Never Take The First Ammendment for Granted
Just when reading the domestic news has made me feel hopeless for my feminist journalist agenda, I found the story of an Afghani man being imprisoned and possibly killed for trying to have a debate about feminism.
"He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed."
I am about to embark upon my journalism career in which I hope to make the news media a more feminist place. Reading about this Afghani man's struggle reminds me that being a feminist member of the media is more than just offering fair coverage to women's issues and being constantly offended by advertisements. Being a feminist media maker is about the having the freedom to express myself and trying to reach as many people as possible. The concept alone that women can be (and are) successful leaders in anything is enough to put one's life on the line in Afghanistan (a country that is supposedly democratic by the U.S.'s increasingly ironic hand), and that's what I'm working against. The whole idea is to empower people to look outside of their socially constructed expectations for themselves, and this story is a perfect example.
This man is stepping so far outside of gender norms for his community that he's being persecuted, while on United States territory, little is being done to stop it. For all of the political and military power the U.S. exercises over Afghanistan, I thought that I could expect a little compassion as well. But this story isn't even on the New York Times web site yet, while coverage on the front page discusses the Super Bowl and Fashion Week.
Seriously? This is why I'm going in to journalism.