Never never be born a girl in Afghanistan. Never.

A girl who says she is nine years old was captured at a checkpoint in Afghanistan wearing a suicide vest. The BBC reports her story as she told it.

It was late evening, the mullah was calling for prayers and my brother took me outside and told me to put on this vest. He showed me how to operate it, and I said: “I can’t – what if it doesn’t work?” And he said: ‘It will, don’t worry.’

I was scared and he took the vest back from me and he hit me hard, and I felt scared. Then [he gave me back the vest and] left me near the checkpoint where he said I had to operate it.

She wandered off and slept in the desert that night, and in the morning a soldier from the checkpoint found her.

When I told the commander my story he told me to go back home and I said: “No, they beat me there and I am not treated well.”

He said: “OK, well if you’re not going home then we have to take you to the provincial capital.” That’s when they brought me [to Lashkar Gah and] I spoke to another commander, the senior commander, and that’s how I come to be here.

Even if the government says it will guarantee my safety I am not going back – the same thing will happen again. They told me: “If you don’t do it this time, we will make you do it again.”

That’s a loving family she has.

My father came here and told me to go back and I said: “No, I will kill myself rather than go with you.”

I don’t have a mother, I have a stepmother and she was not very nice to me.

I did everything at home. I cooked, I made bread, I washed clothes, I cleaned the whole house and they still weren’t happy – they would treat me badly, as if I was a slave.

I didn’t go to school because they didn’t let me. I can’t read a word, I can’t pronounce anything. It’s because I wasn’t taught – nobody taught me how… of course I want to go to school.

My brother told me: “You’re here in this world and you will die. You are not here to learn or to do other things or to expect that your word will carry any weight. You are here just to die and do your duty.”

Never, never, never be born a girl in Afghanistan.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From last week, the BBC reports another political murder in northwest Pakistan.

On a hot and humid night in late August, a small group quietly scales the wall of a mud-brick house in a village near Pakistan’s north-western town of Akora Khatak.

In the dim, starlit courtyard, they make out the figures of a man and a woman lying in two separate charpoy cots, sleeping. About 15 minutes later, they walk out through the main door, leaving the couple in pools of blood.

So we know roughly what’s coming. The two were of the “wrong” family or ethnic group or caste for each other; or the woman had been ordered to marry someone else; or the woman’s younger brother had been accused of something or other.

The code is simple: Any contact, even just communication between a man and a woman outside of customary wedlock is considered a breach of the honour of the woman’s family, and gives it the right to seek bloody revenge.

The woman’s family must first kill her and then go after the man.

The mere expression of suspicion by the woman’s family is enough evidence and the community demands no further proof.

The mere expression of suspicion is enough to justify murder of two people, no questions asked. So if a woman’s brother or father gets irritated with her, he can simply express suspicion and wham, she’s gone. (I’m betting it doesn’t work if a woman’s sister or mother tries to use that trick, because obviously a woman’s claim is worth less than nothing.)

One person who hopes to change that is Rukhsana Bibi, now a widow, who claims that she survived an “honour killing” in a village near Akora Khatak and has taken the unusual step of publicly speaking out, trying to seek justice through the legal system.

Ms Bibi suffered horrific chest and leg injuries when she and husband, Mohammad Yunus, were victims of a brutal attack while they lay sleeping in the courtyard in Akora Khatak. Her husband was murdered, but Ms Bibi survived with seven bullets in her body: two in the chest, three in the left leg and two in the left hip.

And then we get to what happened. I called it – it was the one about the woman being promised to some other man, as if she were a piece of furniture boxed up ready for shipment.

Ms Bibi tells me that she met Mr Yunus – a student of medical technology – at a village wedding in the summer of 2011. They fell in love with each other at first sight.

Although their meetings were rare, they frequently spoke to each other on their mobile phones.

She describes how their relationship went on like this until April, when her family arranged her marriage to a distant relative, an uneducated cattle tender in her village.

Unhappy and frustrated, she and Mr Yunus decided to run away.

They married in the north-west before going into hiding in the Akora Khatak area.

Well pieces of furniture aren’t allowed to decide for themselves whom to marry.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And in Mauritania – another journalist, another criticism of Mo, another “apostasy” claim, another potential death sentence. “Mo is the best thing ever and if you deny it we’ll kill you!” Well that sure convinces me.

A young journalist in Mauritania faces a possible death sentence after being convicted of apostasy for an article criticising the prophet Mohammed, AFP reported Monday (January 6th).

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed was arrested January 2nd in Nouadhibou and “was convicted of lack of respect for the prophet”, a judicial source told AFP.

And then the private sector got involved.

In Nouadhibou, a businessman even offered up money to anyone willing to kill Ould Mohamed.

In describing the January 3rd incident, Nouadhibou-based journalist Mostafa el-Sayed told Magharebia that “businessman and preacher Abi Ould Ali, a resident of Nouadhibou, said during a protest against the offending article that he was willing to pay 4,000 euros to anyone who killed the young author, unless he announced his repentance within three days.”

Yet many who denounced the article were angered by the businessman’s incitement to murder, saying it pushed society towards terrorism.

Not to mention that lacking respect for “the prophet” should not be a crime in the first place, let alone a capital crime.

“Those who incite to murder want to terrorise us,” young researcher Salihy Ould Ab said. They are just a group of salafists and Islamists who want us to erase our minds and refrain from thinking and criticism.”

“They are inciting people to kill a young man just because he wrote an analytical article in which he referred to some of the positions of the Prophet Mohammed. This means that Mauritania is on the verge of entering an era of terrorism,” Ould Ab wrote on his Facebook page.

It’s good to know that there are sensible people in Mauritania along with the vigilantes and theocrats.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Yemisi - Gay Cameroonian, Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé, imprisoned for sending love text message to same-sex person, dies.

That’s appalling.

He was sent to prison in March 2011 for sending a text message declaring his love for another adult human.  The message was a simple “I’m very much in love with you”. How does such a message constitute harm? Why should this lead to imprisonment?

Cameroonian activist, Lambert Lamda, said Mbédé had been out of hospital for about a month before he died and had received no medical care during that period.  ’”His family said they were going to remove the homosexuality which is in him. I went to see him in his village. He could not stand up, he couldn’t speak.”

 He couldn’t get a visa to leave Cameroon.

In July 2013, a prominent Cameroonian gay rights activist and journalist Eric Lembembe was gruesomely murdered. Mr Lembembe’s neck and feet was broken and his face, hands, and feet burned with an iron. How many more will die before the world wakes up to its responsibility? This horrific treatment of a person because of their sexual orientation is why we bother.

Hiding under culture, religion or inhumane laws to commit crimes against humanity must be thoroughly condemned. Silence is simply acquiescence to oppression.

The hell with religion, culture and inhumane laws that allow or encourage crimes against humanity.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Here are Chris and Abhishek on the BBC show The Big Questions. The question, you will remember, was “Should human rights always outweigh religious rights?”

There’s also Tina Beattie, and a guy called Davis Mac-Iyalla saying yes they should, and (I skipped ahead) hot disagreement about (male) circumcision.

I skipped all the way ahead to get to the Chris and Abhishek part at about 50 minutes. They unzipped their jackets as requested to reveal the (shock-horror) Jesus and Mo T shirts.

Do they have the right to wear such T shirts? No, the woman in a hijab sitting (reluctantly) next to them says. No, another woman in a hijab in the back row says. “When you’re threatening our religion,” she explains twice. Of course, the T shirts don’t threaten her/their religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ5X_lPXnvU

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ah the tragedy of manhood today, having to live in a “feminized” atmosphere in which being a bully isn’t unreservedly admired by 100% of everyone. Britt Hume of Fox “News” is sad and upset about the tragedy. He blames women.

During a panel discussion on the Fox News show Media Buzz, host Howard Kurtz asked if [Governor Chris] Christie’s “bully image” was hurting him after his administration was accused for closing part of the busiest bridge in the world to hurt his political opponents.

“I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and are kind of old-fashioned tough guys run some risks,” Hume opined.

Oh I know. It’s so sad. All Governor Christie did was create a colossal traffic jam for his own purely selfish reasons. In normal times, before all this feminization nonsense, who would have objected to that? No one! All those people stuck on the approach to the George Washington Bridge, breathing exhaust fumes and late for work – would they have frowned on a little piece of mischief like that? No in thunder! Because in those days men were men and women were at home putting the corn flakes away and nobody had anything but love for bullying and spite.

“Feminized!” Fox News contributor Lauren Ashburn gasped.

“Atmosphere,” Hume nodded. “By which I mean that men today have learned the lesson the hard way that if you act like kind of an old-fashioned guy’s guy, you’re in constant danger of slipping out and saying something that’s going to get you in trouble and make you look like a sexist or make you look like you seem thuggish or whatever. That’s the atmosphere in which we operate.”

“This guy is very much an old-fashioned masculine, muscular guy,” he added. “And there are political risks associated with that. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but that’s how it is.”

Of course it shouldn’t be. Good god. If a guy is big and muscular well then he should be punching his subordinates every chance he gets. Anything else is a surrender to the forces of feminization! This terrible smothering atmosphere in which adults are expected to refrain from abusing their muscles or even their political office which they earned fair and square by being big and muscular – well it’s a scandal, that’s all. God damn sissy women killing all the buzzes.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Dave Ricks posted the link to Emily Lakdawalla’s post on why rocks are evenly spaced on Mars so I read it so now I have to share it More.

On Mars there are rocks everywhere. The difference is that Mars’ landscape is shaped in large part by impact processes. Far-away impacts can toss rocks for miles, and they fall where they land. So it’s not particularly surprising that you see rocks everywhere, even in flat places on Mars. What is a bit surprising is their even spacing. Here’s an example of a rock-strewn landscape selected more or less at random from the early part of Spirit’s mission, when it was dashing across the flat plains to the east of its landing site toward the Columbia Hills.

NASA / JPL / Cornell / calibrated color by Daniel Crotty

She adds a closeup of some rocks and then explains how they get to be evenly spread.

…the wind doesn’t move the rocks, at least not directly. What the wind does do is lift sand; sand particles jump (or “saltate”) along the ground, knocking into each other and launching more sand particles. When the wind runs into a rock, it loops and whirls, scouring the area right in front of the rock. Over time, it digs a pit in front of the rock. At the same time, the sand that was scoured from in front of the rock gets deposited in the wind shadow behind the rock. Do this for long enough, dig a steep-sided enough pit, and one random day the rock will tip forward, rolling in the upwind direction, into the pit. Rinse and repeat, and you get rocks trooping across the landscape over time. (The press release didn’t give a time scale for this process.)

That explains how rocks can move, but how does it explain an even spacing? Well, according to the release, when you have a cluster of rocks, “those in the front of the group shield those in the middle or on the edges from the wind, Pelletier said. Because the middle and outer rocks are not directly hit by the wind, the wind creates pits to the sides of those rocks. Therefore, they roll to the side, not directly into the wind, and the cluster begins to spread out.”

Well how stinkin’ cool is that? Not to mention the photo.

We live in interesting times.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More from Ann Elizabeth Mayer’s long article A “Benign” Apartheid: How Gender Apartheid Has Been Rationalized.

Taking advantage of the failure of CEDAW expressly to rule out any culture-based justifications for gender discrimination and playing to cultural relativist sympathies, states have frequently resorted to culture to defend discriminatory laws and policies. For example, many Muslim countries have entered reservations when ratifying CEDAW, saying that they must qualify their obligations in order to uphold Islamic law and speaking as if it were obvious that women’s rights had to be sacrificed where conflicting religious precepts were at stake.87 Appeals to Islam may be used in combination with appeals to the complementarity thesis, with claims being made that countries are obliged to treat women in ways that
recognize women’s different nature and the different roles that women should play, ideas that are often linked to religious teachings that are imbued with patriarchal ideas. For example, Morocco included language in its reservation to Article 16 of CEDAW giving men and women equality in the family, saying: “Equality of this kind is considered incompatible with the Islamic Shariah, which guarantees to each of the spouses right and responsibilities within a framework of equilibrium and complementarity in order to preserve the sacred bond of matrimony;” and Egypt in reserving to the same article said it was doing so in the interests of upholding Islamic law in which “women are accorded rights equivalent to those of their spouses so as to ensure a just balance between them.”88

87 See Rebecca Cook, Reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 30 VA. J. INT’L L. 643, 687-91, 694-95, 701-06 (1990); Belinda Clark, The Vienna Convention Reservations Regime and the Convention on Discrimination Against Women, 85 AM. J. INT’L L. 285, 291, 299-300, 310-12, 371 (1991); Jane Connors, The Women’s Convention in the Muslim World, in FEMINISM AND ISLAM: LEGAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES 351-71 (Mai Yamani ed., 1996).

88 For a discussion of the Moroccan and Egyptian reservations, see Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Rhetorical Strategies and Official Policies on Women’s Rights: The Merits and Drawbacks of the New World Hypocrisy, in FAITH AND FREEDOM: WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD, 106-13 (Mahnaz Afkhami ed., 1995).

Which is exactly like the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which adds a reservation to nearly every right of the form “as long as it complies with Sharia” – which of course makes many of the rights completely empty and worthless.

Although reservations by which Middle Eastern countries have sought to excuse themselves from compliance with various CEDAW provisions have been vigorously criticized by advocates of women’s rights and have also provoked objections from some other states parties, the international community has taken no effective steps to curb such reservations. One reason is that attempts to deter the practice of reservations in conflict with the object and purpose of CEDAW have met with resistance in the form of
accusations that these were tantamount to Western attacks on Islam and/or the Third World.89 An attempt made in 1987 by the CEDAW Committee to examine the basis for reservations that used Islam as the grounds for non-compliance in a study “on the status of women under Islamic laws and customs and in particular on the status and equality of women in the family” resulted in a strong diplomatic backlash.90 Muslim countries quickly rallied to stop this project, intimating that the CEDAW Committee was engaged in cultural imperialism and attacking Islam.91

Does that sound familiar? Jaw-clenchingly familiar? Yes it does. It’s what Maryam gets told all the time. It’s what got Taslima’s tv serial shut down when mullahs said it might hurt someone’s sentiments, even though the serial is not about religion. It’s what makes ostensible feminists and progressives passionately defend the hijab from criticism, always including that stupid cartoon -

 - as if criticism of the hijab were exactly the same as snatching one off someone’s head.

The study was abandoned in the face of concerted pressures from Muslim countries, proving that it was not hard to mobilize effective opposition to CEDAW by using claims grounded in Islamic culture and religion. After this episode, one appreciates that the fear of inflaming Muslim opinion may inhibit initiatives to curb the practice of CEDAW reservations that are made under an Islamic rubric. Reviewing this situation, one scholar has noted that CEDAW effectively seems to have a lesser status than other human rights conventions, being treated more as a statement of intent than as a set of internationally binding obligations, and that the culturally-sensitive nature of the content is a factor influencing countries to see CEDAW more as rhetoric than as international law.92

92 See Clark, supra note 87, at 285-86.

It’s a very bad arrangement.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Smithsonian Magazine offers snapshots taken by Spirit and Opportunity over the past ten years.

Another bow to the engineers. They figured the two Rovers would last three months. Spirit lasted six years and Opportunity is still working, a decade in.

Check out the rounded rocks. A long-gone river?

A closeup of tiny spherical rocks clustered in a square inch of the Martian surface, captured by Opportunity. Full size version. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS/Cathy Weitz)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Seen on Twitter:

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The facts

The story of Ryan J. Bell has created quite a bit of buzz these past few days. For those that aren’t familiar, on December 31, Bell -the former senior pastor at the Hollywood Seventh-Day Adventist Church- announced he would be “trying on” atheism for a year. As he said in a blog post announcing this:

So, I’m making it official and embarking on a new journey. I will “try on” atheism for a year. For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.

Per Dan Burke at the CNN Religion Blog:

The seeds of Bell’s journey were planted last March, when he was asked to resign as pastor of a Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Hollywood.

He had advocated for the church to allow gay and lesbian leaders, campaigned against California’s same-sex marriage ban and disputed deeply held church doctrines about the End Times.

Eventually, his theological and political liberalism became more than leaders in the denomination could bear, and he lost his career of 19 years. His faith was shaken, and for a while Bell became a “religious nomad.”

By January 3, Bell had been let go from his adjunct teaching positions at Christian at Azusa Pacific University (APU) and Fuller Theological Seminary as well as his consulting agreement with the Glendale City Seventh-day Adventist Church, leaving him with no sources of income.

On January 6, Hemant Mehta of the “Friendly Atheist” blog started an online fundraiser for Bell which has to date raised over $26,000 from an initial goal of $5,000. Mehta had originally been critical of Bell’s year long experiment.

The Narrative

On the blog post announcing the fundraiser, Mehta wrote:

I think it’s important to show that, unlike the Christian organizations, we support someone who’s willing to put his own beliefs under the microscope. Furthermore, we’ll support his experiment even if he doesn’t end up becoming an atheist.

What a disappointing response from the Christian schools and church.

Not unexpected, just disappointing.

One thing’s for sure: Bell just got a dose of reality from his experiment. A lot of atheists remain in the closet precisely because they’re afraid of the ramifications of coming out. They’re afraid of losing their families, friends, or jobs. Bell lost some of those, just for saying he was exploring life without God.

Speaking to Burke, Mehta elaborated:

“He learned what it’s like to be an atheist real fast,” said Hemant Mehta, a prominent atheist blogger and schoolteacher in Illinois.

Mehta said he knows many atheists who fear that “coming out of the closet” will jeopardize their jobs and relationships, just as in Bell’s experience.

…

“I think more than anything else, people appreciate that this guy is giving atheism a shot,” Mehta said. “I mean, he lost three jobs in the span of a week just for saying he was exploring it.”

Why I think this narrative is flawed

Let me start by saying I think Bell’s story has a lot going for it on the “Atheism vs Christianity” front. For one thing, he’s a charismatic former evangelical pastor who has decided to oppose church positions on key progressive issues. For another, he’s willing to potentially leave behind entirely the religious beliefs and practices he’s espoused for most of his adult life. All this in full public view. In addition, it’s hard not to sympathize with the plight of a father with two children who’s life is rapidly changing and has just lost his livelihood-all for seemingly just dabbling in atheism, much less being a outspoken anti-theist.

However, there are two aspects of Mehta’s narrative where I believe he is missing the mark:1) That Bell’s experience of losing his employment has somehow taught him “what it’s like to be an atheist” and 2) That the response from the schools and church that he was working for was somehow unwarranted.

It is true that many atheists keep their convictions to themselves to protect themselves from employment discrimination or harassment, or even just to avoid rocking the boat with their religious co-workers. It is also true that there are employers who would take punitive action against an employee due to a difference in religious convictions or indeed a lack of same. The reason that such retaliation is so insidious however, is that the difference in religious convictions is unrelated to the task at hand. For the vast majority of jobs in secular workplaces, a worker’s atheism is no more a help nor a hindrance then her colleague’s belief in Christianity, Islam, or any other religion.

Some atheists might nonetheless argue that Bell’s non-committal decision to simply give atheism a try ought to be a mitigating factor. To those people, I would request that they ask themselves how they would react if the situation were reversed (while recognizing that such comparisons are rarely precisely equivalent). Would they support with equal enthusiasm an atheist organization that continues to pay for the services of one of their public representatives while that representative goes on their year-long journey of spiritual discovery to blog on a website called for instance “myyearwithjesus.com”? And most importantly, would the cancellation of said employee’s contract be an example of the “jeopardy” Christians face when coming out in the workplace? I would imagine that such an argument would be met with very little sympathy if not outright laughter among even the most tolerant of atheists.

But let’s come even closer to people with Bell’s circumstances and examine members of the clergy who have become atheists with the passage of time and who face many challenges as a result. The Clergy Project is an especially valuable initiative for them. My understanding of what these clergy members typically seek for their next career stop is to transition away from being paid to serve their faith communities. I would be very surprised if many of these clergy members have the reasonable expectation of remaining employed as religious leaders or as seminary teachers after coming out as atheists.

Atheists are right to be outraged when their atheism precludes them from performing secular functions. But how many atheists feel that their opportunities in life are somehow limited by being shut out of teaching positions at Christian seminaries?

This brings me to my second objection. The flip side of atheists not having the reasonable expectation that they ought to have equal opportunities to teach at Bell’s former employers APU and Fuller is that these employers are under no obligation – legal or moral – to entertain Bell’s recent experimentation with atheism. The fact that he’s simply giving it a shot doesn’t change the fact that he is publicly stating his intention to not follow the tenets that they require him to uphold. Regardless of his admirable sincerity and pleasant demeanor, make no mistake that Bell is creating a confrontation, albeit under the guise of “just asking questions”. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would imagine that the fact that this confrontation comes just a few months after another public falling out with the same church’s leadership also played a role in their decision.

Conclusion

Sympathizing with Bell as a person is quite understandable. He’s in a tough spot for all the reasons outlined above, and these no doubt hit home with many atheists. However, animus against his employers by atheists seems misplaced.

The challenges Bell is facing only bear a superficial similarity to those that atheists face in secular workplaces dominated by Christians in the US. If we are trying to tell powerful stories that exemplify these challenges, my recommendation is that we look elsewhere.

Simon Davis is online marketing director at a health care publications company. His writing has appeared in Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines. You can follow him on twitter at @SimonKnowz

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Ottawa Citizen did its “ask the religion experts” question on the winter Olympics and Russia a couple of days ago. Kevin Smith of CFI Canada spoke for the nones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is participating in the same race as many third-world countries, where attacking homosexuality is all the rage; people motivated by goodwill for themselves rather than towards others.

American Christian evangelicals, their influence waning at home, have invaded god-fearing Uganda to spread the morals of their homophobic creator, one whose every command must be obeyed if they are to have eternal life. They have been victorious, although the punishment for being gay is merely life in prison and not, as some had prayed for, the death penalty.

Similarly, Putin, whose policies are failing at home, attempts to solidify his base by taking a page from the fundamentalists, cosying up to the corrupt Orthodox Church and finding a minority scapegoat. Instability requires provocation.

Some people have called for a boycott. However, the 1980 boycott did not shame the Russians from leaving Afghanistan, and it’s doubtful a boycott of the 1936 games would have stopped Hitler from slaughtering Jews and other minorities, including homosexuals.

For two weeks, these Olympics will provide an opportunity for a rainbow coalition of people to take a stance against Putin’s abuse of LGBTQ rights. The world will be watching.

Exactly. I’m hoping it’s the gayest rainbowest Olympics ever.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Glendale California has a statue to “comfort women” which was unveiled on July 30 last year.

Photo by Melissa Wall

Three far-right Japanese politicians want Glendale to remove the statue.

Three members of Japan’s House of Representatives called on Glendale to remove an 1,100-pound statue honoring an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 “comfort women” from Korea, China and other countries who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese army during World War II.

The trio, Mio Sugita of the Hyogo Prefecture, Yuzuru Nishida of Chiba, and Hiromu Nakamaru of Hiroshima, are members of the Japan Restoration Party, a 1-year-old conservative political party that prefers a smaller central government, tax cuts and a hard-line approach to national security.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ann Elizabeth Mayer points out something very significant in her article A “Benign” Apartheid” How Gender Apartheid Has Been Rationalized [pdf].

As the foregoing comparisons between the international human rights documents on racial and gender discrimination have illustrated, the former is far more harshly condemned than the latter. Among other things, there is nothing in CEDAW expressly admonishing that gender discrimination is impossible to justify regardless of motive.

No, I’m sure. That’s because so many people think it is possible to justify. But wouldn’t it be nice if that could change? If we could finally drop all the bullshit about women being “complementary” and having their own “role” and about “family values”?

Although the parallels between racial and gender apartheid are significant, the international community has impliedly accepted various rationalizations for what amounts to gender apartheid–rationalizations like the need to respect natural differences and religious and cultural traditions–that would not be given serious consideration if racial apartheid were at issue.

That state of affairs itself seems almost “natural”…but not all that long ago people did accept various rationalizations for racial apartheid, along with accepting apartheid itself – by which I don’t mean just the South African variety, but also all the de facto segregation in places other than South Africa.

That the Apartheid Convention warns us in Article III that racial apartheid can never be justified and is criminal regardless of motive has already been mentioned. Since critical outsiders felt confident that the power relations inherent in South African-style apartheid were unjust and deserving of the strongest condemnation, any defense of the associated culture/religion became likewise untenable. As discussed by Courtney W. Howland, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision against South Africa in the 1970 Namibia case showed no interest whatsoever in exploring the reasons for South Africa’s apartheid
policies; any such rationales were dismissed out of hand.80 As Howland reminds us, according to Afrikaaners’ religious beliefs there was a divine plan for the roles of Whites and Blacks that mandated Afrikaaners’ supremacy and their domination over Blacks.81 However, the ICJ ruled that the motives for apartheid were irrelevant, and it also deemed that evidence purporting to show the benefits of South African racial policies was immaterial.82

80 Howland, The Challenge of Religious Fundamentalism, at 347-48. 81 id.
81 Id.
82 Id.

That’s interesting, isn’t it? Afrikaaners’ religious beliefs were just dismissed as irrelevant when it came to apartheid. It can be done, so let’s everybody start doing it with gender apartheid too.

That is, attempts to justify racial apartheid by appeals to the motives behind it or its supposed beneficial impact were laughed out of court. Howland concludes that, by now, “[tlhere is no chance that the international community would accept that religious belief justifies systematic racial discrimination.”83 This conclusion seems incontestable. One need only imagine the reaction that would occur if someone tried to attack Nelson Mandela as an enemy of culture and religion on the grounds that his campaign against racial apartheid had been destructive of Afrikaaner traditions and disrespectful of Afrikaaners’ Christian faith in order to appreciate that the principle of racial equality easily trumps conflicting claims based on religion and culture.

In contrast, as will be discussed, room has been left for religion and culture to be successfully invoked to rationalize gender apartheid. A rare instance where the use of culture to justify treatment of women in violation of international human rights law is expressly prohibited is in the 1994 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Article 4 of the Declaration asserts:

States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination. 84

One can surmise why UN delegates agreed that women’s rights could not be curbed by custom, tradition, or religion in circumstances where violence was being used against women.

83 Id. at 349. 1

84 G.A. Res. 48/104, supra note 24, Art. 4.

Because they didn’t want to say “our religion says we can use violence against women.” It would be awkward. But short of violence…it’s a different story.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I missed this when it first aired, but saw it when it was recycled the other day. I think I’ll watch it again online…maybe a few times.

It’s Nova on engineering Curiosity Rover.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Jill Filipovic on harassment of women online. (Hey have you ever noticed that this seems to happen to quite a lot of women? That’s interesting, isn’t it.)

We want to believe that the Internet is different from “real life,” that “virtual reality” is a separate sphere from reality-reality. But increasingly, virtual space is just as “real” as life off of the computer. We talk to our closest friends all day long on G-Chat. We engage with political allies and enemies on Twitter and in blog comment sections. We email our moms and our boyfriends. We like photos of our cousin’s cute baby on Facebook. And if we’re writers, we research, publish and promote our work online. My office is a corner of my apartment, and my laptop is my portal into my professional world. There’s nothing “virtual” about it.

Or separate. It’s really not separate.

Imagine going to work and every few days having people in the hallway walk up to you and say things like, “Die, you dumb cunt” and “you deserve to be raped” and, if you’re a woman of color, adding in the n-word and other racial slurs for good measure. Consider how that would impact your performance and your sense of safety. But you still love your job and your co-workers. That’s how the Internet feels for many of us.

Except for the part about every few days. It’s all day every day. Not walking up to you, to be sure, because blocking, but it’s there.

I know these harassment stories are ubiquitous to the point of being boring. “Women get rape threats” is not news. Amanda Hess helpfully details the actual costs of these threats: The hours of work lost to tracking someone down online, to reporting someone to the police, to developing self-protection mechanisms when the police fail, to, in extreme cases, hiring professional enforcement for speaking gigs. For me, the costs included a law school education, professional contacts, and a robust work life.

But what about the things you can’t put a price on? How many stories weren’t written because the women who could best tell them were too afraid? How many people like me, damaged and lashing out, paid their online cruelties forward? How many women look back at the person they were before their skin thickened, before they learned how to deal, when they were a little more sure-footed, and how many of them grieve a little bit for all the good things that got lost in the process of surviving?

What does an online landscape look like when the women most able to tolerate it are the same ones who are best capable of bucking up and shutting parts of themselves down?

Like this one. It could look a lot better than it does.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Sheema Khan is not keen on the idea of “accommodating” requests for exemption from class participation with the Wrong Gender.

In Muslim communities, gender segregation has led to the marginalization of women, as they are shut out of debate, discussion and decision-making. Under the pretext of “religious purity”, women are discouraged from full participation in community development. At some events sponsored by Muslim campus groups, women are relegated to the back of the hall. At such events, men may freely ask questions; women are encouraged to write their questions on paper, so their voices won’t be heard. Some groups even forbid women speakers, or offer the excuse that there are no qualified females to address the audience. As in the UK, there should be greater scrutiny and debate of accommodations made to groups where gender equality is compromised.

Professor Grayson should be commended for taking a principled stand. Allowing such an exemption will open the door to further requests that are contrary to the advances made in gender equality. Just ask Muslim women. We don’t want to go backwards.

But of course the whole idea behind this “accommodation” is that you don’t ask the women, because it’s a man who requested it. You don’t ask the women and you don’t inform them; you just secretly “accommodate” the man’s request.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Yes I’m all over Russia like a bad rash today. This business of calling for people to be burned alive gets on my nerves.

Human Rights Watch reported on the ECHR’s ruling in October 2010.

In a stinging ruling issued against Russia, the European Court of Human Rights rebuked the Moscow authorities for repeatedly denying activists the right to hold gay pride marches, Human Rights Watch said today. The court, ruling on October 21, 2010, said the ban violated the right to freedom of assembly. It also ruled that the Moscow authorities had unlawfully discriminated against activist Nikolay Aleksandrovich Alekseyev and the organizers of gay pride events on the basis of sexual orientation, and had denied them a remedy having violated their rights.

And yet, oh look, more than three years later they’re behaving worse instead of better.

Alexeyev, a Russian LGBT activist, had requested permission, as required by law, from the-then Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov to hold a peaceful demonstration to draw attention to discrimination against gays and lesbians in Russia, to promote respect for human rights and freedoms, and to call for tolerance on the part of the Russian authorities and the public at large towards gays and lesbians. He requested permission to demonstrate three years in a row, in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Each time the Moscow authorities denied permission on the grounds of public order, prevention of riots, protection of health and morals, and rights and freedoms of others.

Luzhkov repeatedly stated that he would not allow gay activists to hold public events in the streets of Moscow “as long as he was the city mayor.” He claimed that authorizing gay parades would breach the rights of those people whose religious and moral beliefs included a negative attitude towards homosexuality.

Ah yes that one again. It’s what the US Catholic bishops claim about employers having to provide health insurance that includes (gasp) contraception. It’s what B&B owners claim when they want to refuse to rent rooms to gay couples. It’s what theocratic bigots do these days: they wrap their bigotry in the kryptonite of “religious beliefs” in order to violate other people’s rights.

The court reiterated that it would be incompatible with the underlying values of the European Convention if the exercise of rights like the freedom of assembly by a minority group were made conditional on its being accepted by the majority: “Were this so, a minority group’s rights to freedom of religion, expression and assembly would become merely theoretical rather than practical and effective as required by the Convention.”

Rather than banning demonstrations on the basis of their potential to threaten public order and cause riots, the authorities should be fulfilling their duty to ensure that police protect peaceful demonstrators when they are exercising their freedom of assembly, Human Rights Watch said.

The court reminded the Russian government that demonstrators “must be able to hold the demonstration without having to fear that they will be subjected to physical violence by their opponents. It is thus the duty of …[s]tates to take reasonable and appropriate measures to enable lawful demonstrations to proceed peacefully.”

See how that works? Not “you can’t have a march because if you did thugs would beat you up” but “it is our job to make sure thugs don’t beat you up.” The latter is civil society; the former is a failed state.

HRW has been there.

On May 27, 2007 Human Rights Watch was present in Moscow, when Alekseyev and a small group of LGBT activists and their supporters tried to stage a peaceful public demonstration to claim their rights. Anti-gay nationalist groups assaulted them, beating some severely, pelting others with rocks and eggs. Police sided with the violent rather than the victims, failing to protect the peaceful demonstrators. Human Rights Watch documented this in “‘We have the Upper Hand’: Freedom of assembly in Russia and the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” a 20 page report, co-authored by ILGA Europe.

It appears that this battle may take some time.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on October 21, 2010, in the case of Alekseyev v Russia – a useful note.

63.  Referring to the hallmarks of a ‘democratic society’, the Court has attached particular importance to pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness. In that context, it has held that although individual interests must on occasion be subordinated to those of a group, democracy does not simply mean that the views of the majority must always prevail: a balance must be achieved which ensures the fair and proper treatment of minorities and avoids any abuse of a dominant position (see Young, James and Webster v. the United Kingdom, 13 August 1981, Series A no. 44, § 63, and Chassagnou and Others v. France [GC], nos. 25088/95 and 28443/95, § 112, ECHR 1999-III).

The ECHR ruled against Russia in that case. Russia, of course, simply paid the fine and carried on regardless.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

You think that’s a joke? Satire? Hyperbole?

It’s not.

Gay Star News quotes AFP:

 ‘There is no question that society should discuss this issue since we live in a democracy,” [Church spokesman] Chaplin told pro-government Izvestia daily.

‘For this reason, it is precisely the majority of our people and not some outside powers that should decide what should be a criminal offence and what should not.’ he said.

Chaplin said he was ‘convinced’ homosexuality should be ‘completely excluded from the life of our society’.

Christopher Stroop has more at Religion Dispatches:

There are few bright spots in LGBT issues in Russia today. A recent media hubbub over the (as yet remote) possibility of recriminalizing “sodomy” may in fact be an indicator that things are getting even worse. The most recent buzz began when entertainer and anti-gay provocateur Ivan Okhlobystin published an open letter to Putin calling for the question of sodomy laws to be put to referendum.

That’s the guy Masha Gessen fired as a columnist, but without telling him that it was because “certain opinions simply will not be accepted”…like ones calling for people like her to be burned alive. He’s one of the reasons she and her partner and adopted child fled Russia for the US.

Back to Religion Dispatches:

As Global Voices Online’s Kevin Rothrock has pointed out, many in the liberal Russian blogosphere had until recently tended to regard Okhlobystin as only a charlatan and provocateur making outlandish statements as a form of performance art. His recent actions, however, are causing some of them to change their views and to see the man as a genuine fascist. It says something about the state of the ROC that leading hierarchs are willing to associate themselves with the likes of Okhlobystin and other radical conservatives.

Chaplin, who, as Chairman of the Synodal Committee on Church-Society Relations functions in many respects as the public face of official Orthodoxy, exhibits a pattern of such behavior. He has praised the radical Orthodox activist known as Dmitry Enteo, for example, and even joined with Enteo in a prayer service for the passage of laws against abortion, ‘propaganda of homosexuality,’ and blasphemy.

Chaplin’s is a prominent voice among Orthodox Russians, and the message he consistently sends is that the absolute worst, most violent and oppressive elements and tendencies within Russian Orthodoxy, even when their demands go beyond what the (hardly liberal) Russian state will countenance, have the moral high ground.

It’s frightening.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)