War of Feminism
We often get told that the war on Terror is really the war for Feminism, those awful Muslims, why they do awful things to Women’s rights, and we have to support women’s rights at the end of an M-16. Doesn’t look like the rights of women have increased at all since Saddam was ousted this from the Guardian
Hidden victims of a brutal conflict: Iraq's women
Abduction, rape and murder are the punishments for any woman who dares to hold a professional job. A month-long investigation by The Observer reveals the terrible reality of life after Saddam
'It is very difficult for women here. There is a lot of pressure on our personal freedoms. None of us feels that we can have an opinion on anything any more. If she does, she risks being killed.'
It is a story familiar to women across Iraq, betrayed by the country's new constitution that guaranteed them a 25 per cent share of membership of the Council of Representatives. That guarantee has turned instead into a fig leaf hiding what women activists now call a 'human rights catastrophe for Iraqi women'.
After a month-long investigation, The Observer has established that in almost every major area of human rights, women are being seriously discriminated against, in some cases seeing their conditions return to those of females in the Middle Ages. In areas such as the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City in east Baghdad, women have been beaten for not wearing socks. Even the headscarf and juba - the ankle-length, flared coat that buttons to the collar - are not enough for the zealots. Some women have been threatened with death unless they wear the full abbaya, the black, all-encompassing veil.
posted by Bomber @ 2:33 pm
6 comments
6 Comments:
"Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.
"Combatants and their sympathizers in conflicts, such as those in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Rwanda, have raped women as a weapon of war with near complete impunity. Men in Pakistan, South Africa, Peru, Russia, and Uzbekistan beat women in the home at astounding rates, while these governments alternatively refuse to intervene to protect women and punish their batterers or do so haphazardly and in ways that make women feel culpable for the violence."
http://hrw.org/women/
NS
Come on guys, I know this is a 'boyzone' blog site but surely someone's got something to say!
Women had it far better under Saddam than anywhere in the Arab world. To the point where their education rivaled that of men. As a consequence, status of Iraqi women had vastly improved. I know numerous Iraqi families here where the mothers have PHDS, Masters, or at the very least a bachelors in something. Now it's back to the dark ages. Just where America wants 'em. Same goes for Afghanistan-- 1970s was a period of revolution...but America preferred it to be used as a battleground for the cold war.
-Anti-Flag.
...
The reason we don't respond Anon is because the role of woman in our own country at the hands of us as men is disgusting and what moral right do we have to wag fingers. Look at our domestic violence rate, the amount of women we as men rape in our own country each weekend - we let our sisters, our mothers, our daughters and our girlfriends down by not standing up to this type of abuse in our own country - that isn't to say that we must not demand better treatment of women in other countries - we must - but I think our words ring pretty hollow until we start doing right in our own country - and part of that is cutting through the macho bullshit that men wrap themselves with in this country.
Amen to that Bomber, thank you!
NS
Women in Islam.
I dunno about all of this, I have never been there, either. But, in this non-middle-east Islamic country where I live, my wife's gynecologist is Arabian, third generation immigrant, our Opthoalmologist is Iranian, immigrant, two of the classmates my wife went to girl's school with hold important portfolios in the Federal Parliament. Last week at the International Airport I met three ladies immigrating from Iraq, and one from Afghanistan, each of whom said they came here as refugees because the conditions and opportunities for women in their countries had deteriorated since the invasion to the point that they had to leave. All were accompanied by their husbands and children, except one young, unmarried Archetect who said all she wanted to do was find a job.
Yeah, they wore headscarves. About half of the women do. It's hot here, many western women wear them, too. So too, some men. I would not call them wuzzies though just bcause they wear funny things on their heads.
My experience in these matters is limited, and any conclusions drawn from them must be qualified as limiting. I am always willing to benefit from the much borader and first hand experience oand knowledge of Deamo if he wld care to elucidate, and backhis rhetoric with fact and references.
Hey, thanks, Bomber. You have a good thing going here, and a real public service it is. good luck down there in that fine land of yours. Don't let the arseholes change it!
..
Post a Comment
<< Home