On Wednesday night I hooked up two of my best friends in Athens in a rich part of town I tell you, money doesn't talk in Athens, it screams. If you go to the rich parts of town, it's like a whole other country. So much greenery! Such wide and clean footpaths!
After getting initially lost we finally made it to our destination and proceeded to have a cosy night chatting and drinking wine. We ran through all kinds of topics and eventually rested on women's rights. I know feminism gets a lot of bad rap for wanting to wipe out men, and I can appreciate how men today feel attacked by it. Personally I don't think I'd even bother if I hadn't grown up in the Home Country.
But I did, and growing up in a place where just looking at a boy could potentially get you killed does something to you. Your freedom, your life as a female is so restricted sometimes it's too much to bear, especially when you go back and see no change in the situation. You see women mistreated all their lives going on to mistreat their daughters. Young girls who stay unmarried because of a small scar on the face, or a burn mark on their body, considered not good enough by some guy who isn't exactly an oil painting himself.
On every turn and in everything you do you are reminded that you are less, not a whole person, just a woman. That feeling never leaves you because the concept of a woman as slightly less than a man exists on one level or the other in every country on this planet. It irritates the living daylights out of me when I see women portrayed as just playthings.
So it kind of pissed me off when I saw new posters in my neighbourhood for some new strip club. All good fun, right? Heck if there was a male strip club staffed with illegal immigrants who were bought and sold like second hand books, who were degraded and abused almost daily, I'd be there like a shot!
Normally it's hard to tell who is being exploited in such establishments, the stripper or her customer who's stupid enough to part with all that money with a woman who's faking her desire for him. Maybe I'd take the second view if Greece wasn't such a notorious gateway for human trafficking.
What I am grateful for, though, is that the Sex Sells concept hasn't gone to the same heights in Greece as in Italy, where one coffin manufacturer uses it to sell coffins. I kid you not.
