This also happened today.
Statement pic.twitter.com/oW98HnKPEw
— Andy Wightman (@andywightman) June 7, 2019
A crappy cowardly “statement” that marks out Julie Bindel (though without naming her) for special opprobrium a day and a half after a raging man attacked her after that very meeting. It’s interesting that he apologizes for causing people “distress and hurt” by listening to Julie but says not a word about any “distress and hurt” anyone might feel about the assault on Julie.… Read the rest
Lindy West is confused. She has a piece at Comment is Free about what a mess the US election is. She starts with a friend who works hard for abortion rights.
… Read the rest“You’re a hero,” I said.
“No, I am not,” she snapped, vehement. “Somebody’s got to do it. It’s a fucking embarrassment that I have to.”
She was right. “Our country is a septic tank,” I sighed. “On fire.”
“Full-on fail.”
I still think that choosing to take on the exhausting, sisyphean, largely thankless work of abortion advocacy (we are not taught to say “thank you” for abortion; we are taught to never speak of it at all) is heroic. She could choose to leave that work to others,
Human Rights Watch to Iraq: yo, don’t legalize marriage for 9-year-olds.
… Read the restIraq’s Council of Ministers should withdraw a new draft Personal Status Law and ensure that Iraq’s legal framework protects women and girls in line with its international obligations. The pending legislation would restrict women’s rights in matters of inheritance and parental and other rights after divorce, make it easier for men to take multiple wives, and allow girls to be married from age nine.
The draft law, called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, is based on the principles of the Jaafari school of Shia religious jurisprudence, founded by Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia imam. Approved by the Council of Ministers on February 25, 2014, it must
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
More religious bullying. (Of a much worse variety. Of a nightmarish variety. That’s how it is – we lurch from the bad to the horrendous, day by day and hour by hour. But the horrendous doesn’t make the bad something we should shrug off. We have to pay attention to all of it.)
Shakila, age 8, was grabbed by a bunch of men with AK-47s, and held for a year.
… Read the rest…the taking of girls as payment for misdeeds committed by their elders still appears to be flourishing. Shakila, because one of her uncles had run away with the wife of a district strongman, was taken and held for about a year. It was the district leader, furious at the
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Whatever else we do, whatever metaphysical view gets us there, the first order of business has to be shackling women. We always have to make sure women don’t have too many rights. We have to make very damn sure they’re not as free to decide how to live their own lives as men are.
We have to carve away their genitals so that they won’t have sexual feelings.
… Read the restIn the rural areas of Egypt, in Upper Egypt, however there is scant respect for the law. You hear the words “tradition”, “custom”, “honour” uttered like a mantra when people justify their decision to circumcise their daughters.
The belief there is that it is the female who is sexually rampant and
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Brilliant. The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled that voters can decide the “personhood” of the fertilized egg – human egg, that is, not chicken egg or salamander egg.
… Read the restThe measure would amend the constitution to extend “personhood” to the unborn, likely rendering abortions illegal in the state if upheld.
Anti-abortion forces hope the amendment, if passed, would ultimately be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, providing another opportunity for the justices to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
“Although our opponents were beaten in this lawsuit, we know that they will not stop in their desperate attempts to deny the obvious truth that life begins at conception and that every life deserves to be protected in the
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
And by the way three cheers for female genital mutilation.
…some communities see the practice as an integral part of their culture. “I have two daughters and five nieces, all circumcised by doctors. I do not consider it a human rights violation because, according to our religious teachings, it has been divinely ordained. My faith dispels any doubts that some might put in my mind,” says Shaheen Abdullah.
Good old god! “He” designed us the way we are and then ordained that the females of us have to have our genitals chopped off. Why not just not include the genitals in the original package then? Why construct the thing only to ordain that it should be carved up and … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Kristin Aune brings the good news. She and a colleague surveyed “nearly 1,300 British feminists” and guess what?
The results show that, when compared with the general female population, feminists are much less likely to be religious, but a little more likely to be interested in alternative or non-institutional kinds of spirituality.
That’s a relief, isn’t it? Much less likely to be religious but oh whew, a little more likely to be “spiritual.” At least they’re not all hopelessly atheistic and bad.
… Read the rest[Pat] Robertson was worried that feminism was challenging traditional Christian values – at least, values he considered Christian. Many liberals and feminists, concerned about the rise of fundamentalism and its erosion of women’s rights, conclude similarly that
Well how sodding depressing.
… Read the restWomen hoping to extend their rights in post-revolutionary Egypt were faced with a harsh reality Tuesday when a mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted marchers calling for political and social equality, witnesses said.
…
The demonstration on International Women’s Day drew a crowd only in the hundreds to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the popular revolt that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power. Gone, organizers said, was the spirit of equality and cooperation between the sexes that marked most of the historic mass gatherings in the square.
As upwards of 300 marchers assembled late Tuesday afternoon, men began taunting them, insisting that a woman could never be president and objecting to women’s demands
Pakistan’s parliament last year passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, but then
it was rejected by the Senate, reportedly because of the objections of one senator, preventing it from becoming a law.
According to insiders, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam – Fazl senator Maulana Muhammad Sherani (presently the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology) had objected that the bill was not ‘male-friendly’ and was contradictory to Islamic law.
Later, the Council of Islamic Ideology also termed the bill “unnecessary”, adding that the implementation of this law would increase the rate of divorce in the country.
In other words, the law might make it possible for women to divorce men who beat them up, and that would be bad, so … Read the rest
Robert Lambert and Jonathan Githens-Mazer tell worried Guardian readers about “Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence” as if they’re roughly the same thing rather than being very different things. Dislike of a belief-system is a very different thing from violence against people.
[M]embers of the EDL are echoing sentiments about Muslims they have adopted from sections of the mainstream media and the BNP. It is no coincidence that Nick Griffin has been peddling exactly the same hatred towards Muslims for the last decade. Similarly, a cursory examination of the records of Islamophobia Watch over the last five years provides a sense of the extent of Islamophobia in the mainstream media.
Islamophobia Watch! As if that were a respectable and reliable source! Bob … Read the rest
Deepa Shankaran on the politics of religious fundamentalism:
… Read the restIn these politics, the key platforms are grounded in “morality”, “the family” and gender roles, and fundamentalist campaigns often call for a return to “traditional” values, speaking to the fear of social upheaval brought about by women’s growing autonomy, sexual liberation and the increasing visibility of LGBTQI people. According to women’s rights activists, a major fundamentalist strategy in every region is the use of discourse that blames social problems on a “decline in morality” or the “disintegration of the family”; and that presents rigid gender roles within the family as “natural.”…As these discourses translate into fundamentalist campaigning on specific laws, policies and practices, they give rise to concrete consequences for women’s
