Honor Diaries Essay

In Honor Diaries, a group of nine female activists come together to discuss issues faced by women and girls, specifically with a focus on Muslim-majority societies. These nine women touch on an array of issues but emphasize major topics such as female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and honor violence. All the topics revolve around one major concept which is honor. The women argue that honor is contained in women and it is to be guarded by men (Basch-Harod, Kweskin, Traiman, & Smith, 2013). Additionally, they state that honor lies in a women’s body, in what she does, and in what she says. The word honor is just a nice replacement for saying that males control females. This representation of Muslim women is flawed for it gives the impression …show more content…
Furthermore, statistics are used to back up the number of forced marriages, female genital mutilations, and honor killings. But, these statistics are used selectively for we don’t know if there has been an increase in these issues or a decrease because these statistics are the ones that give ground to the arguments made in the movie. When such points and examples are constantly brought up throughout the film it is bound to give the audience an impression that Muslim women are oppressed, suffering, and in need of dire help and that these issues are mainly prevalent in Muslim societies. So, the representation of Muslim women in Honor Diaries is very distorted for an array of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that the nine activists are all women who have claimed that they have “escaped” from all these events while they had the chance. These women have not been victims of the issues they talk about. The movie also does not provide a perspective of the women who have actually been through such events and what they have to say. The film provides an unbalanced, one sided, and biased view which doesn’t allow for the whole picture to be