"Saving Face"

The overall treatment of women in this world is horrendous.  Our country is one of the few in which women aren't treated as property of a man.  In a lot of the Third World countries a woman is lower then the animals that the man owns.  Her only two purposes are cooking and reproducing sons.  Daughters are looked at as a liability because it will cost the man in the end to marry them off.  I know from my experiences in the Middle East on how women are treated.

I was reading a couple of articles yesterday and wanted to share them with you.  The first one was about how some women in the Middle East are disfigured with acid being thrown in their faces for just the slightest thing.  If the wife of a man doesn't want him to marry another woman she might tell him no and the man would throw acid in her face so she would spend the rest of her life in and out of hospitals with a disfigued face.

The real difficulty here is that many of these attacks are not reported so the advocates for women's rights in these countries can not fight for them.  These are male dominated society and even when the culprits are reported, caught, and tried they are usually let off with little more than a slap in the face.  The woman is still disfigured and considered an outcast for the rest of their lives.

Filmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy just won an Academy Award for her short documentary "Saving Face" in which documents several of these attacks and has helped format a new law in Pakistan to combat these attacks.  This new law deals out a mandatory prison term of 14 years to life for the culprit.

This is a big thing because for once Pakistan is in the news for something other than Taliban.  I pray that someday there is a true justice in this world.  Why can't people just see each other for the good that they can bring to the world and just live together in peace.  We are all human and we will argue because no two people will see everthing the same but why do we have to result to violence.  Just look in the mirror and ask yourself this question at the end of each day.  "Did I do everything in my power to make the world a better place today with my actions?"

The documentary will be shown on HBO on March 8th.