Woman Between the Extremes of Passivity and Ethics:
By : Nazik Al Malaika..
This text, originally a lecture delivered in 1953, was later reprinted  in Al Malaika's book, Fragmentation in Arabic Culture.  Al Tajzeaia fi Al Mujtamaa Al-Arabi.


 
    Discussions of the question of Woman remain emotional. People deal with the issue subjectively, and common views are usually biased. Personal believes and rigid social standards make the subject difficult to discuss for the thinker who fears angering society, or making personal judgments, ot even falling into a social or religious abyss. The cause for this situation is that the question of woman still remains an ethical issue, and every ethical issue touches, from different angles, the different sides of social, religious, and political aspects of human society. Nothing is more difficult for the searcher than dealing with ethical questions, because every individual in the society considers himself, regardless of his culture, an authority on the subject. So the theme turns to an emotional minefield. The most important evidence for this situation is that the bases for the law which addresses women's issues and concerns is to be found in local tradition, rather than logic. Tradition, if we look at it closely, is a blind law established through the accumulation of habits and emotions through time in a specific environment. It is not therefore the proper bases for laws.
    There are problems other than the ethical ones. Women in this country have not yet reached the intellectual level necessary to recognize the bitterness of their situation. The moment when an individual recognizes that he has been misused is crucial in the history of her development. But the individual will not feel the unfairness of his treatment until she tastes some liberty. The question of liberty also does not accept compromise. One is either free, or not.
    Another obstacle in the path for development is a small group of educated, and therefore very proud and sensitive, women. We here confront a situation which might be called "Psychological cover up." This is a common situation which impedes a woman from admitting to herself that she is obeying her father or brother, so she deceives herself by imagining that she is acting in accordance to higher ethical standards. Often we see females advocating the veil, as though they are saying: "If we cannot achieve what we want, let us want what we can achieve."  In my view, this is a situation woman faces, which causes her to lose the strength of resistance, keeping deep within her a smarting wound, acting as though she has achieved what she wants..
    As for the man made obstacles, it seems that they are caused by his imagining that the liberation of women will lead to the loss of his own liberty.  He probably believes that her liberation will harm only him, since the benefits will be solely hers. If he is not opposed to the idea, he stays passive.
    It is obvious that the two sides of this issue separate the world into two groups: Women and Men, and create two senses of freedom, one feminine and the other masculine. Few among us note that the slavitude of women will inevitably create a masculine slavitude since the two sexes live in co-operation in the same environment. The truth is that it is impossible and illogical for those two beings to live together, with one of them being totally free, and the other a total slave, since the slavitude of this side will effect the liberty of that.
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     The first important point to make is that the history of women characterized her till now with passivity. The evidence for this claim are clear. It is not necessary to seek evidence in legal texts. To glance casually around us will show the extent of common opinion's disregard for women. The fact is that the history of human bondage does not include a worse case in which the individual lacks all the rights of life. Women have lost gradually even their human value. This appears in little events we see every day without noting. For example, there are different values attached to the relationship with the brothers of the fathers, and those of the mother. Society considers the brothers of a father closer to the individual than the brothers of his mother. This evidence suggests that the father is considered more important than the mother. Another example which shows society's disrespect for women is that married women are considered more important than single females. Married women have many benefits and gain the respect of people. Does not this indicate that the value of the woman is not in her character, behavior, and culture, but is obtained as a gift from her espouse? Which lowers her to passivity and kills her ambition. If personality can be obtained through marriage, it is no wonder that marriage becomes her sole objective. Woman according to this strange view is merely a mirror reflecting the grandeur of others.
    Economically, when the modern male complains that he is supporting a female, he is equally assuring her lower value in his gaze. For this complain includes a strange meaning in it, which is that her labor in child rearing and education, cleaning the house, and cooking, all this appears valueless in comparison to his work in the store, factory, or parliament. He forgets that this division of labor should result in a division of income. If woman has assumed the responsibility of staying at home to perform many difficult jobs, while the man works outside, it  necessary follows that she has earned her part from his earnings, not as a gift, since she would earn that sum if she worked outside as well. what matters for us is to discover that the complicated work of women in the home appears valueless to men.
    The Arabic language equally shows the absurdity of the woman's situation in our society. The simplest study of the terms and grammatical roles show that this is the language of a nation which does not esteem its females. Grammar always prioritizes the masculine over the feminine. and the plural is usually put in the masculine, even if the number includes one male element, and one million females. Singular  terms are often used to indicate the female plural in traditional Arabic texts.  It is worthy of note that the word Amia (meaning illiteracy) is taken from the word Aum (meaning mother). The term  used to describe a great poet in Arabic "Shaer Faahl" means masculine, and shows a disassociation between the feminine and the creative element of culture. And these are just a few examples which can be easily multiplied.
    This underestimation of the woman's value and labor led to her deprivation of private property. And we don't mean the economic element, since she has lost other aspects as well. Such as time. What does a woman have of this fortune which she theoretically should take one half of? Nothing in reality. Woman has been burdened with labor which occupies her full time, while man has the time to search and read and make great art and contemplate and socialize in the sciences and even worship What he believes in , which too is an aspect of personality of a human being who willingly chooses his path. The strange thing is that people assume that the work in the house is something which nature imposed on the woman, and though she has been provided with special organs which prepare her to cook and clean. We hear talk about woman's "natural place in the home" and they refer actually to this labor, in which many men excel: Some men are great cooks and cloth makers.
    But the loss of time and money is less strange than another loss to which the woman is subjected, and that is the loss of her name. The woman, even in the west, carries the name of her father while unmarried, and then loses it once married, and takes the name of her husband. And if he divorced her for any reason, she regains the name of her dad. and she might marry again , and then her name is changed for the fourth time. If this is not tragic, it is actually comic. This being should have her own name, which does not change. And a stable name is almost an indication of a human's pride in his personality and past and labor. The real cause of the loss of the woman's name might be her deprivation of the right to build her own past, through her own efforts. There is certainly a disgrace if a woman carries the name of her husband. And if a man carries the name of his wife most people would despise him. People accept this costume without thinking about its meaning and signification.
    As for the loss of the children whom the father is permitted to take away from the mother, once they reach maturity, this is in our view the worst kind of deprivation and the most brutal.
    It is necessary to mention the ethical restrictions imposed on women. Even characteristics have different connotation when applied to men and women. Generosity is considered a feature of nobility in the male, while it is seen as being wasteful when applied to women. The origin of this feature is perhaps that man considers the money his and not hers.
    Another instance of the different ethical expectations imposed on both genders is mourning. When someone dies, his sister, mother and daughter are expected to wear black, and stay at home, while the men are allowed to seek relief outside. They have the right to wear black, or not, even in their ties. The meaning of this separation is obvious and it is caused by the injustice we discussed above. The objective of the social practice of mourning is clear: It is that the woman stays in her home for the longest time, and economize in what she wears, so that a one dress is enough.

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 The moral component in a woman's life deserves further analysis, since it may well be the origin of all other deprivations which she suffered, as though it is the theoretical abstract aspect of the subject. And the beginning of the error is that the moral law is emptied of the first condition of every moral law, the condition which makes it possible to describe a human being as moral or immoral. The truth is that a moral law is meaningless if  the individual is not permitted to transgress it. Every moral law  gains in strength from the assumption of the individual freedom to accept or reject it. And this liberty is the source of ethics, and allows for judging behavior as worthy or condemnable, which implies that if a law is forced, morality would lose its value, becoming  coerced behavior without merit.
    To explain this view, let us imagine a man honest because a lie will lead to his death. Such a man isn't honest since his honesty is forced. And here, honesty loses its merit. One praises honesty if the individual is permitted to choose between lying or telling the truth without coercion. I remember having heard a man talking with disgust about those who eat fish, saying that they forget the image of the fish writhing in agony at the shore as she is dying.. The man's younger sister said: "But you hated the taste of fish since you were young." He was upset with his sister, and criticized her in front of the guests. And the reason is that she made his virtue appear coerced. Her statement that he hates the taste of fish deprived him of the moral choice, making it appear coerced.
    The truth is that so long as the choice is coerced, society considers it less virtuous, as though virtue requires free choice.  Morality cannot exist with coercion.
    If we think of the situation of women, we will discover that she has not reached the situation where any moral law applies. She is still tied to a position of passivity which deprives her of any kind of morality. Or, she is prevented by force from having any ethical code according to which she can be assessed. She is not good because her goodness is coerced. And she is not bad because the bad she does is caused by the temptation of breaching the law, which that law itself creates. For, every restriction creates the temptation to breach that restriction.  Perhaps, the cause of this situation is that every restriction implies an accusation of a moral weakness which needs to be watched. As though the restriction is already an accusation. Many of the innocents who are accused of moral weaknesses might enact them eventually. The reason for this is that innocence is hurt of the accusation to the degree that the soul yearns for fulfilling it. One might cling to morality because of the pleasure of feeling innocence and purity. What would happen if we are accused of what we did not do? One faces the situation of the little girl who was accused of stealing a golden necklace and was punished cruelly without being able to prove her innocence. When she grew she desired to steal  although she did not need the things which she stole. She might have philosophized the situation saying: "they consider me a thief anyway.. So, why should I fear? Why not enjoy the things which I stole anyway?" This is the logic of abused innocence.
    Restriction is also harmful because the restricted subject is condemned to the loss of the virtue of choice and of its moral destiny. Restriction deprives  the restricted subject of the pleasure of choice and control of its behavior. While moral freedom gives the individual a sense of power which springs from the depth of the psyche and causes the individual to choose the moral dimension. and is the psychological award for the choice. It is possible to state that: the more one is free to choose, the more one senses the pleasure of the decision. This feeling is the magical key to the situation. An example is the case of a man who gave a hundred dollars to the poor willingly, and another who gave the same sum at a party because all of his friends did the same. The first person is happy because of what he did. The second is angry, and might swear not to attend such parties in the future. In this case, the virtuous action is not longer virtuous. and it is the situation of the woman who has lost her choice and is coerced. This is why it is impossible for a woman to feel as a generous man does when he aids the poor. Her virtue is forced on her, and she is therefore deprived of all the psychological pleasure resulting from it. Thus a woman endures virtue without any awards, which is very difficult.
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    All this explains the reason for women being during entire periods in a passive position which makes all moral judgments on her impossible. The pressures and coercion imposed on her made her entire life a lengthy list of restrictions which deprived her of all positive ethics. This retention of her energy inside herself caused  her to substitute behavior for an outside veil, meant as a protective screen for the handicapped depths, so that it does not appear broken, passive, without being, and on this screen all the moral judgments were based.
    The fact is that most judgments addressed the results without looking at the causes, so they studied the behavior of women without the cost of the restrictions imposed on her, and searched for the morality in the life of a being without freedom, and sought the character where there is no will, and explored the present, where there is no past or history. And this was the view of many philosophers, and it lacks rationality and equilibrium. For, there is no ethics without total freedom of behavior, and no character without self conscious ethics, and no production in any field without a deep and round character, which can analyze its wants and desires. This is because liberty produces ethics, and ethics produce character, and character is what produces art and thought and humanity.
    The truth is that the behavior of a woman in this situation cannot be any different from what we see today among the lower classes. She does not wish to condition herself for life in this cruel environment which does not protect her but treats her with absolute cruelty. And in the shade of this pressure , woman was forced to give up on all the benefits of virtue, since she discovered instinctively that this virtue is no more than a luxury which the free enjoy. As for the enslaved, acting moral deprives them of the dream of their rights. Thus, woman gave up on much of the moral luxury which beautifies life and gives it depth and intellectual richness.
    The pleasure of friendship was one of these luxurious items women lost. For woman cannot be a friend today. The moral obligations deprived her of this human pleasure which humans enjoy the more their horizons expand and their social character matures. For friendship requires liberty in the giving of caring. It is a tide which floods another human being. In this it is like generosity because the generous gives to satisfy an inner craving. Thus one gives love to friends. and woman feels that she does not have anything to give others because she lacks liberty and confidence. She is miserly because her she has so little to give. She barely has enough to survive, so how can she give others anything? She is like shallow  water which cannot swell to irrigate the valleys near by.
    Friendship is a psychological giving which completes the human character and fulfills the sense of freedom. And the woman in her fragility and lack of property is careful, in a miserly way, about what she has. And this is the reason for the miserliness in all parts of her life. She fears spending as though it is a danger to her. This is a defense required by the inability to compete with those around her. In human history one finds the members of abused minorities feeling envy and acting egotistically, weak and hateful and miserly, which are the feelings thinkers attribute to women. One might say that each negative attribute results from a feeling of loneliness and the lack of social protection.
    Woman lost not only friendship, but the uniqueness of character as well. Philosophers have noted and mercilessly mocked this lack of individuality in women. A philosopher said: "I know many men, but only one woman."  meaning that all women are different copies of the same character.  The cause of this situation is obvious. For without freedom of behavior people act in the same manner. It is liberty which opens gifts and endowments and the forces of the self. And the character is the sum total of all these elements. Difference of character is created as a result of the liberating of the different aspects of the self. As for the instincts and social habits, they are alike in all members of a community. There is no doubt that women are similar because they are subjected to the same passivity. How can we expect difference of behavior and attitude between women? And according to what law could we require of enslaved women to posses Personality and originality and a character? If we take of the question of behavior all what remains of the individual is the similar natural instincts and characteristics which men, as much as women, possess.
    The lack of personality resulted in the lack of responsibility, outside the very limited personal circumstances. What is responsibility, other than the sense of a power which encourages us to help others and assist them in dealing with their circumstances? Woman does not feel this power because  she is always protected by her brother and father from the danger of uncertainty and the difficulty of making decisions. After centuries in this situation, she learned to distrust her ability to make decisions independently.
    This lack of responsibility might be the cause for women talking faster than men. Recent American research suggested that the number of words women utter in a minute exceed that of men. Man talks slowly because he thinks and weighs his words before uttering them. He realizes that the wrong word might cause disasters sometimes. His sense of responsibility drives him to reflection before speaking. Women speak so fast that occasionally she changes the meaning of words. And, the more the meaning is deep and specific, the more one needs to reflect in saying words. This means that character effects the speed of speaking.
    These are some examples about the practical impact of restriction on the lives of women. It is obvious by now that women did not reach the point  where it is possible for philosophers to judge them morally. There is no morality without liberty and choice. Isn't it about time for those millions of women to stand and require of society to give her the right to create ethics and morality ?
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     The question is: What can woman do regarding their situation? Should she stay at home and await the movement from passivity to morality, and enter public life afterwards? Or should she seek representation so that few cultured and economically liberated women might defend her rights? We recommend the second view because the right to representation is not attached to culture. Two and half Million Iraqi women deserve to be represented in a democratic society. This in addition to the fact that the admission into the practical domain of life will help women overcome their passivity. a passivity which men share and it is certain that for every enslaved women there is an enslaved man.
    As for the protests, the stronger objection is that woman is not intellectually endowed, that thinking is masculine. We will not mention the names of women who appeared in various intellectual and scientific domains. Some knowledge of logic, and the laws of heredity, offer better perspectives. It is not logical that woman , who is the source of life, lacks the gifts which later generations possess. It is impossible to accept this generalization. Nature does not create half a race inferior to the other.. since the fetus combines the qualities of both parents.
    Some object that the happiness of society today results from the division of labor.. where women is responsible of the home.. so that her leaving it will lead to the collapse of the family. And this strange accusation ignores the primary goal for the construction of a society. Why do people sacrifice some of their individual liberties to live together? The answer is that society is created to offer individuals the possibility of using the maximum intellectual and emotional  level which nature has given the individual.
    And so, what is the excuse for a society sacrificing half its citizens for the sake of the other half? This is a situation which sociology could not accept theoretically. Since the implied meaning is that we planned society before hand, without thinking of its actual needs.
    As for the objection that "if even men do not succeed in public life, how can women?" It is based on the assumption that women are similar to men, which is not valid. If we accept the sexual difference between the sexes, we should expect some difference in their endowments. It is certain that female thought will bring in a new point of view in the human cultural level.
    We might say that the domain of women is like areas in the mind which have not been explored and used. She is a new continent which no other discovery will match. Nothing is greater and more wonderful or deeper than the energy which nature gave the human being. Let that human be the greater law with which we measure the justice of our laws and systems.

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