A conversation I had with Jeff last week during lunch got me thinking a lot about my trip to Qatar. He was telling me about his night at his internship in the emergency room at Sharp hospital. He is basically shadowing and working with a current nurse as part of his program. They we headed to the waiting room to pick up a patient and when he read the patient’s name he told the other nurse that he knew exactly how the conversation was going to go. The patient was a Muslim woman and he said that the patient was not going to say anything and her husband was going to do all the talking. Sure enough, he was completely right. He knows quite a bit about the culture since he was deployed in Iraq for a year. I started talking about what I had learned while I was there. Then I started to think back to my reflection paper when I wrote:
“Some of the ones that stick out in my head are the fact that girls/women cannot leave the country without a chaperone until they are 35 years old. I think my mouth fell straight to the floor when I heard that. Another one was that there is no dating there and arranged marriages are quite common…All these things were just so surprising to me and I actually found myself internally criticizing their culture. I kept asking myself how any girl/woman could live like that. I didn’t understand how they don’t just rebel and do what they want. This was actually a huge moment of growth for me. I don’t really consider myself to be a feminist, but I deeply believe in women’s rights and it’s something I’m really passionate about. In fact, for a long time I refused to learn how to cook because I saw that as me fitting into the stereotype of what I’m supposed to be because I’m a female. I’ve gotten over that now, but there are still things I refuse to do because I refuse to fit that stereotype. So when I was hearing about all these things that the girls/women are not allowed to do, it actually made me very angry. I honestly just wanted to know why these girls/women put up with it. Then after thinking about it for a really long time I realized that this is their culture and it’s a part of their lives. They don’t question or rebel against it because they don’t know any different. I realized that just because it’s different than the way I choose to live my life doesn’t make it wrong.”
I honestly do feel like I have grown a lot from this experience because I learned that it was not fair for me to criticize their culture. However, I found it interesting how easy it was for me to have the conversation with Jeff. As I was talking about it and basically criticizing their culture, I realized what I was doing. I was having an internal conflict with myself of I should not be continuing to have this conversation. Instead I should take this opportunity to let Jeff know the reflections I had after my trip to provide the chance for the two of us to have an educational moment together. Even as I’m typing this I’m realizing that even if I had tried that it wouldn’t really make a difference. Because Jeff was in the Army for four years and was deployed to Iraq for a year, he has lost three friends to the wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan). All three of these soldiers are men who he was fairly close with and it was really tough for him to get over their deaths. Because of the deaths of his friends, Jeff has admitted that he often experiences hatred towards Muslims. We have had quite a few conversations about this and he knows that it is not the fault of all Muslims that he lost his friends, but he still struggles not have those feelings come up. I have told him that is understandable that he would have these feelings toward them, but it is still difficult for me to accept. However, I must also recognize that I have not lost anyone close to me because of the war, so I have no idea how he feels. I feel like all I can do at this point is making sure that I am continuing to have these reflections and maybe after some time has passed I can have these conversations with Jeff.
My struggle continues to be that I don’t feel like I’ve completely allowed myself to accept the way the girls/women are treated as their culture. Even as I read through my reflection paper, I found myself getting angry about the way they are treated. During Ethics class a few weeks ago we were asked to think of an example when we went from super-ego to conscience. It was not until some of my other classmates starting giving their examples that I realized my example was. My moment of going from super-ego to conscience is my experience in Qatar, specifically thinking about the way the girls/women are treated in the culture. I realized that I was raised to be independent and never depend on anyone for anything. My mom was raised in a very traditional Mexican household where she would always have to come and do chores and my uncles would get to go out with their friends. My mom made a decision that she was not going to raise my brother and me that way, so we both always had equal amounts of chores to do. I realize that because of this and seeing the way my grandma basically babies my uncles, I have become very judgmental of any woman who follows this traditional way of living. I realized that this was happening way before my trip to Qatar, but it wasn’t until my trip that I realized I did it. It wasn’t until I got into class that week that I realized that it was an example of me going from super-ego to conscience. However, I do still feel there is a lot of work to be done. I still find myself being judgmental, so I need to be very conscience about it and continue to reflect and come to terms with the fact that just because someone chooses to live their life this way does not make it wrong. I may not agree with it and I may feel that it diminishes the power of women, but it is not fair for me to judge someone because of it. Even as I’m writing this I’m realizing that I have a long road ahead of me, but I believe that me realizing it is the first step.
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