Lacy Macauley is by her own definition a
‘radical activist’ based out of Washington, D.C.
She was one of the organizers behind
#DisruptJ20, the action meant to disrupt President Donald Trump’s inauguration
as well as disrupt the various balls and events attendant to the inauguration. She’s
basically been involved in every leftist protest action for years, from G20 and
Occupy actions to protests against pipelines.
Macauley went to Turkey last year because
the G20 was there. Leftists traditionally protest and have riots at the
location of the G20. She also was interested in learning more about a Muslim
country and working with refugees. There, according to her blogpost, she met a
Muslim man.
He offered a ready smile, engaging
kindness, and intelligent conversation. He said all the right things to
convince me that he cared about women’s rights and activism. In February, I
decided to return to Turkey with the promise of love driving me forward. I
couldn’t have known things would turn sour.
Then came our first fight. I had wanted
to interview a local woman for an article on Syrian refugees. He did not
approve. He knew the woman and did not like her, so he strictly forbade me from
speaking with her. After I questioned his rationale, he yelled and stormed out
of the room to go smoke a cigarette. I just stood in the middle of the room not
knowing what to do. Of course, as a Western woman, no one had ever forbidden me
from speaking with anyone else.
She found out strangely enough that not
every man or society has the same openness and respect for women that she took
for granted in the United States. She found out that he expected her to be
dependent on him, to be constantly by his side and that he controlled her every
move.
It got worse.
In the following weeks, I was violently
pushed, blocked from leaving freely, and repeatedly told not to speak. If I
spoke anyway, anger erupted. I endured threats that I would be burnt with
cigarettes, flinching as he “faked” with his lit cigarette. I had to duck to
avoid having sharp objects thrown at my face. I had water angrily poured over
my head.
Unwanted sex? Rape? All the time. He did
not stop to determine whether I consented to sex.
He then tried to cut off her connection
with the outside world, shutting off her wifi and criticizing her use of social
media. He also made her unfriend another Turkish man on Facebook and tried to
have her cut off others.
Her experience in the society didn’t get
better. She claimed she was arrested for just going to a speech because she was
an activist.
Two days later, however, I was jailed by
Turkish police for several hours when I tried to simply enter a large public
speech in Antalya by the president of Turkey. (They make a habit of jailing
reporters and activists, and I didn’t look like I fit their norms. I wrote
about this experience with the Turkish police here.) I had an “out of the
frying pan and into the fire” sensation.
So did that experience give her any
enlightenment as to how wonderful America is? What a real patriarchy is
actually like? Or the ways in which Islamic society allows and normalizes such
oppression against women?
In a word, no.
She didn’t initially speak of her
experiences, she said, because she “did not want to feed into the narrative of
Muslim men being aggressive.”
So the truth was less important than
anything that might call into question her political agenda points.
She still came back and organized
#DisruptJ20. She came out with Antifa (anti Israel organization) just this past
weekend in Kentucky.
Despite everything that had showed her
thoughts to be misplaced and in error, she still can’t ditch the radicalism.
What a sad way to waste one’s life…
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