are instead reduced to this.
AS EFFORTLESS AS ... WARNING THE AYATOLLAHS THAT WE ARE ALL WATCHING THEM.