Last night I dreamt that my penis was skinned; the mass of raw meat pulped with something resembling a hammer; and then I was told this was good and I had to go home. I was mortified — strangely enough (well, it was a dream) I did not feel pain, but I was horrified with the thought of anybody ever seeing me naked again. I thought this was a punishment for my unspoken sins.
And then I woke up and realised what I dreamt of was, basically, my brain re-living the description of genital mutilation in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “The Caged Virgin”.
Unlike most, Hirsi Ali brands the female circumcision “genital mutilation” and does not escape giving very precise descriptions of the process, in which vulva is cut and the sides of the vagina are cut with a sharp object so they start to bleed; then they are pressed together to grow together and thus ensure that the girl remains a virgin until marriage. It is apparently a common practice among Muslim families, and in Ayaan’s case her father demanded that this is not done; what he did not know is that Ayaan’s grandmother arranged the practice to be performed anyway. After all, what worth would a girl be if she couldn’t prove she was a virgin? Ayaan’s grandmother, undoubtedly, believed she was doing the only right thing she could.
It is a strange feeling for a Pole to read this book. I recognise my countrymen in the Muslim fanatics far too often for comfort. No, Polish catholics do not commit acts of terror, but then, neither do a majority of Muslims. It is mostly the attitude towards sexuality that the two share.
In Poland, homosexuality is, at best, a sin, and at worst punished by removing the homosexual from their family, as the family decides the person has in fact never been their son, daughter, brother or daughter. A raped woman is more often than not declared to be guilty of her own plight, since “she must have been provocatorily dressed”. (By which they mean she wasn’t wearing a burqa, basically, even if they do not use the word.) In general, women are worth less, both to Catholics and Muslims; there is no such thing as a female Catholic priest, and an often voiced sentiment is that feminism is a bad thing because it made women lose their femininity — i.e. being weak feeble creatures needing being cared for, and mute objects unable to protest if their emperor/owner got bored with them — and so it repulses “real men”.
The differences are also very obvious, of course. It is a punishable offense in Poland to offend the Pope or God himself (this is called “offending religious feelings”; the most famous cases being those of an artist who used a symbol resembling crucifix in her work combining it with a flaccid penis, and of Jerzy Urban, former spokesperson of a Communist regime, currently an owner of a left-wing weekly, who dared to declare John Paul II an “aged minor god”, “living corpse” and “Brezhnev of Vatican”). But in Poland it is punishable by monetary fees, community work or at worst up to two years in prison (up to my knowledge the prison punishment has never been applied), and among Muslims it is more than often punishable by death. In Poland a homosexual couple may expect to be thrown stones at for holding hands; in Iran they will hang. A raped woman in Poland may expect to be ridiculed and bullied; in Somalia she will be killed for staining the family honor. In Poland a gay parade may be forbidden by authorities, attacked with sticks and stones by God-loving good people and attract more police than supporters; this is still quite a step forward from Iran. And so on.
It is difficult to say which way will Poles go; the Western or the Eastern. Both sides of the conflict seem to become more radical with time; the bishops are no longer content with abortion being illegal, now they call in vitro “an elaborate murder” and want to outlaw it too. (This discussion started with the government trying to decide whether in vitro should be reimbursed, and if yes — then if just to married couples or to unmarried ones as well; now it is a discussion about murdering innocent little children, by which they mean the fact that sometimes out of 8 impregnated cells only 2-3 are planted in the mother’s womb. This means 5 little innocent children die.) The left-wing — I do not talk about myself here, I talk about Polish left-wing, which translates to moderate right-wing everywhere in the West — dare to utter words such as “positive discrimination”, “protecting minorities” and “abortion” sometimes and not even in negative context.
I am quite a pessimist when looking at the processes forming, because I have read the diaries of Witold Gombrowicz, written in the 60s. He describes a society so narrow-minded, blinded by catholicism and ready to condemn anyone slightly different that I can’t help but think: yes, this is how I felt in Poland. (Gombrowicz fled Poland and moved to Argentina.) It feels like these 40 years haven’t really changed much. Worse, it feels like the 2.5 years since I moved away from Warsaw changed one thing — myself. I wouldn’t be ready to cope with the bullshit anymore. I used to convince myself that this was my country, those were my countrymen, and perhaps I should try to understand them. Now I am on Hirsi Ali’s side; there’s nothing to understand in relentless bullying with religious justifications. And while my genitals remain intact, mentally I may never grow to be fully at peace with myself because of what I have gone through — and let me just tell you I’ve been among the lucky ones.
