Born in the U.S.A.

How to broach a topic like this, littered with landmines? Especially when a woman from the supposedly-enlightened bastion of freedom and equality that is the United States deigns to bestow her help and knowledge upon the poor oppressed masses of the other, chained by their religion and backwards culture and, perhaps, hummus. The portrayal of all Arab women or all Muslim women, or all non-Western women as pitiable creatures draws some of my more exasperated sighs. The falsehoods that are perpetuated, the generalization of the restriction of one country to all, the thought that the hijab might as well be a stamp marked "Please Liberate Me!". The undertone (though not always so under) accompanying much of this hand wringing that "we" are so much better. That we have achieved gender equality. That much of this is insincere is unsurprising: there's a long history of using "Save the brown woman from the brown man" to justify occupying and controlling both. Lord Cromer, the British colonial head in Egypt (1883-1907), decried the treatment of Egytian women and thundered against the veil, then went home and co-founded an anti-women's suffrage group. The sudden sympathy of American government officials for the poor Afghani woman coincidentally arising with the desire to invade brings to mind certain parallels.

And at the same time, I'm glad I was born a woman in America.

Most of the time I can't even comprehend how much privilege I have, and not just from my nationality. I am a white woman born into a middle-class educated family in America. Despite the relative strictness of my upbringing, at 18 there was never a question of my shipping off to college a thousand miles away, in New York City, no less. No sense that the honor of the entire family rested between my legs. And it doesn't in every family - but it does in some.

Just the fact that I'm here in Syria, a woman living by herself, is something. Most weekends I hang out with my guy friends more than girls because a lot of the girls have to be home at 8 or 9, or if lucky, 10.

A lot of my freedom comes from money. I could afford to travel here, can afford to get a place on my own and have no responsibilities other than myself. And sure enough, among the more well-off, daughters go off to college in Beirut or England and stay out late. And there is a contingent of girls who come from other areas of Syria to go to college in Damascus, and live alone or in groups, especially from the Jolan (whose seperation from their families is quite understandable). But I'd say from my Western woman perch that more typical is going back to Jeramana from Capoeira class with a 28-year-old woman, her cell phone ringing every 5 minutes with parents telling her to hurry up and get home, as if she can will the traffic away or the servees faster. It is 8:30 pm.

Even as pharmacists refuse to give out contraceptives, even as rape victims are blamed, even as the worth of a woman is measured in fuckability, even as lifting your t-shirt for a free hat are being trumpeted as "expressing yourself", I thank fucking God that I am woman from America.