This is the devastating endgame of patriarchal control taken to its most violent extreme—where obedience to male authority is prioritized over the survival of women and babies.
What happened to Nasrin isn’t just a tragedy—it’s a systemic execution of autonomy. The Taliban's mahram rules are a textbook case of Diabolical Imagination (https://hersafeharbor.substack.com/p/diabolical-imagination-the-creative) inventing bureaucratic barriers and theological justifications that trap women in life-threatening situations, all under the guise of "protecting honor."
This young woman died not because of a lack of medical care, but because she wasn't allowed to access it without a man. Because her life was deemed less important than the performance of male guardianship.
Her eighth pregnancy. No autonomy, no contraception, no access, no voice. Just endless cycles of forced gestation and denied care—until it killed her.
And this isn’t an isolated story. This is part of a global pattern:
In Afghanistan, it’s checkpoints and escort laws.
In the U.S., it’s hospital religious refusals, criminalization of miscarriage, and abortion bans.
In both, womanhood becomes a liability unless under male control.
This is the same ideology, just wearing different clothes. It’s the same belief: that women cannot be trusted to make decisions, move freely, or survive without the oversight of a man.
We must name it:
This is not culture.
This is not tradition.
This is gendered apartheid, enforced by fear and theology.
And it’s not just "over there." These systems are talking to each other. Learning from each other. Emboldening each other.
If they can imagine a thousand ways to block us, we can imagine a thousand ways to burn it down—and build better.
Such an important question—and no, I don’t excuse culture or tradition at all when they are used to justify violence or control.
When I say “this is not culture or tradition,” I’m calling out the way those words are often weaponized to shield oppressive systems from critique. As if labeling something “cultural” makes it untouchable. As if “tradition” means it can’t be interrogated.
But the truth is:
Any tradition that depends on controlling women is not sacred. It’s strategic.
Any culture that thrives on punishing bodily autonomy is not neutral. It’s political.
Culture and tradition are not inherently good. They’re tools—and like any tool, they can be used to liberate or to subjugate. What I reject is the idea that just because a practice is old or widespread, it deserves immunity from criticism.
So no, I’m not giving culture a pass.
I’m saying: don’t let them hide behind it.
Let’s name what it is:
If a system denies women care, freedom, or survival—it is oppression, no matter how long it’s been around or who claims it’s tradition.
Want to dig deeper into a specific example—like religious hospital policies, or legal justifications for forced birth? I’d love to go there.
My view of culture and tradition is that these represent creative fabrications intended to codify ways of dealing with perceived realities. Culture and tradition fail when they cease to represent the best account of reality easily perceived by the subjects of these fabrications. When the religious authorities persecute those who properly identify the sun as being the center of the solar system or that pregnancy is a delicate complicated process not involving some captive person, child or baby, then culture and tradition has failed and has begun to poison the society that it should claim to benefit.
Exactly—this is such a sharp and necessary reframing.
Culture and tradition are not sacred in themselves; they are human-made tools, fabrications, as you rightly say—designed to interpret, shape, and guide how a society understands the world. They are at their best when they evolve with new knowledge, when they make life more livable, just, and meaningful for those living it.
But when culture and tradition become fossilized, clung to out of fear or control, they stop serving people and start disciplining them.
They become weapons—used to silence truth-tellers, punish scientific clarity, and uphold fictions that benefit the powerful.
Galileo wasn’t persecuted because he was wrong—he was persecuted because he was right, and his truth threatened a fabricated worldview that had become too politically and theologically profitable to surrender.
The same is happening now with reproductive rights.
Pregnancy isn’t simple. It’s not a moral binary. It’s a biological, emotional, and social complexity that doesn’t fit into patriarchal tradition. So rather than adapt tradition to reality, they punish anyone who speaks the truth about it.
That’s when tradition becomes poison.
Not because it started evil—but because it refused to evolve.
This is the devastating endgame of patriarchal control taken to its most violent extreme—where obedience to male authority is prioritized over the survival of women and babies.
What happened to Nasrin isn’t just a tragedy—it’s a systemic execution of autonomy. The Taliban's mahram rules are a textbook case of Diabolical Imagination (https://hersafeharbor.substack.com/p/diabolical-imagination-the-creative) inventing bureaucratic barriers and theological justifications that trap women in life-threatening situations, all under the guise of "protecting honor."
This young woman died not because of a lack of medical care, but because she wasn't allowed to access it without a man. Because her life was deemed less important than the performance of male guardianship.
Her eighth pregnancy. No autonomy, no contraception, no access, no voice. Just endless cycles of forced gestation and denied care—until it killed her.
And this isn’t an isolated story. This is part of a global pattern:
In Afghanistan, it’s checkpoints and escort laws.
In the U.S., it’s hospital religious refusals, criminalization of miscarriage, and abortion bans.
In both, womanhood becomes a liability unless under male control.
This is the same ideology, just wearing different clothes. It’s the same belief: that women cannot be trusted to make decisions, move freely, or survive without the oversight of a man.
We must name it:
This is not culture.
This is not tradition.
This is gendered apartheid, enforced by fear and theology.
And it’s not just "over there." These systems are talking to each other. Learning from each other. Emboldening each other.
If they can imagine a thousand ways to block us, we can imagine a thousand ways to burn it down—and build better.
Why do you claim that this is neither culture or tradition? Do you excuse culture and tradition as the source of these kinds of problems?
Such an important question—and no, I don’t excuse culture or tradition at all when they are used to justify violence or control.
When I say “this is not culture or tradition,” I’m calling out the way those words are often weaponized to shield oppressive systems from critique. As if labeling something “cultural” makes it untouchable. As if “tradition” means it can’t be interrogated.
But the truth is:
Any tradition that depends on controlling women is not sacred. It’s strategic.
Any culture that thrives on punishing bodily autonomy is not neutral. It’s political.
Culture and tradition are not inherently good. They’re tools—and like any tool, they can be used to liberate or to subjugate. What I reject is the idea that just because a practice is old or widespread, it deserves immunity from criticism.
So no, I’m not giving culture a pass.
I’m saying: don’t let them hide behind it.
Let’s name what it is:
If a system denies women care, freedom, or survival—it is oppression, no matter how long it’s been around or who claims it’s tradition.
Want to dig deeper into a specific example—like religious hospital policies, or legal justifications for forced birth? I’d love to go there.
My view of culture and tradition is that these represent creative fabrications intended to codify ways of dealing with perceived realities. Culture and tradition fail when they cease to represent the best account of reality easily perceived by the subjects of these fabrications. When the religious authorities persecute those who properly identify the sun as being the center of the solar system or that pregnancy is a delicate complicated process not involving some captive person, child or baby, then culture and tradition has failed and has begun to poison the society that it should claim to benefit.
Exactly—this is such a sharp and necessary reframing.
Culture and tradition are not sacred in themselves; they are human-made tools, fabrications, as you rightly say—designed to interpret, shape, and guide how a society understands the world. They are at their best when they evolve with new knowledge, when they make life more livable, just, and meaningful for those living it.
But when culture and tradition become fossilized, clung to out of fear or control, they stop serving people and start disciplining them.
They become weapons—used to silence truth-tellers, punish scientific clarity, and uphold fictions that benefit the powerful.
Galileo wasn’t persecuted because he was wrong—he was persecuted because he was right, and his truth threatened a fabricated worldview that had become too politically and theologically profitable to surrender.
The same is happening now with reproductive rights.
Pregnancy isn’t simple. It’s not a moral binary. It’s a biological, emotional, and social complexity that doesn’t fit into patriarchal tradition. So rather than adapt tradition to reality, they punish anyone who speaks the truth about it.
That’s when tradition becomes poison.
Not because it started evil—but because it refused to evolve.
Yes, yes and yes. Although I would not qualify the problem as strictly patriarchal even while that is a completely fair characterization.
Agreed.