We often discuss the disconnect of religious fanatics who rape or beat or kill women and girls in the name of morality. Often such abuses seems to be condoned by governments like Iran. However, after a series of acid attacks on women for not being properly veiled, the Iranian government is actually investigating and denouncing the attacks.
The government’s sympathy only go so far. Under the Sharia-based law in Iran, women must wear the loose fitting hijab that covers their heads and necks.
The attacks have occurred in Isfahan and General Hossein Ashtari has confirmed at least four acid attacks. Others say that there are at least 13 women chemically burned for being “badly veiled.” Other attacks have occurred in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India where the women are accused of “sullying” their family “honour” by committing “indecent” behaviour.
While the government has insisted that it will investigate, others have insisted that it must also punish women who are not sufficiently covered. Various women have adopted thin veiled or more shapely clothing to the outrage of religious Iranians. Iranian MPs have written to President Hassan Rouhani to demand that police increase enforcement of wearing of the veil. Once again, these legislators have little faith in convincing people to follow their Islamic values. Instead, they want to coerce them to comply to their values and call it a moral act.
Source: Yahoo
Kay Parker and Ginger Lynn, discuss.
No one gives a rats butt about Camille Paglia.
Camille Paglia, discuss.
It’s not murder Squeeky, that’s your issue.
And Jill’s point about porn is incredibly important. The whole point of porn is to depict women as plaything for the pleasure and control or man. It reaffirms the diseased man’s need to lessen woman in order to control her, sexually or otherwise, and worse yet, to convince woman that to denude herself and offer her gender, her sexuality, her being as a toy to the depraved fantasies of others is gender empowerment.
Misogyny is like racism or classeism in that it takes the exception and makes it the rule in order to support and justify its bias. WE have full generations of women who are perceived according to what the man sees on its computer.
Violence against women feeds on porn.
I seriously doubt that any director of any women’s abuse organization lamented the fact that “liberal feminists” weren’t volunteering. Sounds like a convenient story.
Jill, Are you talking about the porn stars? Because if you are, some are damaged. There is an interesting documentary on Netflix about porn stars after their careers are over. The men do fine. Many women do have problems, but much of it is related to AODA issues, a problem systemic in our culture. But, no one put a gun to these women’s heads. Some porn stars do VERY well after their careers. They are in control of their senses and smart, hard working women. Jill, it’s about choices. Don’t want to be a victim of porn, don’t be a porn star. And, you are not talking about the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, the 1st Amendment.
Is there harm done by porn to men and women. Absolutely. Is there harm done to men and women by alcohol, pain meds, guns, autos, how long a list do you want? Do we ban everything of potential harm??
“There are women in the US that are unjustly incarcerated that face sexual abuse. That is hardly “piddly””
Of course it isn’t and there are, as Jill pointed out some very deeply ingrained troubling patterns and relationships in all societies.
But those weren’t the first things you used to compare the Iran acid bath women’s problems. Your statement that women EVERYWHERE should be fighting for reproductive freedom and income equality. Good things. But REALLY? those should be the focus of women EVERYWHERE? That should be their first priority?
Organizing for the vote is a great thing…..here. I dare you to go to Iran and give it a go. Go agitate there for income equality and reproductive freedom.
“Women in the Mideast should be able to look to women of the West for inspiration, not see us as being complacent and smug about our own freedoms and advancements.”
This is so very true. They look to us for help. When we concentrate on our piddly things, like abortion restriction, free birth control and parsing pennies between jobs, while ignoring the horrors of Third World Women……. it does make us look complacent and smug. There are many organizations that do assist women world wide. Education and health. Trying to change the culture of repression in Islamic countries. Great and worthy causes that should be supported and some of which I donate.
We as Western women, in general, are so incredibly free compared to other women in the world. It took a long time to get to this point. Are there still problems. Well,of course. There is still work to do. However, instead of navel gazing at the small problems we have we should work to help women (and men) in REAL distress. To say that the answer to those real and immediate problems is to agitate for birth control and income equality is frankly ridiculous and shows a complete lack of the ability to conceive that other people are not YOU.
When your first priority is to not be killed or mutilated. To be able to find food in a famine stricken area, those other things that western feminists obsess about, (for example: is it a patriarchal repressive and diminishing action if a man holds the door open for you)…….. are insulting to other women with REAL problems.
It isn’t shut and stop complaining. It is more like focus on the real and immediate problems. Prioritize.
@Annie
If your worldview is one of murder now or murder later, then maybe you need to change your worldview.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“Reproductive freedom??? Why not just call it what it is. Just come right out and say you think “women should have the right to kill their unborn babies.” Squeeky Planned pregnancies and abortions are not synonymous.
Jill, We are not talking about abuse of violence of women here being the whining. I have spoken out many times on that subject and given my grandmothers horrible experience @ the hands of a brutal man. The whining is about the other issues that have nothing to do w/ violence and everything to do w/ a liberal agenda. Western feminists care less about women than they do about liberalism. I worked w/ rape victims. The rape crisis center was run by a courageous true feminist. Whenever a rape victim came into my office I would have someone w/ the rape crisis center there as well as I explained the prosecutorial process. Almost every time I called, this woman, the director, was the one who showed up. Most rape victims are poor, white, black and Latino. I asked this director why she didn’t have any volunteers to help her out. She got livid and went on a rant about how this was hard work, gut wrenching work, and feminist didn’t want to do it. Have any of these liberal feminists volunteered for a rape crisis center? No, I didn’t think so!!
Squeeky in societies that don’t allow abortion we see female children being killed at birth, is that better?
Po, presicely. We see what happens in male dominated societies to women and children. Especially female children.
Paul, I am very sorry to hear about your daughter. That is wrong and I’m glad she is able to get away from her abuser.
Nick, why is it elitist to point out the harm done to women in pornography? I don’t understand your reasoning. You can research the physical and emotional harm it causes. It’s not a matter of opinion when women are ending up in the hospital with severe injuries. How is pointing out these severe injuries, injuries which have been documented, being elitist?
@swm
Reproductive freedom??? Why not just call it what it is. Just come right out and say you think “women should have the right to kill their unborn babies.”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
po, Nice try.
DBQ, In my post above I gave an example of a woman who has received detailed mutilating rape and murder threats for merely talking about violence against women in video games.
Girls and women are raped and murdered at an alarming rate in this culture. We are also beaten and there have been cases of acid thrown on women in the US.
Young women are taken and repeatedly beaten, drugged and raped, then turned out as prostitutes. These include girls as young as 7. Babies are used in child porn.
I guess I have difficultly understanding why these cruelties seem unimportant to you. Is it spoiled to point out this reality which occurs in the US? If so, why?
Please help me understand your point of view.
SMM, Thank you.
And there are far too many who turn a blind eye to abuse of women in this country. We should just shut up and take a punch, hmmmm?
Swarthmoremom sees the higher wisdom that what is happening there is happening here, and to differentiate between the two is to be blind to the bigger perspective. Women are much more threatened here than they are anywhere else. One of such statistic that supports it is that in the US, the highest cause of pregnant women death is their partner. Women are murdered daily, raped, abused…and the political leadership of one party is trying to use their biblical/moral framework to involve themselves into the reproductive/gender rights of women.
Those who pin it on Islam take the very, very short view. Not so long ago, (and possibly still) Hindu widows were required to join their husband into the pyre, and dowry issues are causing many Nepalese women to be burnt alive…
We are not separated in first world/3 world. Women’s right here is women’s right there, religious rights here is religious rights there, and ethnic rights here is…yes, ethnic rights there.
Patriarchy is the problem, whether it is university girls being raped and have it dismissed by the university or the cops, a female senator being pinched and talked about as a piece of meat by her colleagues, women getting paid less, being forced to have abortions in prisons…
We have a fascination with these cops shows which explore the same scenario of a female, naked victim and a depraved murdered. Without the idea of the female murder victim, that genre dies. Says something about how we view women.
Our whole capitalistic system relies on denuding women for the sake of moving products. Our young girls are told that there is only value to them if they look glamorous and take their clothes off, and that the trade off between their brain and their bra size is a worthwhile one.
And before someone goes off again, throwing acid on someone’s face is horrific and deserving of almost the death penalty, but that is simply one of the many symptoms of the war of women, which is ongoing EVERYWHERE.
SWM, You referred to “my gals.” Are they “women” if lockstep liberals and “gals” if they stray from the insular herd? I am just trying to understand the vernacular. Cultists need to read Nietzsche.