If you look up Patriarchy in the dictionary...

I saw a photo on the front page of yesterday's National (com)Post that really summed up the state of women in the world for me.

Here's a similar one from Boing Boing (because I can't find the original).

These women are participating in the Miss Landmine Angola pageant.  It is not bad enough that the patriarchal military industrial complex made land mines that blew their limbs off, now they need to tart themselves up in patriarchal standards of beauty and compete to see who's more pretty and feminine to win a fucking leg.  They are given clothes and makeup and some money for participating.

The idea is to show women with disabilities in a more positive way and to highlight the problem of landmines.  The goals of empowerment are stolen right from the pages of any good (liberal) feminist tome.  Couldn't that be done with women in their clothes?  Just change the women in the photo to men in speedos to understand how ludicrous this is.

And we happy folks in the developed world also get some disability porn too.  Look at those severed limbs, the carnivalesque women of colour with crutches on the beach.  It's so sad, but they are so beautiful and courageous.   Blah blah blah.  They may well be beautiful and courageous, but exploiting their situation like this is absolutely vulgar and yet again underscores women's worth as merely sexual objects.

The problem is that landmines are blowing off people's legs and the victims (yes, they're victims, not survivors--yes, they survived, but only because they were victimized in the first place) need health care and rehabilitation because they are missing their limbs, not because they are the prettiest.  AND, these landmines need to be removed and not manufactured and sold in the first place.  (Go visit the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to learn more.)

Comments

[claudia]

Thanks for making me aware.

[alice]

Wow. Just wow. Words fail me.

[JoVE]

Holy crap. More reasons not to read the NP, not that every other paper wouldn't cover it too.

[Riin]

Geez. How much money is spent on arranging, publicizing, and holding the stupid pageant? Couldn't they use that money to give more than one person a leg? Idiots. "Nope, no leg for you, but here, have a bikini."

[M-H]

Oh gourd, it's difficult to know where to start with this. But you've done a terrific job. Thanks.

[Stephanie]

They are competing for a leg?

Holy S**t. I am so disappointed. Humanity is a slow learner.

[Suzanne V. (Yarnhog)]

Wow. That is so wrong, I'm not sure where to even start. (My dad, an eighty-year-old, oldest son of a patriarchal Arab family, has declared on more than one occasion that men are not fit to rule because testosterone makes them insane. He believes only women should have power. I'm pretty sure we at least wouldn't hold a pageant with disabled women in skimpy bikinis competing for a prosthetic leg to replace the one blown off by landmines used in our wars because we couldn't get our heads out of our asses long enough to sit down and work out our disputes. Crap.)

[Romi]

I am speechless.

[Teresa]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I can't believe the contest exists and that the prize is a leg. Vulgar indeed.

[The BeadKnitter]

Nauseating. That's the only word I can think of to describe this.

[Angie]

Here, here. Everyone should hear this. Why can't they wear their own clothes and address the organizations that are pretending to help them while coincidentally creating jobs for themselves?

[Jennie]

unbelievable! I can't wrap my head around the idea that anyone would think this was okay. let alone admirable. This is just totally criminal.

[Carol]

You are absolutely correct. Lets holler for equal opportunity. Men should have to tart up too! Maybe then the idjits that thought this up will think of a better idea.....

[Deborah C.]

Dreadful. That is the ONLY word I can think of. Competing for a leg on the basis of beauty? Sorry, it just doesn't compute. Agreed, we should be removing the landmintes, and helping the victims, not making them jump through idiotic hoops.