"From the Burkha to the Thong: Everything Must, and Can, Change!"

A National Campus Speaking Tour by Sunsara Taylor

Spin the globe. Anywhere you look, women are being held down and slammed backwards. In Bangkok and Bangalore and Moldova young women are stripped naked and sold across borders as sex slaves. In Indonesia and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia women are shrouded in burkhas, kept as the property of fathers and husbands, and even killed if they somehow "dishonor" their family.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., young women are told, "You are no longer oppressed," and "There is nothing holding you back." But in reality, women's lives in this country too will be marked by the many limitations, and degradations, imposed by society on girls and women. Many will learn to cut themselves, to starve themselves, to hate themselves—internalizing the message of a society saturated with images of them as nothing more than objects of sexual plunder, objects of derision, or baby-making machines. More will be beaten, sexually assaulted, forced or coerced into bearing children they did not desire. And all will be told that their value is ultimately reducible to whether they are sexually desired by men, but then they will be shamed and called "sluts" if they actually have sex. No matter what they dream about, work towards, or achieve, they will still have to look over their shoulder walking home at night.

The fact is, to be born female on any part of this planet is to be born into a lifetime of danger, disrespect, discrimination and degradation. Between the burkha and the thong, there is no good choice. Both are hideous embodiments of the oppression of women. Both reduce women into objects to be owned, or played with and discarded, by men. Neither should be accepted. And all of this must change.

Women are not breeders. Women are not lesser beings. Women are not objects created for the sexual pleasure of men. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor. When women are held down, all of humanity is held back. Women must win liberation, and they can only be liberated through the revolutionary transformation of the world and the emancipation of all of humanity, and through being a powerful motive force in that revolution.

Starting in late February, Sunsara Taylor will be hitting the campuses with a speech titled, "From the Burkha to the Thong: Everything Must, and Can, Change!"—deeply exposing the many forms of oppression that still confront women, breaking open a new conversation on the oppression and liberation of women, and drawing a new generation into the struggle to liberate women and emancipate all humanity.

Funds and volunteers are needed to make this tour a success.
Contact sunsara_tour@yahoo.com to get involved today.

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