Boxes by Nisan Başçiftçi

Boxes in different sizes, shapes, and features, in which women try to fit in from the day they were born in  Turkey... The only similarity among them is their restrictiveness, molding women’s lives and perceptions.  Boxes tell us that you should look perfect, but not too perfect that you wouldn't seduce men, who are not responsible for their actions if you are “asking for it" by showing skin; you shouldn't be skinny, but neither  too fat: men would never choose a fat woman as their spouse; you should be powerful, but not too powerful  that you would make men feel weak; the guilt is on you if your hijab is not covering every inch of hair  because men get seduced as it's their nature. Each corner of our boxes imposes another criterion for women  to get to fit in the community.  

In my community, our boxes have many corners that form polygonal prisms, determining the way we look,  the way we laugh, the loudness of our voice, the things we wear, the rights we possess, and the fear we grow  by. Fear, the corner that makes us itch and scratch our skins until we bleed the blood of femicide, domestic  violence, male supremacy, and inequalities that worsens our wounds gradually, accelerating blood’s rapid  flow until we get rid of the corner and box itself.  

The boxes we tried to fit ourselves in killed 380 women only in 2020. The corners that are wounding us are  empowering the cruel souls that are willing to kill their spouses just because they were disrespectful, as  Ümmü was, deserving an inhuman death by the bullet of his husband’s rifle as she didn’t prepare the dinner  for him, or because they damaged their manhood with a piece of fabric, as of hundreds of women deserved to  be killed for showing their skins. Today, my box is only preventing me from wearing the skirt I want while  someone else's is preventing her from reporting her husband that beats her, her children every day. No matter  how tight your box is or how many corners of it make you scratch to the blood of your flesh, girls and  women are not passing a single day without the fear of being abused.  

The goosebumps you get the moment you realize you are being followed, the meaningless effort to pretend  like you are talking with your dad on phone, and the attempt to hold your keys in your hand, trying to make  it look like a knife, which could scare your potential murderer, are part of our everyday lives. We are  growing up by learning how to protect ourselves, and how to not be murdered like we are living on a  battlefield. But we have to, in a society where even wearing leggings may end up in your death, and your  murderer may get absolved because you were “asking for it” with that revealing clothing. In a community,  where even politicians, who must protect our rights say, “Women should not laugh noisily. That may seduce  men," women are frightened to refute the impositions of boxes with a fear of being succumbed, meaning  either being disregarded by the community, being raped, or even being killed.  

Even in the protests made to emphasize the momentousness of the Istanbul Convention’s implications  regarding women's rights, which the government decided to abolish, 11 women rights activists were beaten  and arrested by officers in İzmir because they were claiming their right to life. Despite the fear of getting  arrested for advocating our rights, it is not even possible to talk about gender equality or the challenges that  women face in a community, where women are even awed of reporting their rapists with a fear of being  labeled as impure and getting murdered by their families to clean their chastity.  

Grinding these corners incrementally and ending up destroying the boxes we are trapped in is the primary  challenge we have to overcome today as the women in my community.  

If we are getting arrested for claiming our rights by making our voices heard, we should shout louder; if we  are getting disregarded or even disdained by our society because we were abused, becoming “impure," we  should collaborate, embracing impurity.  

If we are getting criticized for laughing noisily by the politicians, we should become politicians as the future  of this country to realize what they ought to do, in memorial of the 380 women that were murdered with  thousands of others that we forgot the names of.