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.

 

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.

 

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.

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. [Read more…]

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.

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.

 

Mary Raftery

RTÉ remembers 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. [Read more…]