Iran this week celebrated its National Women’s and Mothers’ Day and Ayatollah Khamenei held forth on his demented view of the ideal Islamic women. Khamenei denounced the very concept of women’s rights and gender equality as a Western plot against all women.Khamenei accused Israel and the West for advancing notions of equality , which promotes earthly pleasures and the exploration of women. It appears that equality is all a “Zionist conspiracy.” Of course, such views would normally be viewed as perfectly insane but this is the religious head of Iran.
Khamenei warned that “These aberrant and neglectful people humiliate the role of a housewife while a housewife is actually in charge of raising and educating the most valuable product, which is a human being . . . unfortunately, sometimes inside the country and in some Islamic environments, tasks and expectations are ascribed to women that in fact collapse and humiliate their roles.”
The good news is that apparently all feminists now deeply regret their efforts to achieve equality: “Today, Western scholars and those who pursue issues like gender equality all regret their actions for the corruption they caused.”
Happy Women’s Day.
Mixed gender combat units are a liberal PC social experiment IMO- kinda like busing in the 70s – the elites who make these decisions are are never affected. Women are free to serve,and I think that’s a good thing – there are many jobs they can perform well at – equal or even better than their male counterparts, but with very few exceptions they lack the physical strength and are a distraction in mixed combat units.
I want to point out that the burka in the photo from the article is from Afghanistan. The women in Iran wear a roosari (similar to hijab) or the black chador, which is like a huge semicircle they have to hold together with their teeth when they can’t use their hands. Literally, they hold it in their teeth. It’s the strangest thing that they haven’t adapted it to be more user friendly. It’s almost as if it’s meant to be awkward to wear. Oh wait, this is Iran and the style was developed by men…so…
Anyway, sigh, I’ve heard this reasoning used by the Ayatollah a lot by people from The Old Country from various Middle Eastern and African countries. They put women on a pedestal, honor them, protect them like treasures, etc, etc. They have been raised to think this is what they are doing. There is no connection in their minds at all how they can believe they treasure women as a jewel, with how they treat women who step out of line. There is this intense pressure on women to be perfect, far more than men. All the focus is on women – what they wear, what they say, how they act, if they speak at a boy they are not related to, and on and on. Honor rests firmly in the behavior of women, who must be strictly controlled at all times of their life. It’s neurotic. If you take an even more repressive country than Iran, Saudi Arabia, that’s why the women underneath those abayas are often wearing couture and expensive makeup. The moment they reach their women friends’ house, those veils come off like throwing open the curtains. And once planes reach Western nations, they throw off the veil and go blow tons of money shopping.
Another phenomenon that I have observed among women born in Iran is that they are all iron willed. Since they have no scope for self determination, the amount of control they pour into their children is astounding. The girls they keep very close for doing all the work in the house, being very overprotective. Their boys are their pampered kings. The boys do zero around the house, and are preferentially treated. They are absolutely owned by their mothers. It’s through their sons that an Iranian woman feels important. It is rather common in Iran for a man to treat this own wife as subservient to his mother. All of his efforts are to please his mother, and all of his wife’s efforts had better be to do the same, too. It’s not until her own sons grow that she is finally the center of attention. It’s very different from the West, and my own observations are anecdotal, and yet it was pretty ubiquitous amongst my acquaintance. There are all sorts of jokes in the Iranian American community about a wife’s relationship with her mother in law, as well as Iranian boys being princes.
There is certainly a range on how women are oppressed under extreme Islamic regimes. For instance, there are areas of Africa where women are beaten if they appear to be wearing a bra, which is considered an enticement to men because it flatters the figure. But the unifying thread is that they are oppressed. They do not have equal rights. Their testimony is not worth the same as a man’s. They do not have the same freedom as a man. They cannot travel as freely as a man or make their own decisions, even about working, as a man. Once you phrase oppression as “protection”, you can control, oppress, or abuse anyone, whether it’s women or citizens in general.
And the ultimate test of whether it is oppressive is if they have to trap women there, as well as how they act overseas. If you have to force a woman to stay there, because she would flee otherwise, then she’s not exactly enjoying this treatment, is she? And if the majority of those women do not follow such strict behavior overseas, then they are not voluntarily submitting to it at home, are they?
KarenS – you might find this book interesting: Rage Against the Veil: The Courageous Life and Death of an Islamic Dissident by Parvin Darabi, an Iranian critic of Islam.
The book is about Parvin’s sister, Dr. Homa Darabi, who on February 21, 1994 committed suicide by immolation in a city square in Tehran, Iran to protest the “slavelike” treatment of women in Iran. The book details Dr. Darabi’s life leading up to this moment, addressing women’s rights in Iran during the monarchy and after the Islamic Revolution.
Homa, despite her accomplishments – including a medical degree from the U.S. chose to return – it’s as if she could not shake off her early cultural influences.
Thanks for the book recommendation, Autumn. I will check it out. I am curious if the doctor returned to Iran because her family was there, or because she felt a pull for her home country.
I recently read I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai, the young girl who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban out of retaliation for her advocacy of educating girls. Great read.
Plus, I wonder if we all maybe need to be rethinking the way we live. Here is an article I was trying to find for my above comment, and I finally found it:
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/kanth-a-400-year-program-of-modernist-thinking-is-exploding
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
squeek, as tempting as it is to think of the “happy savages” enjoying their simple lives there is no such thing. I recommend Thor Heyerdahl’s book “Fatu Hiva” where he and his bride sought to escape the toxins of modern civiliation and move to be amongst natives. He (and she) discovered that greed, the desire to control resouces and power is unfortunately part of the human psyche. Sure, modern/post modern societies have speeded it up and are currently wreaking every nation under the globe at an unsurpassed rate in history, but it is what it is.
I think just being aware and choosing to tread as lightly as possible on this earth (total cliche I know) and how to be involved in one’s community is key.
Oh, I forgot to include this clip from one of my fav movies “The Gods Must Be Crazy”……
Thank you for telling me about that book. I just ordered it! I have read his Kon Tiki book, and one other the name of which I forget. My father had them in his library. If you like that kind of book, might I suggest “Kabloona”, and for nautical stuff, Peter Fruechens “Book of the Seven Seas.”
My father had those also, although I think I stole the Peter Freuchen book from him. He had two copies, so it is not like I left him “High and Dry”, or anything.
Also, I don’t think that we are going to have Utopia on Earth, whether we are natives, or First Worlder’s. But I think we maybe need to reexamine our belief that everything is just rockets for us, as opposed to the pure world of crap we presume the muzzies dwell in. There are definitely bad things going on there, but really, wouldn’t we be better off as a society if we whacked the heads off drug dealers in America? Or if the great majority of women went back to being mothers and wives as opposed to being the Hot Messes so many of them are, busily engaged in making life miserable for themselves, and their families? And so many of the Hot Messes aren’t even “Hot”. They are overweight, full of tats and piercings, and have a crazy, disheveled presentation. Not to mention all the various drugs they are on.
Like somebody above said, showing cleavage isn’t the be all and end all of life.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – it appears you pretty much wiped out your dad’s library. I hope you left him some Field and Stream to read. 😉
Oh no, he has plenty of books left. I bet he has close to three or four thousand, if I had to guess. Plus, he has already said that he is leaving his library to me when he croaks. Sooo, maybe I am just getting an advance on my inheritance??? (Which sounds a lot better than saying I am just ripping them off from him. 🙂 )
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – do you write yourself checks from his checking account, just to get a head start? 😉
Before we give the Muzzie hell about their beliefs, we need to do a little looking at our own moats, which I think we have fallen into. I have posted this link before.
http://www.returnofkings.com/71027/there-is-scientific-proof-that-feminism-is-failing-women
Plus, how very non-multicultural is it to presume that the “Western Way” is the de facto one and true proper way? I happen to be prejudiced in favor of it, but that is probably because that is the system I have always lived in. Here is another more recent article on how wonderful “sexual equality” has been:
http://www.returnofkings.com/116603/20-reasons-why-modern-women-are-so-unstable-and-miserable
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Not everything can be framed in terms of rights.
Critiques offered of contemporary feminism by figures such as Joan Didion and Helen Smith are instructive. Clare Boothe Luce was, in her writings and example, also instructive re the distinction between achievement by women and the feminist discourse which came into prominence ca. 1971.
“Not everything can be framed in terms of rights.”
I would agree but in the context that in our civil society, everything should be framed by the constitution with our equal, unalienable rights at its center.
I would agree but in the context that in our civil society, everything should be framed by the constitution with our equal, unalienable rights at its center.
Why? Constitutions provide a scaffolding of public institutions and typically incorporate some entrenched clauses that limit legislative power. That’s it. (And, while we’re at it, ours has largely been replaced with a set of judicial opinions which manifest word-merchant sector wilfulness).
Civil society is not a legal-formal construct. It is something that is influenced by law, and ‘rights’ really are not at issue in wide swaths of social relations.
“Civil society is not a legal-formal construct. It is something that is influenced by law, and ‘rights’ really are not at issue in wide swaths of social relations.”
That’s interesting. I’m not quite sure how you can on one hand claim ours is not a legal-formal construct and on the other claim it is influenced by law? Is law merely a suggestion for our civil society and our constitution an optional device for good governance? In a real sense that is exactly how it’s “working” today and the security of rights is not the better for it. If we continue to “progress” in our current direction we may once again discover the insecurities of living in the state of nature (anarchy).
Here’s a nice aphorism from the retired PM of Britain: “There is such a thing as society. It’s just not the same thing as the state”. When you’re done with your daily quota of James Madison’s correspondence, you can give it some thought.
Gender equality is nothing more than a social construct. If genders were equal in all respects then there would be no such thing as gender. There are obvious differences physically and as studies have shown, there are significant differences in how we process information. The only thing we should legitimately demand from our society regarding equality is with respect to the natural and unalienable right to life, liberty and property. A civil society, that puts as its first duty to respect the natural rights of everyone equally, will discover the natural roles of the genders will not need to be constructed but rather identified through free will.
I am not sure what you are saying, Olly. Are you saying that men and women are NOT equal?
“Are you saying that men and women are NOT equal?”
That depends on your equation. We are ALL equal in natural rights. We should all be treated equally in opportunity to pursue happiness, but we should have no expectations for an equal outcome.
Obviously, Olly, everyone knows that outcome is not the issue, equal access and equal treatment is the issue. I think what women are asking is just that, equal access and equal treatment. So what equation is it that may make men and women unequal?
I think what women are asking is just that, equal access and equal treatment. So what equation is it that may make men and women unequal?
No, women are asking for their grievances to be addressed. However, their grievances are not consistent one-to-another or over time. Nor are their grievances necessarily a function of the distinct context in which they are expressed. Addressing their grievances also is unrelated to ‘equal treatment’ (You could say much the same about all sorts of identity politics).
But, DSS, whatever grievances those are are built around the feeling (valid) of unequal treatment. If women are paid less for the same job, that’s a problem of unequal treatment.
Additionally, we have grievances that do not fall directly under unequal treatment but are valid nonetheless, such as economic and social support for after childbirth and for child care. Women, due to their gender adn the breakdown of society, are burdened with child bearing and childrearing, and they are legitimately due support for that.
But, DSS, whatever grievances those are are built around the feeling (valid) of unequal treatment.
That’s pretty funny. I knew a minister once (female) who told me about a conversation she’d had with a divinity school admissions examiner. The examiner tells her he has a standard pair of questions for those seeking admission, because the initial exchanges you have with a prospect can be quite stereotyped.
Q. Why do you want to enter the ministry?
A. I like working with people.
Q. Oh? Do you know many?
If women are paid less for the same job, that’s a problem of unequal treatment.
No, it’s their manager’s rough judgment of what they’ll have to pay them if they want to keep them on staff for a time sufficient to amortize their training. It may be their managers rough judgment of what their skills are worth as a revenue generator. That judgement may be unfair or erroneous. It’s not exactly abnormal to feel aggrieved by your employer. The question at hand is the degree to which these grievances should be justiciable. Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease.
Additionally, we have grievances that do not fall directly under unequal treatment but are valid nonetheless, such as economic and social support for after childbirth and for child care. Women, due to their gender adn the breakdown of society, are burdened with child bearing and childrearing, and they are legitimately due support for that.
The ‘supporters’ commonly go under the name ‘husband’ and ‘father’.
DSS, the same jobs requiring the same qualifications, and responsibilities and hours and stress…etc…across the private and federal sectors usually pay men more than women.
Simply inexcusable…and unequal.
I don’t think it needs forcing down, but if women bear children and take care of them, society owes them support. Whether those supporters are called husbands or fathers matters little if they are allowed to squirt their responsibilities.
And this brings me back to my earlier point: the quran is the earliest constitution anywhere that established alimony and child support. In it, even the child’s milk is the father’s responsibility, and as such, he is supposed to remunerate the mother for feeding the baby, and if she chooses not to breastfeed, it is his duty to pay for a wet nurse.
DSS, the same jobs requiring the same qualifications, and responsibilities and hours and stress…etc…across the private and federal sectors usually pay men more than women.
Simply inexcusable…and unequal.
In your imagination, Po. There is a difference in aggregate compensation per worker between men and women, but that’s attributable to aggregate working hours, a different distribution of occupational choices, and (among women) a history of entering and exiting the work force that men do not typically have. There’s a seven-digit population of employers in this country. You’re positing a huge information-imperfection in the labor market if you fancy they can cut their labor costs by 12% with no productivity losses just by canning their male employees and hiring women.
I don’t think it needs forcing down, but if women bear children and take care of them, society owes them support. Whether those supporters are called husbands or fathers matters little if they are allowed to squirt their responsibilities.
Likely a bad idea for the development of the culture which attends the social economy to conceive of someone being ‘owed support’, especially if the owing parties had no role in the decisions made to require support. Husbands and fathers are much more likely to be shoved out of the family home by a mother who wishes to replace a marriage economy with a child-support economy than they are to walk out and stiff their children. As for the fathers of illegitimate children, they had no say in bearing that child, they are often bad prospects to begin with, and some of them are shoo’d away by the mother. The mother is evidently ‘owed’ support, but she’s not expected to be minimally prudent in her personal conduct.
And this brings me back to my earlier point: the quran is the earliest constitution anywhere that established alimony and child support.
I certainly would not take your word on that.
The distinction between alimony and child support is in many circumstances factitious. It’s atypical that formal alimony is granted. The last case I knew of personally, a women had insisted on a divorce from her husband of 33 years without grounds and against his better judgment. In a sane world, she would have gotten nothing of her husband’s earnings.
DSS, again you are relying on anecdotal events to frame a larger point. None of those points you made negate my larger point.
Regarding the quran, you don’t need take my word for it, whose word would you offer instead?
DSS, again you are relying on anecdotal events to frame a larger point. None of those points you made negate my larger point. Regarding the quran, you don’t need take my word for it, whose word would you offer instead?
Your larger pint you pulled out of your ass, Po. I’m relying on two things: actual statistics on the domestic labor market and the logic of human behavior in given situations.
Not obvious at all when we have people advocating the right to equal outcome. You talk about income inequality. In the free market that’s an outcome argument that would solve itself by market forces. We are an impatient culture and we tend to view our desires as a right that needs to be fulfilled on our own timelines and not where society happens to be. “In order to form a more perfect Union” does not define when we should get there but that we should work towards that goal. The progressive era denies the natural transformation of a culture by forcing the will of the minority on a timetable that is artificial.
I agree with that, Olly, but let’s not dumb baby with bath water (another typical American trait), We can let the market determine outcome WHILE insuring the market is legitimate and fair.
You can ‘ensure” nothing. All you can do is transfer discretion from businessmen to lawyers. Again, cure worse than disease.
“So what equation is it that may make men and women unequal?”
We are only equal in natural rights; in everything else we are unequal.
So who gets to determine who is more, or less equal than another?
If white men are in power of most systems, who but white men get to determine the rules of the game?
And how did white men get to be in charge of most systems and therefore in charge of determining the rules of the game and their field of application?
Haven’t white men determined the nature of natural rights since the beginning of this country and still trying to tell us what the natural rights of others are, including and especially women?
If you have a complaint with careers-open-to-talents, freedom of contract, freedom of association, and allodial tenures, you’re free to present your own conception of mundane economic life. Protip: kvetching that white men thought something up therefore unfair is generally an invalid argument.
“Haven’t white men determined the nature of natural rights…”
What relevance is it who first introduced the natural rights argument? When you get hit in the head by a falling coconut, do you blame Newton? The question is; do you believe we are all created with equal and unalienable rights? If a bunch of white guys create a form of government designed to secure those natural rights, then is the form wrong? Our culture, since our founding, has been in a constant state of transformation. It may not always appear to be moving but we know and we feel it when it’s not moving in a way that secures natural rights for everyone equally. And experience has shown us that occurs when our government exceeds its purpose and its authority.
Olly, the issue is not that, the issue is that those white men established, as part of the exercise of their own natural rights, the curtailment of the natural rights of others, non white men. A good parallel is this thread, the exercise of the natural rights of Persian religious men in Iran causes the curtailment of the exercise of other non-Persian religious men in Iran, yes, including Iranian women and non-Muslims…
“the issue is that those white men established, as part of the exercise of their own natural rights, the curtailment of the natural rights of others, non white men.”
Po,
I understand the point you’re making and it is a common misunderstanding of this nation’s founding. What took place was fundamentally a strategic planning problem. Our founding fathers had a vision for this country which is found in our Declaration of Independence. They knew there existed a tremendous gap between where they wanted this country to be and where we were at our founding. The challenge was to develop a system of government that the various states and their current interests would ratify. That form was designed to be amendable and that would take time. Had they the ego of today’s progressives they would have argued the vision needed to be achieved on their watch. However they had the humility to know the transformation this nation was to take would not be according to their will but by the will of the people. Our republic survives not because white men created it but because we haven’t given up on the vision.
Olly, the issue is not that, the issue is that those white men established, as part of the exercise of their own natural rights, the curtailment of the natural rights of others, non white men.
No, they did not. Caste systems were a social fact in 1787. They were a social fact throughout the Caribbean, and in Brazil as well. A less intense caste system was in place throughout Spanish America. Most components of continental Europe were societies of orders. Subaltern populations had some customary immunities, but there was no great body of ‘rights’ to be curtailed. The closest you see to that would be the escalating severity of serfdom in eastern Europe in the early modern period, or perhaps the conversion of indentured servitude to chattel slavery in the colonies after 1660 (on a much smaller demographic scale). Regarding the world around you as being composed of a single order without legal status distinctions was an idea that hardly predated the late 17th century, and, in truth, no society truly regards its whole body of residents as undifferentiated.
They knew there existed a tremendous gap between where they wanted this country to be and where we were at our founding.
They did? Who among them?
That’s a challenging question in light of the fact you believe my daily Madison quota has been reached. I’ll use quotes from Lincoln then as he would answer the question cited in this article from the Heritage Foundation:
“In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction,” Abraham Lincoln observed in 1858. “All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon.”
http://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/how-understand-slavery-and-the-american-founding
That tells me Abraham Lincoln’s gloss on the era. Working politicians need usable pasts. In 1783, 13 of the 17 British colonies in North America had just seceded from the British Empire (and been granted a mess of unorganized territory to boot in the peace treaty). Slavery was a feature of 10 or 11 of these colonial societies (though slaves were demographically important in perhaps five). Nearly half the delegates to the Constitutional Convention (26 of 55) were men from these five colonies. It would be extraordinary if more than a few were at home with the idea of comprehensive social restructuring.
“Working politicians need usable pasts.”
That’s hardly a unique characteristic. The founders for instance didn’t establish this government in a vacuum.
The blather about ‘Zionist conspiracy’ is demented. That aside, what you fail to acknowledge is that every society gets sex wrong in some respect. You yourself are like any other professional class bourgeois. You’re living in a disaster zone with debris and rubble strewn everywhere and you simply pretend it isn’t happening.
Okay, Jonathan,, I’ll play…who then is Allah?
Po – excellent question. Who then is this Allah who is prayed to before committing suicide and killing 40 people and injuring 200 more? Do you have an answer?
I do, Paul. I dare say it is the same God in whose name much evil is done and much good is done.
Yep, the same God who is blamed for the evil people do in spite of His telling them NOT to do it!
Who did you think He was?
Nice distraction though, what is your idea of gender equality, or are you an agnostic about that too?
Po – since I don’t believe in an active God, I cannot believe in yours. I do believe in an Uncaused Cause which I call God, however it is not something I would pray to or would guide me through life. It clearly is not something that would cause me to commit suicide and kill 40 people and injure 200 more.
Don’t flatter yourself, Paul, that something has not caused 99.99% of humanity to commit suicide and injure 200 people. I have yet to kill myself and blow you up in the process (only argumentatively blasting you that is. )Which speaks of rule and exception.
By your logic, the Japanese kamakazis, the Tamil Tigers, the Stern gang and and the IRA were all followers of Allah.
Meanwhile, what is your understanding of gender equality? Or you don’t know?
Po – if you will look above you will see my take on gender equality.
Paul, I did not see it.
Please state your take on gender equality.
Allah is simply the Arabic word for God. God is God; it doesn’t matter which language is used.
Thanks for that, TIN, Jonathan, along with many other people unfortunately are ignorant of such basic thing and are always pitting Allah (God) against Jesus AS…:)
God in Christian theology has three persons. Next time your calling other people ignorant, you might remember that.
Uh…DSS, and how does that counter my point? I don’t recall having addressed the Christian God (s) yet…
The divinity and personhood of Jesus has been the most fiercely debated issue in all of Christianity. The debate consumed the first seven ecumenical councils. They thought they had come to an agreement with the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 and the adoption of the Nicene Creed, but the issue continued on until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which ended up in splitting the Church in two: the western (Catholic) church and the Eastern Orthodox. So whether Jesus is God or the Son of God or both, or all three if you include the Holy Ghost is not an easy question. I was raised as a Catholic and never got past the Holy Trinity. It didn’t make sense to me as a kid and doesn’t make sense to me now. And then there are those who preach the pre-existence of Jesus and claim that he was present throughout the Old Testament in the form of angels, etc…….Anyway you look at it, the fact that the identity and role of Jesus was up for debate by Christian leaders for almost 500 years after his death does give one pause…..
Muslims believe that Jesus was a human being and a prophet, the same as Muhammad. I don’t know that they think Muhammad was “better than” Jesus; but rather that they complimented one another. I think Muslims are probably right about Jesus being a person and a prophet, but not God. Christians have had to come up with some pretty tortured reasoning to establish the divinity of Christ.
I have nothing against Islam. The people who commit atrocities in the name of Islam would commit atrocities even if they adhered to another religion because they are barbaric people. Religion is more than theology; it also encompasses the cultures of the adherents. And any thinking person knows that there are good and bad in all faiths and cultures.
No. Some Eastern Churches were in schism after the Council of Chalcedon, but not the main body. The Coptic, Nestorian, Armenian, and Jacobite bodies were off the reservation after Chalcedon (or earlier councils). The schism which distinguished Orthodoxy from the Catholic Church dates from 1054 AD, although a gulf in liturgical and disciplinary matters had been manifest for 4-5 centuries at that point.
Yes, you’re correct on that. The “big split” came in 1054. There has been talk recently of attempts to reunify the eastern and western churches, but I can’t see that happening. The eastern church is not going to recognize the “infallibility” of the Pope, and the Pope is not going to give up his earthly authority. If anything, there will likely be more splinters of Christian churches due to social issues such as gay marriage. It is quite likely that the Episcopal Church will split over this issue in the not so distant future,
I, and Paul, could not have said it better!
Po – your problem is that you see Jesus as a prophet, lesser than Mohammed. Christians see Jesus as part of a Trinity that makes up God. To Christians, Jesus IS God.
Paul, according to the quran, all prophets are equal.
But yeah, I know that to some Christians, Jesus is God.
What is your view on gender equality?
I used to be for gender equality. However, they really stack the deck. If women want to be equal, then they have to be drafted, and they have to have semi-permanent contraceptives inserted until they are out. Women have to pass the same tests men do. If they want equal pay, then stay in the workforce as long as men (I started when I was 11). They need to receive the same prison sentences for the same crimes, Justice needs to be truly blind.
Paul, most of us mean different things when we say equality. What is gender equality to you?
Paul,
1. There isn’t any draft, and hasn’t been for at least 30 years;
2. Should men in the military have semi-permanent vasectomies until they are out?
3. Women do pass the same military and civil service tests as men;
4. Pay is based on the work that the employee does during the pay period, not over a lifetime.
5. Prison sentences are determined by judges, most of whom are male.
#3: No. Gender-norming of performance scores has long been rampant in the military, even the Marines. The lady Marine in my old office offered the excuse that if they did not gender-norm, they’d clear the women out en bloc. You’ve seen this in other venues, such as firefigher training wherein all the women applicants drop out. If we were sensible, there would be a woman’s auxilliary to each of the armed services, and women would be employed for their technical skills.
TIN – I agree with all the others, but men still have to register for the draft at 18 and it is the women service people who are getting pregnant and discharged from the service.
“Of course, such views would normally be viewed as perfectly insane but this is the religious head of Iran.”
Donald Trump’s view of gender inequality would normally be seen as perfectly insane, but this is the most powerful man in the world.
Indeed, and at least we can trust the ayatollah not to grab women by the pussy 🙂
He probably has a harem of 100 young women and 50 young boys.
Donald Trump’s view of gender inequality would normally be seen as perfectly insane,
What did he say about ‘gender inequality’ that was ‘insane’?
What is more to the point is that most, if not all, religions when taken to that perverse extreme, i.e. the only and ultimate rules for living, put women below men. The Catholic woman that is there to pump out babies, the Jewish woman who has to get a note from her doctor to attest that she is clean, etc. This mutt is just another religious extremist. Islam is much younger and therefore this perversity is more rampant. Among the Christians and Jews of the world this disgusting attitude still exists but is slowly and surely giving way to the reality that man makes the laws and freedom applies equally to both sexes, perhaps ‘all’ sexes. What is most interesting to me is that we live in a world where we can see social evolution happening. Evolution, unfortunately, is a slow moving thing.
“Is it live or is it memorex”? Is it an Iranian ayatollah or a US dominionist, republican/conservative/libertarian, potential supreme court justice? One simply can’t tell the difference. “Of course such views would normally be viewed as perfectly insane” (not my words) or ones twisted party’s current party platform? Can one choke on the words Lilly Ledbetter?
btw – believe national womens day was a week or so past. And in the USA we’re celebrating about to confirm someone who also supports the heinous position that would allow an employer to fire a women for getting pregnant. Possibly a repugnant piece of garbage? or once again “is it live or is it memorex”?
And in the USA we’re celebrating about to confirm someone who also supports the heinous position that would allow an employer to fire a women for getting pregnant.
Whatever Judge Gorsuch has or has not advocated, statutory law is what it is. The judge takes the law as given. That aside, in a free society, no one is compelled to work for anyone else or employ anyone else except through the conduit of freely assumed contractual obligations. Its the people who insist otherwise who really are heinous.
Iran’s women in the 1970’s before the religion of peace took over.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3359382/Was-really-women-dressed-IRAN-revolution.html
Why is viewing the cleavage and midriff of a perfect stranger considered a mark of a ‘sane’ society?
I think the point is more along the lines of a separation of religion and government.
When you have an answer which is not non sequitur, get back to me.
Perhaps it was not the ability of one’s self to view the perfect stranger’s anatomy, but the ability of the stranger to dress as they desire.
It was a choice made by an individual, rooted in religion or not-to dress that way. All who cast their gaze on the subject could take her in or look away- another individual choice.
Steg, you can check the New York Penal Law. There’s an entry for ‘indecent exposure’. Life is lived socially and one’s ‘desires’ form and react to a social matrix.
Steg – women either dress for themselves or an other. So, if you are mating age, you show your cleavage and midriff, since they are prime right now. As you age, that will go down hill and if you don’t marry you will have to change your dress style. You will be spending a lot of time in the gym.
Paul, I get that… I just don’t think Ter Ber’s point was what DSS is implying.
Steg – women either dress for themselves or an other. So, if you are mating age, you show your cleavage and midriff, since they are prime right now.
No, you only do that if you’re immodest and vulgar. You won’t find a picture of my grandmother with her cleavage and midriff exposed. Both of my grandmothers were handsome women ca. 1925, but they didn’t show the inventory to just anyone. You might just have found my mother in some sort of gown which exposed cleavage per the fashions of 1950, though I’ve never seen any such photograph and she certainly never did any such thing past age 35.
dds – all that changed with women getting the vote and Prohibition. Women never drank at home, but they would drink in a speakeasy. Jazz was music that was danced to in shorter skirts. These will get shorter over time. By the end of the 50s we have Capri pants that were painted on. And tight sweaters. Etc., etc., etc.
You’re confused. Capri pants do not expose your midriff or your cleavage. An earlier generation had bloomers. Women’s fashion in the 1920s is notable mostly for reducing the quantum of cloth and exposing the legs. Miniskirts worn ca. 1970 were shorter than young women’s clothing ca. 1925, as were short pants, but you haven’t had a secular trend in favor of more exposed legs in the last 50 years. Frequenting speakeasies was a minority taste in the 1920s, which saw liquor consumption decline to such an extent that it did not return to the 1918 baseline until about 1970.
Your grandmother didn’t have t.v. Who knows how she would have dressed if she had been exposed to the media, which has debased our common culture. Young men exposing their underwear, women dressing like sluts, tattoos galore…People are sheep, and will follow whatever celebrity trends are put in front of them. And when there are no parents or school authorities willing to set limits, the kids will become increasingly outrageous in pushing boundaries, because that’s what kids do.
I think she bought a TV around 1955. Television programming in that era tended to be fairly meticulous about what were called ‘standards and practices’. I agree with you that image merchants and word merchants have an adolescent impulse to lacerate sensibilities. That used to be kept in bounds by the suits (who were, no doubt, anxious about legal action). When antique statutes containing obscenity were rendered unenforceable by the judiciary, restraint gradually went out the window. The purveyors of entertainment are not particularly good people, and a certain sort of Gresham’s law prevails.
dds – did you ever see the tops that went with Capri pants? I did. Dated a girl who wore them all summer. It was a lovely summer. 🙂
Mary Tyler Moore’s character favored sweaters and blouses with her Capri pants. My mother favored jeans for gardening and dresses and skirts / blouse / jackets otherwise in that era, so cannot say from meatworld.
dds – Mary Tyler Moore and her fake husband were not allowed to sleep in the same bed. They had separate beds several feet apart. They were never on the same bed together without one of them having one foot on the floor. It was all part of “The Code.”
So what?
My grandparents had twin beds. They had four children too.
I would agree with your remark as I am a Christian, but the contrast of showing women in ‘casual/picnic wear’ to the Islamic dark burka, was what was striking.
Equally striking is the demon possessed actions of today’s western society going totally off the rails in its degradation of mankind.
https://youtu.be/pbW6xKrTaak
Jesus the Christ did more to set women free than any one in all of history. The Lord broke a few rules & customs of the times when He let a woman of ill repute touch Him to wash His feet. He 1st showed Himself alive after His death to women. He treated women with the same respect He treated any one else.
Don’t let the macho definition of what Paul said about not letting a woman teach fool you. Paul also wrote that in the Holy Spirit of Christ, there is no male or female & that everyone who walks in His Spirit are all the sons of God. A woman can do anything in Christian ministry a man can do if the Lord calls her to what ever that may be in each lady’s case.
SamFox
Uh…Jonathan… where do we disagree?
And how could God lie? I mean, if you accept that He exists why would you think that he lies?
Po:
“Women should be able to fight alongside men? Why? Who gains from it? How many women want/need to join the military? Is it a right or is it a wish? Would women join the military if they were better supported in this society, if they could earn a good living doing everything else?”
Studies have shown that women in combat w/ men endanger the missions. The MIC gains from women joining the military and many women join to pay off off their huge student loans.
Others re up because they have children and their spouse does not have a decent job w/ benefits so at least their medical bills are covered and their is a bit of a pension. If we had a similar system for the Peace Corps which benefits the poorest of the world yet only trust fund babies can afford to join it would be different.
Exactly, Autumn, we are been trained to accept the abnormal as normal. The solution is not to create these hybrid women who can outcompete men on their own turf, but rather to provide a juster society where women need not be men in order to find themselves.
The U.S. has a volunteer military. Everyone in a combat unit volunteered to be there. Some men want to be in combat units; most don’t. Actual Combat Units make up only about 10% of the military. So if women want to join, let them. It will be a very small number of volunteers, and Israel has had success with women fighters. You can’t use women not being in combat as an excuse to deny women their rights, since many women have volunteered and Congress has kept them out of the foxholes. Moreover, many women are on the front lines in Iraq as support personnel. They might not be sent there to pull the trigger, but they are doing everything else. And yes, they are trained to pick up an M-16 and shoot if their unit comes under attack. I have a former classmate who joined the Army and was killed in the Persian Gulf. I don’t know the details but I have no doubt she fought back when her unit came under attack.
So if women want to join, let them. It will be a very small number of volunteers, and Israel has had success with women fighters. So if women want to join, let them. It will be a very small number of volunteers, and Israel has had success with women fighters.
IIRC, the practice was discontinued after 1949 because female combat deaths tended to be distracting for male soldiers.
Isn’t that dude one of the woman’s movements butt buddies? i though I recognized him. That’s funny. In the circles of a decent society he, like Clintons, NOW and the left stream media would be called victimizers.
Let’s not shoot from the hip and reread his comments. He is not frowning on equality, which was urged in the quran a millennium before western societies enshrined it into any constitution of theirs, he is frowning on the western concept of equality which, we now see, has taken western women into that weird realm where they are positioned opposite men, when it recruited them into a matchmaking process of we can/should do whatever men can/should do, even when, in most cases in goes against their own best interests and the best interest of both the family and society.
Most of the things we claim women should be equal to men about are things that demean or oppress them, meanwhile we still do not pay them equal amounts for equal work.
Women should be able to fight alongside men? Why? Who gains from it? How many women want/need to join the military? Is it a right or is it a wish? Would women join the military if they were better supported in this society, if they could earn a good living doing everything else?
As for families, I do not know of one woman, including my wife, whose greatest wish isn’t to stay home with the kids, and this after spending a lifetime getting educated and racing with the rats. All the ones working full time are depressed and lamenting missing out on their children childhood.
If that is equality, perhaps we ought to revisit it.
Sexually, who benefits from equality in promiscuity?
If they shouldn’t then they should Equally not be given a free ride on student loans and government jobs. when men are required to involuntarily volunteer for the draft at age 18. sss.gov real short one.
If the should then one has to ask where in the Constitution is that stated? Men were considered to be cannon fodder and women to be baby factories in those days. That’s called judging in the context of the times.
Now we seek to make changes. but playing favorites for large sums of money? Justify that.
Po,
I’m not sure what you mean by “western” societies or constitutions. Greece, a Mediterranean country, is universally recognized as the foundation of “western civilization.” Greek culture was transported to Egypt, Syria, etc. by Alexander the Great. At the time that Muhammad, an illiterate, was preaching in Mecca, Jews and Christians were a significant part of the population. The writers of the Quran were Jewish and Christian converts to Islam. Much of the Quran is reproduced from the Old Testament, the Apocrypha and the Talmud, and the Quran contains stories from the New Testament about Jesus, whom it calls the Word of God. While some says the Quran is a rip-off of the other Abrahamic religions, I see it as a related continuation of the western culture and religion in that area at that time. Just as Genesis 1-11 contains many of the myths taken from Greek myth, the Quran borrows from the existing western religious doctrines, Judaism and Christianity, which genetically and culturally, are its cousins.
Muslim began with the Arabs, cousins to the Jews. They are both white races. Take a look at Khomeini’s photo. He is obviously white. And Iran (Persia) is a white country. The fact that Islam (as well as Christianity) was later adopted by some non-whites, does not deny the fact that it was created in the Middle East based largely on Greek and Jewish religious and cultural doctrines.
Greece, a Mediterranean country, is universally recognized as the foundation of “western civilization.”
By whom. Western civilization has Judeo-Christian, Classical, and Germanic antecedents. The Classical incorporates the Roman as well as the Greek. Philosophy and mathematics find their origins in Classical Greece. There’s so much else, however.
Although our high school and college courses incorporate the Graeco-Roman cultures as “classical,” it was the Greeks who, at the time, were considered to be culturally advanced. Which is why the New Testament is written in Greek: it was the language of educated people throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Romans were known for law, administration and military might. Would the Greeks have killed Jesus? Not likely. The Romans followed the law; the Greeks followed their capacity to reason.
Tin, by western societies and constitutions, I mean modern western societies, European and American. WE know that the link between Greek and let’s say modern European and American societies and constitutions was filtered through Arab-Islamic societies which strengthened it before passing it along.
Without Islam, the Greek civilization would not have reached the West as we know it.
The mistake you make, I think, is that on one hand you assert the ethnic and religious relationship between ISlam and its preceding religions, and on the other refusing the Quran its own offering. Why assume that the quran borrowed from Christianity and Judaism? Why not accept, as it claims, that it is the update of those messages and that what you call borrowings are simply reiterations of the same talking points God offered previously?
And no, the quran is NOT a reproduction of the old testament, far, very far from it. In creed, methodology, content and language, it could not be any different. In fact, the quran is closer to the new testament than to the old, which makes sense considering it is closer to it chronologically.
The reason many Christian and Jews converted was simply because in this new message they saw a repetition and expansion of their own message, and they also knew of the coming prophet and his message.
As for Arabs and Jews being white, no, they aren’t, they are semitic ethnicities, which are not deemed white. In fact, they are less “white”than Persians, which is what Khomeini is.
Po – being Semitic is ethnic, not a race.
Paul, thanks for restating what I have already said. There is only one human race and various ethnicity.
There are three recognized races: Asian, white and black. Any variations are ethnicities. Thus Sicilians, Greeks, Jews and Arabs are darker whites than Scandanavians and Germans, but being much closer to the the Caucasus Mountains, they are what was originally thought of as “white,” not those groups on the outer extremes of whiteness, such as Scandinavians, who were unknown in early history.
You’ve neglected Melanesians. Referring to East Indians as caucasoid is a convention.
People change religions for a variety of reasons. The best reason, of course, is that something about the religion touches their hearts and minds. But studies have shown that when people convert for purposes of marriage, they will almost invariably abandon the new religion if the marriage fails. And I’ve read that most Catholics who became Muslim during the conquest of Spain returned to Catholicism after the expulsion of the Muslims. But then again, many European converts in Bosnia remain Muslims to this day. I’ve wondered if anyone has ever looked at people who convert to Islam while in prison. How many of them stay on the path, and how many return to the bad behaviors of their past once they are out (drinking, drugs, crime, etc.) And then there are those who change religions for social status. Ronald Reagan was raised in the Assembly of God religion, a Pentecostal branch of Christianity. His wife Nancy got him to become a Presbyterian, because it has higher social status among American churches. That is not unusual; many Americans will attend a socially connected church for social advancement or business connections. Because religion also has emotional, family and cultural ties, I think it would be difficult for an adult to abandon those connections.
Po,
You make a valid point re the Quran reiterating and updating the earlier messages of God. I suppose it’s similar to the relationship of the NT to the OT. I’ve never read the Quran, so my thoughts were based on what I heard about it (second hand information).
Po,
If you don’t know one woman “whose greatest wish isn’t to stay home with the kids,” you seriously need to get out and meet more people! Some women can deal with that; my own mother told me that while she loved her children, being with kids all day was so lonely and boring that she desperately craved adult conversation and mental stimulation. As for me, I could spend maybe one day with pre-school kids. The first 1/2 day might be fun, but then I’d start looking for a way to either escape or slit my wrists. In any event, in America we recognize that not everyone is the same. One woman might want to have 10 kids and stay home; another might want to be a scientist or a judge. Everyone should be able to fulfill his or her life ambitions. I don’t impose my personal views of a “perfect life” on others.
Obviously, TIN, there are rules and exceptions. Some women do not want to have children, others love them part time, but most if not all the ones I know who have younger children, and I know a lot of women who have younger children, do not want to work fulltime any longer.
So it is a safe bet to say that most working women with children would like to be able to afford working less to spend more time with their children.
TIN – my mother always said the reason the reason the Fuller Brush man did so well was because stay at home mom’s with babies and toddlers craved adult conversation.
See Florence King on tradesman you met ca. 1939 (e.g. scissors grinders). Her take was that they provided agreeable low pressure male company. After these tradesmen disappeared, women started expecting that from their husbands, who were ill-equipped to provide it. It surprised me when my mother admitted she loved the scissors grinder’s visits as a child.
You had telephones, and women of that era were assiduous girl talkers. What you did not have was male company. Men in domestic settings tend to be weak conversationalists, at least as regards things women like to discuss.
Just like a lot of GOP ZEALOTS IN SUITS and some who don’t wear them….
A dork with a head turban is a dork all the way.
From his first homo act to his last dying day.
We all know Komeeny is gay a a fruit.
The rest of Islam says it matters a root.