Honour And Disgrace Quotes

“ ‘Your father won’t find out,’ Assef said. And there’s nothing sinful about teaching a lesson to a disrespectful donkey.’ ... ‘It’s just a Hazara,’ Assef said. But Kamal kept looking away. ‘Fine,’ Assef snapped. ‘All I want you weaklings to do is hold him down. Can you manage that’? “ (Hosseini, 75) Assef and his friends not only dehumanized Hassan by calling him a disrespectful donkey but they also treated his body as an object that they could do anything they want with solely because he is a Hazara. People who are just born as a Hazara are already considered second class citizens just because they are considered to be an impure Afghan. "Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always

The next requirement for being a “true woman” was submissiveness. According to society men were superior to women by “God’s appointment.” If they acted otherwise they “tampered with the order of the Universe” (Welter 105). A “true woman” would not question this idea because she already understands her place. Grace Greenwood explained to the women of the Nineteenth Century, “True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependant; a perpetual childhood.” Even in the case of an abusive husband, women were sometimes told to stay quiet

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

Iran’s conflict between modernism and fundamentalism can be seen in the novel’s focus on the political prisoners. Marji encounters various men that were incarcerated for holding extreme leftist views, including her uncle, and the consequences they faced. In the chapter “The Heroes” Marji is exposed to the various torture methods induced to make the prisoners betray others who shared their discontent. This can be seen when Marji’s father asks about Ahmadi and Siamk, the newly freed prisoner, tells them, “… Ahmadi was assassinated. As a member of the guerrillas, he suffered hell” (54). In making this comment, Ahmadi shows the intensity with which fierce opponents were persecuted. Additionally, the never ending arrests and deaths of these political opponents show the

I am ashamed for the lies we told you all those years. You were right to be angry in Peshawar. You had a right to know. So did Hassan. I know it doesn’t absolve anything, but the Kabul we lived in in those days was a strange world, one in which some things mattered more than the truth. (301)

Concerning the social context, honor and respect are two significant values that the ‘hijab’ represents. By wearing the hijab, a woman is less likely to be attractive to men and being approached by them, she creates a ‘barrier’ that implements respect between her and another person, by consequent, she preserves her sexual chastity and keeps the family’s honor intact. This is an important detail in the Middle East culture; honor is more a group matter than an individual matter, and in this case, honor’s family is related to women’s sexual abstinence before marriage; in case the honor is lost, it can’t be regained.

Women face two key forms of oppression in this world, powerlessness and exploitation. These two forms fall into Iris M. Young’s ideas of oppression in her article “Five Faces of Oppression”. The definition of cultural imperialism and exploitation used in this essay are taken from Young’s essay. Cultural imperialism is where the dominant customs and morals of a society are rendered as the norm and those who are not in the norm are considered others. Exploitation is a form of oppression where a class structure is present and this class structure includes a dominant group of people who are in power of a subordinate group. Two authors, John Stuart Mill and Simone de Beauvoir, talk about how the oppression of women is not due to nature. It is rather, in Mill’s view, due to a premodern law of force which divides men and women between the strong and the weak. Beauvoir sees this oppression of women as a result from socialization, which conformed women to become immanent. Both these authors have reasonable arguments and have a similar understanding that the inferiority of women is not from the simple nature of being women. Other factors come into play when understanding why women are oppressed, and both authors recognize the fact that society and old habits must change for the equality of women and men to become a reality.

Furthermore, women are often seen as a symbol of cultural preservation and a measure of family honor. In conditions of war and colonial rule, which represents an attack on men’s honor and dignity, attention to women’s roles as prescribed by cultural tradition is often intensified. However, the unusual conditions of war and resistance to colonial rule also may provide openings for women to reconfigure their roles and rights, based on new needs of society.

“The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either… Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame… a boy with Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile. Never mind any of these things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that.” (Housini

Throughout our experience, we have encountered so many challenges when it comes to gender in the society. Gender is being used as a basis for stratifying people in the society. In this article, the racial caste system that used to exist in the United State is depicted. In that the black women were denied the access to justice because of their status. They were perceived to be people who do not have any right within the society and no one could believed them when they were raped by the white men because all the court judges were white men according to this article. The women were classified to be from poor background and they should remain at a low class in the society.

Women and men have had certain roles in society that were understood amongst them to be specified for their particular gender. Males were known to have the leading role as head of the house hold and the bread winner while the woman’s duty was to stay at home and take care of the house and children. While many people years ago deemed this way of life and practice to be the right and ethical thing to do, times have changed and so this kind of treatment towards a woman’s equality must be questioned. Even though times have changed, this mindset of a woman’s ability to be as good as a man has not completely gone away. In today’s society a woman contributes to the economy and her family as equally as that of a man. Therefore, women should share equal rights and opportunities as their gender counterparts.

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

Through years of history women have been subjugated. They are seen as vehicles for reproduction and sexual objects. Yet this is a mentality that is directly related with moral theory. Since this is for the most part a male dominated society, women's views are often seen

The modern world has resulted in earnings, wages and salaries for the women similar to that of men, but the women are continuously facing inequalities in the work force (Andal 2002). This can be attributed to the pre-established notion that women shall not be given access to finance or communication with the world outside of the home which is highly unethical and unfair (Eisenhower, 2002). In the past, they were considered as the underprivileged ones which were not thought of having equal rights but this fact has changed now. For instance, the status of women can be explicitly defined as the equality and the freedom of the women.

Throughout history and today, we women are constant victims of stereotyping from our society. Certain “rules” have to be followed and certain “ideal” women images have to be kept. We are raised in a way to fill certain position where the society wants us to be and as a result, the opportunities are always limited for us and ideas of our importance in the society are diminishing. Even though women gained some independence, where women can work and take various position in society, the society’s idea of typical role of women never seem to change.