Love

Published retroactively

One of the stories on NPR this morning was about an exhibit at the Roman Colliseum. It is about Eros, who used to be a powerful god - a personification of the intangible feeling of love. The exhibit curators said they chose Eros because "love is universal".

But is it?

During my sophomore year of college, (2000/01), I learned about the Taliban and the realities of life in Afghanistan. I remember telling a friend about what I learned. She was very disturbed and told me, "I wish I didn't know that." I began wearing a piece of the burka on my bag as a way to remember the women that didn't have... well... anything that I took for granted.

There were more pressing concerns for those people - like the concerns of pregnant women tossed out into the street during the second stage of labor because a man was able to see their vulvas. The violence came first, but I also wondered, "how does love exist in such a society?" Surely, there were the men who coped with their wives', mothers', sisters', daughters', friends' difficulties sympathetically, but were just as powerless. Surely, there were the women who believed the Taliban's Islam and were happy about the Burka. But that leaves 95% of the rest of the population.

How can a woman accept the embrace of a man that threatens to beat her if she exposes an ankle to his friends? How does a young boy learn that women are people when he witnesses his father rape one of his stepmothers with an electrified metal rod*? How can love possibly exist in those situations? I remember hearing reports from Bangledesh of women who rejected the advances of a particular man. Common custom was to throw acid in the woman's face. In a society where women are sacred of mutilation for expressing their feelings honestly, can love really exist?

And even in ancient Greece, Rome, and Sparta, men turned to other men for sexual satisfaction because the common belief was that women weren't even human enough to feel love. Does a personification of that love really apply to love as I define it? Even the love between men wasn't equal - it was between teacher and student, slave and master. Is that what love is? If it is, we shouldn't glorify love. If it isn't, then we need to stop pretending that love is universal, or even present in some parts of the world.

*That happened in Pakistan, a young girl was married to an older man with other wives. I don't remember the situation that caused her to run away to her own family, but I do remember reading what her punishment was. She eventually did escape and told her story in mid 2002, which I read in Cape Town. I don't know about children being involved, I'm just asking a question and attempting to make people remember that the torture and supression of women affects an entire society.