Lara Logan May Be Afraid, But She Won’t Hide

There’s no doubt that in times of war we all have an instinct to protect women and children, especially when sexual assault is often used as a weapon.

Believe it or not, Lara Logan is one of the lucky ones. She got to come back to the United States to see her family. Unlike many of these women who suffer in silence, Lara vocalizes her pain and receives an outpouring of support from children, teachers, organizations and rape victims. Lara is able to speak out against her attackers when some women in war-torn countries are simply too scared to tell their stories.

This is one of the reasons that Lara is a journalist in the first place. She sees the importance of telling people’s stories. She seeks the truth and tells it from a unique perspective. While it would ease our minds to forbid women like Lara to go places like Egypt (instead having them stay at their local news stations and cover fluff stories to ensure their safety), it would leave a gaping hole in journalism and we would lack the benefits of looking at war from a woman’s point of view.

Lara herself knows that no good will come of staying at home and living in fear. She has now come out and told her story. As she says, she’s not ready yet, but she will go back. She wants to be in Libya. She wants to tell those stories. Although she’s at risk, she knows that millions of other women are too. Their stories are significant. If we don’t tell them, it’s almost as if they don’t exist. The reality of violence against women is lost to the joys of liberation.

Sadly, many people just don’t see it this way. They argue that while these other women don’t have a choice, many times having difficulty escaping their homelands and seeking asylum, Logan did. She was working in Egypt during the revolution when Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11, 2011. They can’t feel sorry for a blond white woman risking her life to tell a few stories. Who is she actually helping anyway?

The truth is that if we have this attitude, where we would rather save ourselves than give voice to the worldwide sexual assault epidemic that women face every day in their own countries, and especially in times of civil unrest and war, we will never attack the problem at its root. We can’t help the problem by brushing it under the table, especially when it’s staring at us right in the face.

Watching this broadcast, you see tears stream down Lara’s face and you hear her suffering, but you also hear that she has the will to triumph over it. She’s scared as an individual woman, but becoming part of a collective has re-lit the fire inside her.

It’s horrible and it shouldn’t have happened to her or anyone woman for that matter, but even more now than at any time, she knows she can’t alienate herself from the struggle. She’s intimately connected to it and, bravely, chooses to speak out about it.

Contact the author here: tinybart@morningquickie.com