Taslima Nasreen
No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism
The pictures are from the celebration of Karva Chauth. Karva Chauth is celebrated by Hindu women who fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands.
Once the moon is visible, it is customary for a fasting woman, with her husband nearby, to view its reflection in a vessel filled with water, through a sieve, or through the cloth.Water is offered to the moon (the lunar deity) to secure its blessings. She then turns to her husband and views his face indirectly in the same manner. It is believed that at this stage, spiritually strengthened by her fast, the woman can successfully confront and defeat death. The husband now takes the water from the thali and gives his wife her first sip and feeds her with the first morsel of the day.
There is no Karva Chauth for men to celebrate. Men do not fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their wives. Men are not the equal partners of women, they are literally the masters of their wives in patriarchal societies. In India, not only illiterate hopeless women dependent on their husbands celebrate Karva Chauth, well educated, independent women also celebrate it.
But seriously, women must stop celebrating misogynistic, masochistic, sexist, repressive, stupid patriarchal bullshit called Karva Chauth. And men must stop treating themselves as masters, they must treat women as equal human beings.
I think, we will not be able to stop rape by executing all the rapists in the world. Rape will be continued until we abolish patriarchy, and make a macho-culture and misogyny free world.
In the meantime, we can try our best to educate men to understand that rape is a crime, and they must not rape. Almost all men already know that rape is a crime. It is not very difficult for them to stop rape. They can do it only if they want.
A cleric cut his wife into pieces for refusing to wear a veil and sending their children to school.
The woman ‘challenged god’s orders’, because she didn’t want to become a walking coffin or a garbage bag. So, she had to die.
I am watching Gandhi on an Indian TV. Today is the Independence Day of India. TV channels are celebrating the day. Gandhi is the father of the nation. Showing Gandhi is part of their celebration. Gandhi is an award winning well produced well directed film. The film won eight Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Richard Attenborough), Best Original Screenplay (John Briley) etc. The film also got Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
I always wonder how the film got so many awards when an important part of Gandhi’s life was ignored. Who knows why the film did not show Gandhi’s sex experiments or Celibacy tests! Gandhi’s sex life is very important to know Gandhi the person. Gandhi started sleeping and bathing naked with young naked girls since 1906. He continued to do that until his death in 1948. 16 to 19 years old young girls were forced to sleep with him every night. Manuben, one of the girls who had to sleep with him, wrote her diaries. She described how she was cursed if she ever hesitated to get naked. Gandhi got angry with her whenever she expressed her desire to marry someone. It was possible for Gandhi to do whatever he liked because he was extremely popular and also because Indian society was deeply misogynistic. There was no proof that those girls were not molested by Gandhi. The girls were asked to keep their mouths shut.
Gandhi also used the girls as his walking sticks.
Muftis are misogynists. If they truly believe in religion, they have no other alternative but to force themselves to become woman-haters.
Grand Mufti in Jammu and Kashmir issued fatwa against music in February this year. He said, ‘music is un-Islamic’.
Leading religious scholar of Jammu and Kashmir, Grand Mufti Mohammad Bashiruddin, on Sunday issued fatwa against the region’s only all-girls rock band run by the teenage girls and against Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for extending support to them.
The Grand Mufti termed the three teenage girls, who formed the rock band, ‘non serious’, saying such an approach leads to ‘gang rape’. “Shameful incidents like gang rapes, that happened in Hindustan recently, are a result of all this. It happens when women are given freedom to roam around, sing and dance,” Bashiruddin told The Tribune.
The fatwa — an advisory by an Islamic scholar, who has knowledge of theology, religious jurisprudence and law — has been issued by the “Supreme Court of Islamic Shariat” headed by Bashiruddin.The Grand Mufti asked the girls not to get impressed with support from the political leadership. Bashiruddin also criticised Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for extending solidarity with the teenage girls, terming it as “unnecessary support”. “It will be unfortunate if our society leaves the right path and gets entangled in musical instruments,” the fatwa read.
Omar had yesterday extended support to the rock band after it emerged that the teenage girls have decided to shut their band following a barrage of abuses targeting them and their families.
The girls’ band had come to limelight last December when the three 16-year-old girls made their first and the last public performance at the “Battle of Bands” competition here, where they battled against other bands consisting of boys.
And then again the same stuff that we hear whenever women refuse to be shackled that women are nourishing Western culture. Whatever Muftis do not like, is Western, and Western is always bad.
Referring to the girls’ band, Bashiruddin said, “Such non-serious acts are the first steps towards national disaster”. Criticism also poured in from the hardline separatists led by Syed Ali Geelani, who termed the support extended by the Chief Minister to the rock band as “tragic and surprising”. “There are some values (which) a citizen has to adopt to safeguard the ethical, moral and religious traditions. Kashmir being a sacred place of saintly persons, there is no room to nourish western culture and immoral values,” hardline Hurriyat’s spokesman Ayaz Akbar said.
Though it distanced itself from the threats issued against the rock band, Hurriyat said parents of these girls should have ‘rectified’ their behaviour. “No noble family will allow their girls to choose dancing as a profession which is a thing of pleasure for strangers,” Hurriyat spokesman said.
After the fatwa was issued, Muslim girls who had their own all-girls rock band had to stop singing. They were banned.
But Mufti enjoyed men’s music. It is alright if men sing. Then music is not anymore un-Islamic. It is only un-Islamic when women sing, because women’s soft and nice voices must not be heard by men who are not their close relatives.
Now, another Mufti issued another fatwa against women who use Facebook and Twitter.
The Mufti is not pleased about women being on Facebook to make friends and is definitely against them uploading pictures on the social networking site.
“Women should not post pictures on Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet. This is un-Islamic,” he said.
A Maulana from the minority Shia sect too endorsed the Mufti’s views.
“Women are not allowed to show their faces to anyone apart from their ‘mehram’ (male kin like father and brothers). So posting pictures on Facebook is ‘haraam’ (banned),” Maulana Saif Abbas Naqvi said.
Muftis are against women playing music, women posting pictures on the internet, or women moving their butts. Muftis are not alone. Allah is with them. Allah asked women not to go in front of non-mahran men . If Allah knew about the internet, he would have advised women not to post their pictures on facebook or twitter.
Islam prohibits music. Women’s voices must not be heard by non-Mahran men or strangers. Allah (33:32) told prophet’s wives that they must not ‘soften’ their voices when they talk to male strangers, they should rather make their voices firm and rough. But why is this? Isn’t it very easy to guess! It is because male strangers might get sexual desire if they hear soft and beautiful voices of women.
Because singing requires “softening the voice” and since prophet’s wives are the role models for all women, women’s singing is forbidden in front of unrelated men.
Now, you can say everything Islam and Muftis say in very simple words and sentences so that everybody can understand,– ‘if women sing and if men hear women’s soft voices and if women’s faces and hairs are shown to public, or on the internet—men have no other alternative but to fuck those women, because men are so fucking assholes that they do not know how to control their sexual urges.’
Muftis actually insult men, not women, when they force women to wear veils, or prevent women from going outside home, or stop women from singing in public places. Banning on women proves that men are nothing but a bunch of rapists, their brains are made of dicks and their hearts are made of dicks.
Once upon a time but not long ago, women didn’t have the voting right. Most people were against women’s voting right and their right to education. In some parts of the word, women had the right to education, even they had the right to work, but they did not have the right to vote. American women are telling us their stories.
Throughout history, there were people who did not want women to vote. Women would work, they would pay taxes, they would technically be considered citizens… but voting was for men. In America, when the right to vote was extended to include all races, all social positions, and all incomes, women were still not included. It didn’t matter if a man was illiterate, had been to jail, or if he was the town drunk. He could vote, and a woman, no matter who she was, could not.
Women suffragists (suffragettes) began campaigning in democratic countries all over the world to change this, starting in the mid-19th century. Their campaigns were largely peaceful and dignified… at least by 21st century standards. But by 19th century standards, these women were abhorrent and indecent, making fools of themselves by demanding to be treated like men.
One of the most notable things about the arguments put forth by the anti-suffragette movement was how weak its position was. Anti-suffragette arguments relied heavily on emotional manipulation and downright hateful nastiness. Humor was a much-used weapon against suffragettes. They were easy to depict as embittered old maids, brutal scolds, and cigar-smoking transvestites.
Ophelia tells us how 20th century London was.
You can see what kinds of hatred misogynists expressed in their cartoons against women’s voting rights.
Men could not tolerate that women left home to join suffrage movement in the beginning of 20th century. They were so scared of taking care of their children! They feared that if women could get their rights, men would lose their’s. They still have this fear.
Women got the right to vote. They got the right to access to politics and to education. They go outside to work. They spend money they earn for their family. But still men don’t share chores and child care at home.
The feminists today suffer from the same misogyny the feminists yesterday suffered from. They are humiliated, hated, insulted, abused the way their feminist sisters were humiliated, hated, insulted and abused.
People get shocked today when they learn women were not allowed to get the right to vote and the right to education in the 20th century. People would get shocked tomorrow when they would learn that women were not allowed to get equality in the 21st century.
I was reading today’s news about how a doctor woman was killed by her doctor husband in Pittsburgh. I was thinking how they lived their family life in their nice beautiful house, whether they woke up in the morning and said good morning to each other, and then had breakfast together, whether they used to go to parties, theaters, vacations together, come home, watch TV, make love! What kind of life a couple could live when one planned to murder the other one? I imagined Dr Robert Ferrante as my husband. I told him about my happiness and sorrows, about my childhood and my youth, and about my love and my dreams, he listened to me and planned to kill me, I was cooking the food he liked and I was serving him dinner every night, while he was sitting on a dinning chair planning to poison me. I was passionately making love to him while he was planning to eliminate me. And one day he finally murdered me.
It does not happen only in Pittsburgh in the USA, it happens in Pirozpore in Bangladesh, in St. Petersburg in Russia, in Porto Novo in Benin, in Piteå in Sweden as well.
First, a top general blames ‘hookup mentality’ for the Air Force’s massive sexual assault problem . Then, Hong Kong’s security minister said that women should avoid drinking too much if they don’t want to get raped. He said, “Some of these cases also involved the victims being raped after drinking quite a lot of alcohol. So I would appeal that young ladies should not drink too much.”
Women should not wear ‘provocative dresses’, women should not drink alcohol too much,women should not go to bars, women should not go to the streets at night, women should not go out alone, women should not go outside without burqas. They have to do hundreds of different things to avoid rape.
Men do not stop raping. Men are not advised not to rape the way women are advised not to be raped. Most people probably believe men will never control the urge of raping women, so it is women, or the potential victims should reduce or sacrifice their freedom and rights if they want to save themselves from being raped, abused, assaulted, killed by their fellow humans.
Women will still be raped even If women stop wearing provocative dresses, stop drinking alcohol, do not walk outside alone, or do not go to bars. Most men still do not believe raping is bad because they know that it is not considered bad to treat women as sex objects and slaves in patriarchal societies.
Mexican Archbishop Fabio Martinez Castilla says, “abortion is much more serious than rape of children by priests.”
Enough is enough. Time to stop appointing pope, bishop, cardinal, priest etc. They are just stupid people sitting in a big chair preaching hatred, misogyny, lies and illusions.