Benazir Bhutto: Face of the Goddess

I’m shocked and deeply saddened by Joan Walsh of Salon and other commentors’ focus on Bhutto’s death as purely a political and economic catalyst and how it will affect the US and world politics.

How about the loss of a WOMAN LEADER in a world increasingly polarized between the masculine and feminine? In the Reagan/Thatcher 80s, Bhutto was to me a shining example of how a woman could be both feminine and powerful, both compassionate and effective—and perhaps more importantly, how the people of a culture widely seen as much more sexist and restrictive to women could actually vote a woman into power. It was the beginning of my recognition of women and feminism throughout the world, not just in the US; of my understanding that feminism wasn’t just about middle-class US women being able to have abortions or go to professional universities or play sports or feel safe to walk home at night, but that it also encompassed the other 95% of the world, of which more than half was women. Women in societies where they could be forced to leap upon the funeral pyre of their husbands from forced marriages. Women who could be killed for simply loving—or looking at—the wrong man. Women whose very lives—not to mention their sexual fulfillment and ability to give birth safely—were threatened by female genital mutilation. And all the hundreds of thousands of women who would never be because of female infanticide in the two most populous countries.

Being from the US and having very little exposure to politics in the rest of the world, I was ignorant of the progressive Scandinavian societies where women achieved near equity during Second Wave feminism. I only remember seeing Corazon Aquino and Benazir Bhutto and other “Third World” women coming to power—being VOTED into power—and thinking, what’s WRONG with us? Even Thatcher, although I admired her abilities (but not her politics) was the Iron Lady, the Man with Tits, the Wombless Woman. There was nothing feminine about her.

But Bhutto, ah, Bhutto made leadership seem naturally graceful and feminine and full of compassion. I did not follow her career closely, know little of the circumstances surrounding her falls from power either time—I have no doubt that there were elements of corruption and power-mongering around her governments, as there are around every modern government. I also have no doubt that the same sorts of people who love to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Helen Clark and Arundhati Roy and Wangari Maathi and all the other strong, powerful women in the world today, also hated Benazir Bhutto and did all they could to bring her down in the eyes of the world and her people. The current epidemic of misogyny didn’t spring, fully formed, from the Bush administration or fanatical Islam—it has been quietly (and not so quietly, see Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell) fomenting ever since the beginning of the Second Wave. It certainly existed where Bhutto was popular.

Speaking of fanatical Islam, however, that was another thing that Bhutto did … for me. Here was a worldly, educated, powerful woman, an excellent speaker, obviously capable of drawing crowds of support (of men as well as women) who was a Muslim. Benazir Bhutto was the face of feminist Islam; she gave credence to the stories of Fatima and other powerful Muslim women—mother and wives and daughters of Mohammed who, like the women surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, were instrumental and absolutely essential in spreading the teachings of Islam. I also suspect that, like almost all women, no matter how important or powerful, they also performed many “feminine” tasks such as care-giving and nurturing and cooking and teaching and building community—in short, the tasks that hold the society together. Tasks that our political leaders should focus on more, rather than trying to force change by economic or political (or violent) means. Of course, I don’t mean to say that Benazir Bhutto spent her time baking bread or wiping the fevered brow of her children—although she very well may have; or that those things are more important than leading the pro-democracy movement and calling for the eradication of poverty in Pakistan. But are they really less important? And even though I never saw her do them and don’t know that she ever did them, there was something about her that gave the impression that great leadership could encompass all of those elements of femininity and compassion without losing any of its power.

After September 11 and the Bali bombing, I was living in Australia. Benazir Bhutto seemed to visit frequently, appearing on many forums and political discussion shows, trying to bridge the cultural gap between frightened, suspicious “white” Australians and angry, suspicious Muslim Australians. Despite incidences of violence and racial unrest that broke out in some of the inner cities (more a result of ghettoization and economic disparity, I believe, than actual religious radicalization) Australians seemed by and large to want to believe that the two cultures could live side by side, could intermingle and create a multi-cultural society. It’s a belief that has practical as well as ideological implications for Australia; after all, the island nation’s closest neighbour is the world’s largest Muslim nation: Indonesia. Although right-of-centre (and Bush “arse-licker” as dubbed by the former leader of the opposition) Prime Minister John Howard was able to wrangle two electoral victories out of fear and xenophobia, his adamant support for the “war on terror” and particularly its implications of a “war on Islam” made many Australian uncomfortable and, I hope, had more than a little to do with Howard’s recent humiliating loss.

I digress. I mention Bhutto’s visits to Australia as she seemed at the time one of the few people able to pour oil on those troubled waters of racial and religious tension. She seemed always, to me, the ultimate in feminine grace and power, with a beauty not simply of face and form, but of compassion and wisdom as well. In short, she embodied a contemporary image of the Goddess; in doing so, she gave me hope. Now, my only hope is that her decision to return to Pakistan for the movement, despite the risks she well knew she took, will achieve what she set out to achieve—a step along her home’s road to democracy, another stone in the path to peace.