My Hеrоіnе

By Dwаynе Bell

There are many women in the world who are murdered by their societies, both in body and in mind. For example, in my January 17, 2001 page, I wrote the following about the fate of Bаrіyа Mаgаzυ, a Nigerian girl who was to be caned 180 times (to death if necessary), for being r4ped by her father and his buddies (you read that right):

Inspite of her sentence being postponed indefinitely and her punishment being reduced from 180 to 100 lashes with a cane, 17-year old Bаrіyа Mаgаzυ has already suffered unimaginable pscychological degradation, incomparable spiritual hypocrasy, inhuman moral inversions and such intellectual starvation that no human being could ever survive. Hеr Nіgеrіаn countrymen have already done more damage and have left her more disabled and pitiful, her life more irreparably ruined, her soul more completely vanquished than any physical torture or execution they could inflict ever could.

(For those of you who don't know, the part of Nigeria where Bariya lives is under control of fundamentalist Islamic radicals, which means she suffers all the torments reserved for all women in her country, besides her own personal tortures. Following my page, Bariya was expediently caned by some obscene government minister in the privacy of his own plush office before international pressure could rob him of his chance to torture a young girl and get away with it. We may never know her ultimate fate.)

At the time I truly believed that no woman, in any day or age, could be expected to survive this kind of absolute sexuo-psychological hell.

I was wrong.

I'd like to introduce you to Mona. I will let her tell you her own story in her own words. Here is an excerpt from the first letter I ever received from her:

Dwayne..

I found your site..from checking out who has been to my site via my tracker.. and you are a link on a page that also has my banner as a link...and anyway.. I guess it doesn't really matter how I found your site.. but I have really enjoyed visiting it..

I am a 31 year old woman who is just now embracing her sexuality. I have had a hard road to hoe..for several reasons..

1) I was repeatedly molested as a child and Playboy, Penthouse and other Pornographic magazines were used by my perpetrator to rationalize my taking my clothes off for him to do his thing with me at the age of 4...

2) I grew up with a mentally ill parent who told me at the same age that If I ever cut my hair or wore makeup that I would go to hell...My dad is now in prison for murdering my stepmom...

Those 2 things..have really kept me from even exploring my own sexuality...I never masturbated..and hardly looked in the mirror.. I had a very low self esteem..and would cringe if someone ever gave me a compliment..

And now that I have begun exploring my sexuality....and am learning to appreciate and enjoy sex with my husband...It's been fabulous..I only wish that I could have come to this place sooner.. I feel like even when I take my body back (I am very overweight...I promised myself at the age of 4 that I would never look like the women who were displayed in those magazines.) I am afraid that it will be too late.. and that i won't be beautiful now that I want to be.. Gotta give it a shot though :)

I am now lucky to call Mona my friend. If a hero is someone who pursues values in spite of incredible odds and opposition, what else, but a hero, is Mona? Never was there a woman who survived more brutal atrocities of a psycho-sexual nature, yet who was determined by her own inner conviction of her own intrinsic value to rise above the damage in the fields of her soul to plant the daisies and roses of her own precious, wholly owned, feminine sexuality.

How easy it would be for Mona to turn bitter about men and sex, yet today she gaily pursues the perfection of her feminine form as well as the joy of sex with her loving husband. Who could blame her for hating the kind of sexy pictures that often appear on Body in Mind, yet instead she writes with praise and encouragement, seeing part of herself in them. Few women have such a completely healthy attitude, period.

One thing sums up Mona perfectly. On her amazing site, Mоnа's Clоsеt, there appears the usual slogan of women who have gone through the kind of abuse Mona has suffered, a slogan they wave at the world like a banner, you know the one I mean, the one where the word 'victim' in the line 'victim of sexual abuse' is crossed out and replaced with the word 'survivor'. Mona goes one better. She crosses out the whole line and replaces it with the word 'woman'.

In spite of so much being done to her to prevent her from doing so, after the most heroic effort imaginable, Mona has single-handedly created something the rest of us admire more than anything in the world.

Mona has made herself into a woman.

We love you Mona.