Unseen and carved.

(This photo by Stephanie Sinclair won the Unicef prize for photo of the year in 2007. Newly-weds Mohammed, 40, and wife, Ghulam, 11.)

It´s one of those pictures that haunt you deeply, even if the reason is not so simple to pinpoint. I don´t know exactly what this little girl is thinking, and I don´t think anyone can. The lost look in those eyes can mean so many different things. But I´ll tell you one thing, it sure isn´t the look of somebody who just entered a lifelong partnership (which marriage is, even if you don´t think of it as a based-on-love-endeavour) fervently hoping for the best.

And you know what tugs at my heartstrings? I can´t fathom what that little girl is going through, but it absolutely kills me to know, just know that there are some people, many men in particular, who won´t see this as a big deal, who truly won´t bleed in the inside, whose first and last reaction will be to try to rationalize the fear of this little girl. The fact that her wedding night will essentially be legalized rape will slip by them with nary a thought (and yes, rape it is if she doesn´t have the freedom to independently decide and give the final say in the matter, rape it is if she doesn´t actively pursue it). Oh, maybe they´ll feel a little bit indignant about her age, and consider the marriage between an 11 years old girl and a 40 years old man another one of those barbarian customs Afghans maintain. Xenophobia here we come !

But for all those who consider marriage and heterosexism destiny for a woman, no matter what society they come from, it´s just seen as the inevitable thing that came to pass too soon. On some deep, internalized level, many societies on Earth have completely accepted, to speak in crude but nonetheless true terms, that a woman has value only insofar as she abides by some set of rules that determines what penis will be shoved into her. Which is why a machist view of rape centers on the notion of stolen property; in the end, it inherently repels the notion that a woman can NOT enjoy being penetrated by a man, any man. It´s not only about consistently telling a lesbian that a real man will make her enjoy it; in the same fashion, it´s feeling that marital rape is at best a little silly and at worst offendingly absurd. And yes, it´s also about declaring that pedophilia is perverted stuff, because if you just waited a few years, you could have it for free.

Many fundamentally sexist world views have an obsession and general horror towards the sexual activities of gay men and women in general. No wonder; in a phallocentrist vision of sex, the value of an individual hangs only on the use that is given to their body orifices. Be it oral or anal sex, a sexist perspective defines homosexual sex between men by the penetrating part. You know how the introduction in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit states that sexual crimes are considered among the worst and most heinous crimes? That´s because in a gender-essentialist society, sex is essentially a way to establish and assert a hierarchy of power (it´s no surprise so many confluate homosexuality and pedophilia, they see both acts as the same in terms of power).

In the case of women, it is understood that they will perform their role of sex partners for men, and so sex is seen as inseparable from "the woman condition". But it is only as sex objects; the one setting the tone is invariably the man, and so the fact that a woman could pursue sex on her own terms is unthinkable, unacceptable and repulsive. Look at how despised women who seek sex as they choose are in our society, and at the same time how the conservative, traditional representations of sex demean women. From porn to the jokes about how a husband has to barter with his wife for her to accept to have sex with him, from the countless sex scenes where only the man acts and the woman just whimpers, to the special uproar reserved at women who cheat, it is clear how in a conservative culture, sex should be done to a woman by the one man or the many entitled to it, and she should take everything that man dishes at her and make him feel good about it.

For sexist, phallocentric, gender-essentialist bigots (and there are tendrils of that worldview in all of us), being penetrated is being subjected by somebody with superior power. It makes women mere outlets for men´s desires, and gay men women-like and thus objects of scorn.
But that´s the difference in the gender-essentialist view of homosexual men and women: by failing to perform their "natural" role, the former choose to lower themselves, while women´s entire existence is defined by their vagina. They are born "lowered".

Some men like to pontificate about how "all women have rape fantaisies". For all people who were born women or in a woman´s body and as such considered women, from the moment of their birth it has been instilled in them that they have something which men want and are entitled to. That in the end they are something which men want and are entitled to. Rape is the materialization of something announced to you since you had the use of reason, a nightmare always feared that you have no right to be surprised by.

You can rationalize away everything you want, in the end, it comes down to feeling another´s pain as your own, recognize them as equal in essence, and also recognize the same oppression; maybe that´s why for so many people, Afghan or not, western or not, women or not, this little girl´s eyes won´t go away...