The parody of “Angry Birds” throws a spotlight on dowry demands and harassment.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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BBC on growing use of Sharia by UK Muslims
IKWRO is campaigning to bring an end to the practice. “The councils are dominated by men, who are making judgements in favour of men,” said Diana Nammi.
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The Guardian is defending sharia again
It’s disturbing that ‘leading’ barristers and newspapers can say Sharia is compatible with human rights whilst it amputates, stones to death, imposes veiling, and kills apostates.
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Top Muslim Brotherhood woman on women’s rights
“When a woman marches to defend her rights, this affronts her dignity.”
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On her own she will not be able to get her rights
There’s a woman in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Apparently she’s there to spread the word to women. She does that.
Speaking to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper Saturday, Abul Hassan argued that “When a woman marches to defend her rights, this affronts her dignity.”
She added that “Does she not have a husband, a brother or a son to defend her?”
Because, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, “dignity” for a woman means being passive and hidden and dependent on male relatives. That’s interesting, because to me that means degradation, not dignity at all. It means subordination, which implies inferiority. It’s hard to see how that can be “dignity.”
“This march was a sectarian one, because all the groups of Egyptian society should defend women. She should not defend herself on her own. The man should stand beside the woman because on her own she will not be able to get her rights,” said Abul Hassan.
Because the Muslim Brotherhood won’t let her.
H/t Małgorzata Koraszewska.
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This will feel a little cold
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the move to erase women wanders even deeper into Bizarroland.
The controversial exclusion of women from various settings in Israel because of pressure from ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders reached a new level this week with a major conference on gynecological advances that is permitting only males to address the audience.
Yes you read that right. A major conference on advances in medical management of women’s plumbing excluded women. Well what’s it got to do with them, after all? If they don’t want a man’s arm up them, they shouldn’t have been born with female plumbing. If they don’t want men and only men telling them what’s what about their plumbing, they should…um…well they should sit down and shut up.
Women are allowed in the audience, in a section separate from men.
Ah, that’s nice. That’s very generous.
As far as Puah is concerned, it operates on a strictly kosher basis, as required by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. While there are women on its board of directors, its public face is strictly male, and the two sexes are not allowed to mix at its events.
Because the rabbinate is strictly male, because it always was strictly male, so it’s not about to change now, is it, so it says the public face has to be strictly male too, because it always has been, because let’s face it, women are dirty and weak and whoreish and stupid and treacherous, so obviously they can’t be part of the public face and they can’t mix with men and get dirty weak whoreishness all over them.
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I see a T shirt
We need a “We are all evil little things” T shirt.
And a banner, and a coffee mug, and a letterhead. And a pony.
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Peter Palumbo
I saw this on Jessica Ahlquist’s twitter feed a few hours ago:
State representative Palumbo called me an “evil little thing.”
Just now I was about to google for details preparatory to doing a post, but JT Eberhard got there first.
Peter G. Palumbo, the Democrat in the RI House from the Cranston district, has no rebukes for the Jesus-loving liars, bullies, or thugs. He has nothing negative to say about the people who felt they were above the Constitution and lied to subvert it. He did, however, have something to say about Jessica. According to Palumbo she is “An evil little thing.” That may have bee said sarcastically, but the line “I think she’s being coerced by evil people” was most assuredly not.
I urge you to listen to him say that. It’s the first soundbite on the page, and it’s just a few seconds. Don’t listen if you have high blood pressure or a stomach ache. It’s disgusting – two grown men sneering at a high school girl who had the audacity to uphold the Constitution.
JT says it more better:
Palumbo’s email address is rep-palumbo@rilin.state.ri.us. His office phone number is (401) 785-2882. Spread the word and inundate him. Our leaders should respect the constitution, not snipe at those who have been been confirmed to have fought in its defense. Palumbo has just sided with dishonesty and bullies.
Drop him a line.
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Où sont les neiges
So it made up its mind and snowed at last. Then it stopped and I went out to walk around and look at it. It was pretty. Melting fast, but pretty. It doesn’t snow much here.
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The crime of Moska
So that’s how it’s possible to treat rape victims as perps.
Just 21, Gulnaz had been released that week from prison, where she had given birth to her daughter Moska. Gulnaz seemed younger than her years, but she held my gaze almost defiantly as she told her story.
She had been imprisoned in a Kabul women’s jail after her cousin’s husband raped her.
The crime came to light when the unmarried Gulnaz became pregnant.
The police came and arrested both Gulnaz and her attacker. Under Afghan law she too was found guilty of a crime known as “adultery by force”, with her sentence increased on appeal to 12 years.
Oh, I see! Afghan law doesn’t have a crime of rape, apparently, it has “adultery by force” and both parties are the perps as opposed to one party being the perp and the other being the victim.
That’s interesting. Usually we* think of serious crime as being a crime because there are victims; that’s why laws against actions that can be considered “victimless” are contested.
Imagine everything rearranged in a way comparable to “adultery by force.” You would get…”Suicide by force.” “Redistribution of wealth by force.” “Cosmetic surgery by force.” “Home visits by force.” “Account transfer by force.”
In what we would call murder, it’s not one person doing a bad thing to another person, it’s two people teaming up to do a bad thing to…….to whom? The owner of one of them? The owner of both of them, “god”? “The community”?
Never mind. I’m just playing silly buggers. I know that’s not how it works with other crimes. It’s just rape that works that way, because rape involves a woman (except when it doesn’t – there are those dancing boys in Afghanistan), and women always belong to men, so whatever is done to a woman is actually done not to the woman but to the man she belongs to. It’s not an assault on the woman, it’s adultery which is a bad thing done to the woman’s husband (certainly not to the rapist’s wife – don’t go getting that idea).
I suppose Gulnaz’s daughter – the one conceived as a result of the “adultery by force” – is guilty of “birth by force” and will be sentenced to 12 years in prison as soon as she’s old enough to use the potty by herself.
*By “we” I mean people who try to think about things, not “we in the West” or the like.
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Jerusalem: gynecology conference bars women speakers
Women are allowed in the audience, in a section separate from men.
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Helen Lewis-Hasteley on the pinkification of toys
If a girl wants a construction set, how is making her feel abnormal going to encourage her – and her parents – to spend money at your store?
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Skepticlawyer on a suit against a blogger
And on feminism, religion, debates about porn and abortion.
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What future for Afghan woman jailed for being raped?
The police arrested both Gulnaz and her rapist. Under Afghan law she too was found guilty of a crime known as “adultery by force.”
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Amartya Sen on identity
From Identity and Violence:
My disturbing memories of Hindu-Muslim riots in India in the 1940s…include seeing – with the bewildered eyes of a child – the massive identity shifts that followed divisive politics. A great many persons’ identities as Indians, as subcontinentals, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way – quite suddenly – to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities. The carnage that followed had much to do with elementary herd behavior by which people were made to “discover” their newly detected belligerent identities, without subjecting the process to critical examination. The same people were suddenly different.
So were their identities really “Hindu” or “Muslim” or were they not? If Sen is right, their religious identities suddenly expanded in size and overpowered all their other identities, which means that they were mutable as opposed to fixed. Identities that can swell can also deflate. This is worth remembering.
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Janet Heimlich on Helen Ukpabio
We must examine what role authority figures play in failing to protect children from abuse or, worse, inciting violence against children.
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Dainty boxing
A couple of months old, but too stupid and bad to overlook.
Women will be boxing at the Olympics for the first time this year. And…can you guess what follows?
Geniuses in the International Amateur Boxing Association think maybe they should wear skirts.
Skirts.
For boxing.
Really? Really? It’s so important that everyone should have easy access to women’s Little Special Place that they have to wear skirts even for boxing? So that when they fall down everyone can check for visible pubic hair?
What’s next? Rules requiring women to wear high heels, a plunging neckline, lipstick, earrings, long hair?
Adults and Tiaras.
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Mary Raftery
Ms Raftery was best known for her ‘States of Fear’ documentary series, which revealed the extent of physical and sexual abuse suffered by children in Irish industrial schools and residential institutions.
It led to the creation of the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse.
In 2002, her ‘Cardinal Secrets’ programme for RTÉ’s Prime Time led to the setting up of the Murphy Commission of Investigation into clerical abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
So did survivors of abuse.
Andrew Madden, the former altar boy abused by a senior Dublin cleric, said Ms Raftery had understood that the Church’s concealment of child sexual abuse was systemic, but that it could best be exposed by helping survivors to share personal experiences.
He said that her work had provided a way for some survivors to do that.
The organisation Survivors of Child Abuse said all survivors will forever remember her enormous contribution to revealing historical abuse in the country’s enclosed institutions.
Its spokesman, John Kelly, said each survivor owed a great deal to her steadfast courage that brought hope where there was despair and vindication when it was sorely needed. He said their hearts and prayers were with her family.
So did politicians.
Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín O Caoláin said she had given a voice to the voiceless, including victims of abuse and, more recently, to those who suffered in psychiatric institutions. He said she had forced governments to act.
Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald said Ms Raftery had played an essential role in the alerting the country to its child protection duties.
She said her ground-breaking documentaries such as “Cardinal Secrets” brought home to viewers the squalid prevalence of child sexual abuse while emphasizing the life-long damage it could inflict on those abused.
So did journalists.
Seamus Dooley, Irish Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said Ms Raftery ”will be mourned by all who knew and respected her as a fearless journalist”.
He said she was someone “who was always willing to ask awkward questions, to seek out uncomfortable facts and to shine a light in the darkest corners of Irish society”.
The Irish Times Editor Kevin O’Sullivan said Ms Raftery’s journalism ”fearlessly exposed the gross failures of Church and State in looking after some of the most vulnerable and damaged of people in Irish society”.
He said her work lifted ”so many layers of institutional secrecy”.
Ireland needed her.
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RTÉ on Mary Raftery
She was best known for her ‘States of Fear’ series, which revealed the extent of physical and sexual abuse of children in Irish industrial schools and residential institutions.