I've been thinking about this too much for the past five weeks, and was already trying to put something into words earlier today, so this will be ineloquent, but: where are the feminists? Where are the women's rights groups? The celebrities who got their #Metoo cover stories? Where are they? Because I don't think I have seen ONE, not one (non-Jewish), feminist organization or publication speak about this since October 7th. Instead, what I did see, and a lot of it on here, from people with the audacity to have things like "proud feminist" in their bios, was DENYING THAT THIS HAPPENED AT ALL, OR JUSTIFYING IT. I saw people saying, essentially, "how dare you call the genocidal terrorist death cult who slaughtered people horrifically and indiscriminately rapists?" (accusations that this was racist, which...no words for how sick and disingenuous that is, no one was aiming this at a race of men, but at Hamas, who indisputably did this). I literally had to block mutuals, liberal feminist queer mutuals, mocking and denying and "contextualizing" (if your response to brutal rape is, "but [Israel] [or whatever reason]" here, there is something wrong with you and you are not a femininist) - "decolonization," "by any means necessary," is INHUMAN AS A RESPONSE TO THIS. "it didn't happen" when we have eyewitness testimony (from the music festival, from the kibbutzim), when we have evidence (from the first responders, from the AUTOPSIES DESCRIBING THE LEVEL OF VIOLENT ABUSE, FROM HAMAS' OWN DOCUMENTATION OF THEIR ATROCITIES). These useful idiots won't even read what we have not been able to escape, what haunts our thoughts and nightmares, because it might intrude on the illusion of their revolutionary fantasies, horrors and blood that will never touch them. And the women of the world, the feminist leaders, are SILENT. I've seen so many famous ones call for ceasefire yet say nothing whatsoever about October 7th, as if this didn't even stoke any empathy in them, didn't happen. I'm not saying don't call for that, I'm not saying anything about the actions of Israel, I want to be able to address this as its own event, as what it was - a heinous, barbaric day of violence against innocent human beings. We aren't even allowed that. We aren't even allowed grief. These women aren't even acknowledged by the people who claim to believe victims first and foremost, by the people who'd usually chant "say her name." This I cannot reconcile. This I will never understand. And yes, it happens elsewhere, it's happening in Ukraine, it's happening in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, so many places, too many, and they all deserve acknowledgment and empathy and justice (which, tragically, we know won't be received). I'm not denying any of that. What I am saying is that this HAS been denied, obfuscated, ignored, silenced. This was a specific sadistic cruelty inflicted on women with intent to cause the most suffering and harm before murder that could be done. It should be said. It should not be forgotten. For Shani and for the women gang raped and tortured and executed at the music festival, in their own homes (whose names we may not know, but they are not anonymous, they were living, breathing women). The silence is unbearable. May their memories be not only a blessing, but the power to somehow create a better world to come.
