the magdalene sisters

Just watched the most incredible film and had to come and look it up online. Its based on a true story of the Magdalene asylums in Ireland where all the so-called fallen women were sent. The nuns are completely dastardly and brutal, and its hard to believe that the last of these places closed only in 1996, but I expect they weren't quite the same. The film was only set in 1964. Very moving and shocking, and makes you just hate all men and the injustice of society at the end. I'm not sure if that is just Irish society circa 1964, or in general. Reminded me very much of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Bernadette in the film is a great character, especially in the last scene in the asylum.

Apparently it was 'denounced vigorously' by the Vatican, but it was created using the stories of many women, to quote: "While The Magdalene Sisters is a work of fiction, the abuses it depicts are allegedly based on credible survivor accounts of life in the Magdalene institutions, which are said to have taken in as many as 30,000 women between their inception in the 1880s and their final closing in 1996. In fact, there are reports that, according to some survivors, the abuses depicted in The Magdalene Sisters actually fall short of the worst that really happened, and the director himself has commented that he refrained from recreating the most terrible reported incidents for fear of overwhelming and alienating the audience. " (from, of all places, http://www.decentfilms.com/)

The same article quoted above raises an interesting point about stereotyping. As much as Muslims hate to be stereotyped as terrorists and wife-beaters, Catholic priests and nuns must hate the association with child abuse. However, neither they nor we should hide from the realities of what goes on, or has gone on in our societies. OK, so not every Muslim father forces his daughters to marry their cousins back home at 16. But do we do anything about it when it happens? Do we make it a collective responsibility to eradicate the social ills we constantly apologise for? This is a huge failure on our part.

This is beginning to turn into a piece for the SuperRahman blog, so maybe I will give her a chance to step in here...(once I remind her to read this page)