Hell Hath No Fury, For Real
Of all of the statistics—numbers of the dead, maimed and missing, among them—that are dribbling out of Iran, there is one that has trumped all others. And it’s also the reason that I believe that the sitting president, that Pinocchio-if-he-was-a-crackhead-looking guy is probably packing a little “jump bag” in case he needs to flee town like that broke-ass magician in Frosty the Snowman.
The number is 71. That is the percentage of female university students in Iran. Three out of every four, roughly. And the most stirring images I am seeing are of some fierce-looking, najib-wearing young women who seem to be pretty much done living like third-class citizens and suffering the indignities that come with every day life in that country. Some crazy shit women have to endure, and if that rumpled-suited clown gets his way, it’s only going to get worse for them. Apparently, while he was handing out money to the nation’s poor voters—hey, that’s democracy— he was explaining his desire to diminish the Iranian woman’s role in the private sector.
The fact that equal rights are even an issue in this day-and-age is ludicrous. And these Iranian ladies are all sorts of fired up and, I don’t know about the women that you know, but the ones I do will outsmart, out muscle and outlast anybody. They not only know how to play dirty, but also seem to relish in it. Manipulative, vituperative, all kinds of –atives. And when they are done, they’re done. Period.
Last night, GG (who possesses none of those qualities, of course) asked me why, if the government is so bent on keeping women down, do they permit them to even go to college. Shouldn’t they be shielded from learning that they have secretly been blasted back to the Stone Age? I was stumped.
Maybe because, even as they sit in their semi-circle, the clerics are realizing that they are merely sticking their finger in the proverbial dike, trying to hold back the inevitable and just. And that they hope that the next group in power will be merciful conquerors, despite offering no such quarter themselves.
I truly believe that hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. Now multiply that by the number of college women in Iran (about 1.4 million or so) and the scope of what is happening, and will happen before long, becomes apparent.
Recent history is littered with brutal government crackdowns, and we have all witnessed the aftermaths, on CNN and the Beeb. That is what constitutes news in our age of armchair upheaval, where we can literally watch people tear each other apart while we eat ice cream. We all thought the students in Tiananmen Square had a chance. So naïve.
But Iran is no China. Clearly, China had its shit together and Iran still can’t figure out how to pump all of its oil and put more of its people to work. And when religion is thrown into the mix, everything gets twice-as-hairy. The world continues to modernize, while religion stays fixed at a time when people still worshipped sun gods and fertility gods like, you guessed it, my old pal and Canaan’s favorite son, Ba’al.
The friction is inevitable, the conflict is too, and revolution will follow probably more often than not. Yet never before has a revolution been led by a country of smart, strong women won’t forget a single indignity foisted upon them. My wife remembers every last one of my transgressions, down to the smallest “I forgot to ask for your dressing on the side.”
And I would reckon, that the Iranian women know who did what to whom, and at some point in the near future you can rest assured that those clerics will never know what hit them.
But they will sure as hell know who hit them.
