Feminism Online

I don’t wanna be a stupid girl

2006-02-24T21:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, girls I just have to tell you about a new song that just hit the charts, “I don’t wanna be a stupid girl.” This song is performed by Pink, an artist I have always admired for her ability to put out material that has a deeper substance than the typical shallowness that pervades contemporary pop culture.

In her new song Pink wants to know what ever happened to all of the smart girls and then she remembers, oh yeah, the smart girl is dressed in a skimpy outfit and dancing next to 50 Cent in a video. Pink boldly declares that she does not want to be that stupid girl.

After hearing the song and reading the reviews, I scoured the Internet to watch the video for this song and it made me feel ashamed for succumbing to the superficiality of that make-believe world at times. Pink mocks the likes of Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Brittney Spears by showing how these girls have little more than a nice voice and a set of fake breasts to offer the world.

In fact, these girls are the exact opposite of what I want my own girls to be in life. I do not want my daughters to think if they flaunt their beauty they can treat the rest of the world with disregard. The image portrayed by these famous faces, and that Pink is taking to task, is not the sentiment that young women should be embracing at this crucial junction of fresh opportunity that awaits women in the 21st century.

Like men, we no longer have to be beautiful to be someone in life. We are no longer a commodity to be bartered depending on how appealing the package. We are our own persons and we determine our own futures. Our intelligence, drive and determination will get us farther in today’s world than being just another pretty face.

I will admit, regrettably, that I have been sucked into this shallow world to varying degrees at different times in my life. For example, since my mother died from skin cancer, I’ve never been one to stay in the sun for any length of time. So when I wanted that deep tan donned by those in Hollywood, I wasted my money to try to get it. But it never looked good on me and I can’t help but wonder if those chemicals aren’t worse than the effects of the sun I was trying to avoid.

Now why would I waste my money on something so trivial when I know better? Just like every real woman in the world, I am beautiful in my own way and I do not need to try to look like someone else (who probably got her beauty from a cosmetic surgeon) to be beautiful.

Before I turned 30, I wanted desperately for the world to stop looking at my bosom and start looking at my brain. Now that I am approaching 40, I find more and more that my intellect and personality are the traits that make me shine.

No doubt there are men out there who want women who are ignorant and have no opinion – I have met this type of man myself. These guys would prefer a shallow woman to be arm candy instead of an intelligent one, but they are also usually shallow themselves and couldn’t keep up with a smart woman with a strong opinion.

I absolutely believe beauty and intelligence can coincide in one woman, but her brainpower should always outshine her pretty face.

In Pink’s video, there is a cute little girl struggling with a good angel on one shoulder telling her to be herself and a bad angel on the other shoulder encouraging her to be shallow – to flip her hair, look down on the “small people” and to be beautiful no matter what it takes. In the end, the little girl glances at her Barbie dolls and then takes off with a football instead. She chose to be her own woman and I’d gladly play some ball with her anytime.

Ladies, my concern is that our young women are growing up in a world where shallowness is celebrated and intelligence is scorned. Our daughters are finally in a position to be whatever they want to be in life, but too often the women they choose to emulate have limited themselves to be judged by their outward appearance.

Our daughters are expected to fit this unrealistic image of a paper-thin woman who is visually appealing and can sometimes sing (and sometimes not) and those girls who don’t fit the mould are left to feel like something is wrong with them – when in fact it is the sick system of anorexia that is wrong.

How many movies and television shows have an overweight, unattractive man playing the husband/father role and his wife is a beautiful skinny woman? There are several. Now how many shows have an overweight, unattractive woman married to a gorgeous, well-built man? I cannot think of even one. Both of these scenarios are unrealistic, but only one is broadcast into our homes.

This sends a very clear message that it is acceptable for men to be less than perfect, but it is not acceptable for women to be anything but perfect – as defined by shallow Hollywood. I love that Pink pops up out of nowhere and shatters that perfect image into tiny little pieces. I don’t need to have a tan or be paper thin to be beautiful, I am beautiful just as I am – and so are you.

We need women like Pink who will take such a strong stand for our daughters. Even more, we need to take a stand for our daughters by teaching them that they are beautiful even if they don’t fit the image being imposed on them through television and magazines. Together we can reshape society’s definition of beauty to include a more accurate version of real women.

The stupid girls from Pink’s song are the exact opposite of what this world needs from the feminine half of the population. There is poverty all around us, violence and wars, and people dying over cartoons. What the world needs is for smart ladies to stop hiding out in their houses, realise they have a responsibility to their generation and get out in the world with their sleeves rolled up, ready to work.

Someone needs to set this world in proper working order and it sure won’t be those stupid girls.

Are the scales of Gender Equality tipping too far on the other side now?

2006-02-19T21:34:00.000-05:00

I was born into a world where little boys had so much promise and little girls, regardless of their intellect or potential, were treated with indifference regarding their role in society. Because of this, I try to bridge the gender gap whenever possible to show how important it is to have a world where both men and women are able to operate at their fullest potential.

After just a few decades of aggressively pursuing gender equality, it seems there is a turn-around of sorts. That is not to say that women are in fact on equal footing as men yet; indeed there is still so far to go. There are parts of the world where women are still considered property, not allowed to have a say over their own lives and bodies and must live their entire lives to please someone else – usually a man.

Even in countries where women are considered equal, there are still significant gaps in political representation and pay rates for the same jobs held by a man. Though these and other inequalities are still present, I truly believe that within the next decade or two we will have made even more substantial advances that will bring gender inequality to the brink of extinction.

However, I am now concerned about an alarming new trend that could prove to be problematic in regards to gender equality – it is what a recent Newsweek cover termed as “The Boy Crisis.” In a gist, there has been a considerable plunge in male academic performance in the last decade.

The cause of this decline is not fully understood as yet, some attribute it to the introduction of video games, others to the lack of male role models in the family unit and still others to the development of a teaching process structured to allow the girls (who just a few decades ago were given equal access to education) to catch up to the boys in the classroom. My guess is that it is probably a mixture of all of these factors.

According to the Newsweek article, “In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High school boys are losing ground to girls on standardised writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn’t like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan Study.”

I know there are some who believe that those who strongly advocate women’s rights are in actuality anti-male, but this concern is no more than just ignorance of the issue. My stance is for gender equality, which means that if boys are now the ones in jeopardy, then as a society, we need to take every step necessary to help them re-establish themselves in the academic world.

The article also reported, “Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they’re a minority at 44 percent.”

I have noticed this trend first hand with my own children. I have four children, two boys and two girls, and my boys have always struggled in school – even the one who has the IQ of a genius. As a mother, this has been quite frustrating for me because it is difficult to see all of this wasted potential in my own son.

I recently started taking a closer look at my children and their friends to see if there are any correlations that suggest that boys are indeed falling behind and I found something quite interesting. My daughter, who is a freshman at a university in the Midwest, has a boyfriend who is absolutely brilliant, but has chosen (at least for the present) to not attend college. Instead, he is working at a fast-food restaurant as a cook.

This is also the case with many of the girls she knows and their boyfriends. It seems that with this small group of children, most of whom I have known for years, the girls are choosing to get a higher education and the boys are not.

I finally persuaded my “genius” son to attend college (after much pleading, yelling, crying and reasoning). He is attending a community college a couple hours drive away and he has a girlfriend who attends a nearby university. Last week we were talking about how school was going and he told me that he has made friends with several other guys who are also attending his community college and have girlfriends who attend the renowned university.

In this case, the girls are the ones getting a first rate education while the boys are attending a community college – mostly because their parents are forcing them to do so. I know my examples are just a small representation of this bigger problem, but my family seems to clearly demonstrate the crisis highlighted by the Newsweek article concerning boys.

My advocacy for gender equality has always been to bring women up to the same standard as men – academically, socially, politically, spiritually (I believe women should also be religious leaders such as pastors, priests, Imams, etc.) and in any other way necessary. I have been such a staunch advocate of gender equality because I truly believe this world will be a better place when both genders are allowed to contribute with their full capacity to society.

This is also why we cannot allow the boys to fall behind academically. The consequences could be just as disastrous to the world as the thousands of years of feminine repression. The goal in gender equality is balance. When one gender is allowed to overtake another gender, the outcome will always be an imbalanced and unhealthy society.

It is of utmost importance to find a way to help bring the boys back into the educational institutions with a willing spirit to learn. Men and women may not be physically or psychologically the same, but both genders play a significant role in shaping the political, economic and social landscape of the world - and neither gender should be refused that opportunity.

Women and the Media - The Feminist Monster Myth

2005-10-01T11:36:00.000-05:00

One afternoon, while writing an essay at the library, I stumbled across Susan J. Douglas’s fabulous book “Where the Girls Are - Growing up Female with the Mass Media”. Although her book was a personal account of a baby boomer’s relationship with the media, I - a young woman born in the decade that brought the world Dynasty cat fights and Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 - found it an informative, relatable read. One of my favourite passages mocks the stereotypes of feminists perpetuated by the media.

“The moment the women’s movement emerged in 1970, feminism once again became a dirty word, with considerable help from the mainstream news media. News reports and opinion columnists created a new stereotype, of fanatics, “braless bubbleheads”, Amazons, “the angries, “and “a band of wild lesbians. The result is that we all know what feminists are. They are shrill, overly aggressive, man-hating, ball-busting, selfish, hairy, extremist, deliberately unattractive women with absolutely no sense of humour who see sexism at every turn. They make men’s testicles shrivel up on the size of peas, they detest the family and think all children should be deported or drowned. Feminists are relentless, unforgiving and unwilling to bend or compromise; they are single-handedly responsible for the high divorce rate, the shortage of decent men, and the unfortunate proliferation of Birkenstocks in America.”

I laughed at the ridiculous caricatures scared people drew when it appeared that women were breaking out of the kitchen and into the big, wide world. It amused me so much that I copied out the passage and stuck in a scrapbook as an example of how change can create hysteria.

Then, I started reading about the accusations biographer Edward Klein was throwing at Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) in a myriad of different media formats - Vanity Fair, The Drudge Report and Fox News to name but a few. Seeing how the media eagerly lapped up the dramatic claims in The Truth About Hillary, including the unsubstantiated speculation that Senator Clinton was “sexually frigid” and that she was raped by her husband in order to conceive their daughter. And of course, Senator Clinton could not possibly deserve fair payment for writing a book because people were interested in what an intelligent, powerful woman had to say. No, according to Klein, “greed seemed to be the only explanation for the outlandish book deal.”

“She was a mother, but she wasn't maternal. She was a wife, but had no wifely instincts. She said she was passionately in love with her husband, but many of her closest friends and aides were lesbians,” he claims, not bothering to back up his claims with evidence or explain how having lesbian friends negated her love for her husband.

But its not only authors like Klein who feel its fair game to manipulate and insult a powerful woman by making implications and allegations about her family, sexuality and personal feelings.

Radio host and former cast member on MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson Jay Severin has called Senator Clinton an “anti-Christ”, “the devil”, “sociopathic” and a “Manchurian candidate”. He did apologise for once calling her a “lying bitch” but only because "technically, it's a redundancy."

Rush Limbaugh has also seemed to take a particular pleasure in attacking Senator Clinton claiming that she is a “real man” and apparently owns a “testicle lock-box”.
But then, this is a man who frequently uses the term “fem-nazi” and believes that those who speak out against sexual harassment are just jealous because nobody’s harassing them.

I have no problem with people attacking Senator Clinton’s policies or even examining her personal life if it is relevant to her role as a public figure. What bothers me is that too many media figures - many of whom are men - seem to take delight in using her gender or status as a feminist to discredit and attack her.

The media has enormous power - most of us consume it on a daily basis via television, the internet and newspapers. How many people hear Limbaugh and Severin and assume that they must be speaking the truth? How many people start to believe that a woman who demands equality is a “wild lesbian” or a “fem-nazi”?

If those in positions of power won’t stand up and end this rubbish, I guess we’ll have to make them. So, e-mail Rush, Jay and any other media figure that slurs women. E-mail their bosses and their sponsors. If they won’t do the right thing by themselves, lets see if they’ll do the right thing when we demand it.

"A Big Disappointment"

2005-08-29T13:04:00.000-05:00

Sitting next to First Lady Laura Bush during the President’s 2005 State of the Union address, Safia Taleb al-Suhail was a powerful symbol of the Iraqi people who had yearned for freedom and finally thought that their suffering was almost at an end. Elections were coming up, a constitution to follow and hopefully, a peaceful, stable, democratic country for many years to come. She embraced the mother of a marine who died in the effort to create that new Iraq, touching people on the left and right of the political spectrum.

But almost nine months on, as Iraq is constantly being battered by suicide bombers, when assassinations are commonplace and children die under the wheels of armoured vehicles, hope for a brighter future is harder to maintain.

The draft Iraqi constitution was finally completed at the weekend - enshrining Islam as the basic source of law and calling for the Supreme Federal Court to include judges and experts in both law and sharia law. According to the Feminist Majority Foundation, this could suggest that clerics may serve on the Supreme Court.

Safia - who had hoped for change - had this to say. Wonder if the right will pay as much attention to her comments as they did to her presence at the State of the Union?

“When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve the rights and position of women. But look what happened – we have lost all the gains we made over the last 30 years. It’s a big disappointment.”

Micro-Credit, Macro-Impact

2005-08-18T11:40:00.000-05:00

I have lived in one of the most incredible cities in the world my entire life. My country is not ravaged by war, poverty, disease or natural disaster. My parents were in the position to give me a safe, comfortable home and my neighbourhood has good schools. Now, I’m a third of the way through my degree and looking at doing a post-graduate. I’m very aware of how lucky I am.

However, millions of women around the world have to struggle to even provide the most basic of things for their families. After a devastating famine in Bangladesh in 1974, Muhammad Yunus, an economist, decided that something had to be done to give the poor a chance to lift themselves up out of poverty themselves. He did this by making small loans available to small groups of people to start their own businesses.

This was a revolutionary step as it gave the poor a real chance to make a success of their ideas when usually, they would never be approved for a loan because of their financial situation.

From his original idea, The Grameen Bank came into existence and has proved to be enormously successful. Not only this is good for the economy of every area that the bank - and other similar micro-credit organisations - operate in, it also gives women a chance to earn their own living. 96% of the loans go to women, giving them real economic oppurtunity and independence.

Take a look at some of the success stories from women around the world.

Nurjahan is a borrower of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Her name means "the light of the world." Abandoned by her parents at three months of age and raised by a neighbor, Nurjahan was married at twelve only to be abandoned by her husband a year later, while three months pregnant. She returned to the family who had raised her, cooking for them while raising her son.
Before joining Grameen, Nurjahan had never earned more than $37.50 in a year and owned no land. After five years as a borrower with the Grameen Bank, her annual income is $250 (just above the national average) and she owns two goats, one pregnant cow, ten hens, and two-thirds of an acre of land. The land cost $1,000, more than four times the average annual income. Seasonally, she employs two farm-hands to assist with her rice crop. In a country where only 46 percent of the children reach grade five, Nurjahan's son is now in 8th grade.

La Maman Mole Motuke lived in a wrecked car in a suburb of Kinshasa, Zaire with her four children. If she could find something to eat, she would feed two of her children; the next time she found something to eat, her other two children would eat.
When organizers from the Association interviewed her, she said that she knew how to make chikwangue (maniac paste), and she only needed a few dollars to start production. After six months of training in marketing and production techniques, Maman Motuke got her first loan of US$100, and bought production materials.
Today, Maman Motuke and her family no longer live in a broken down car; they rent a house with two bedrooms and a living room. Her four children go to school on a regular basis; they eat regularly and dress well. She currently is saving to buy some land in a suburb farther outside of the city and hopes to build a house.

(http://www.microcreditsummit.org/stories/intro.htm)

It seems that micro-credit iniatives really do make an impact and allow women to support themselves and their family. As Wikipedia points out:

More than half of Grameen borrowers in Bangladesh have all children of school age in school, all household members eating three meals a day, a sanitary toilet, a rainproof house, clean drinking water and the ability to repay a 300 taka-a-week (US$8) loan, which has brought them above the poverty level.

These small loans are making such a huge difference to people's lives, especially the lives of women. Its sustainable and it gives people pride in themselves by not forcing them to rely on charity. Maybe our governments should look at this way of lifting people out of poverty.

Dangerous Times for Iraqi Women

2005-07-31T15:07:00.000-05:00

In light of Stellar's post on the rights of Indian women, I did some research on the rights of Iraqi women. Its an important time as the new Iraqi constitution is being drafted right now and many women's rights activists fear that it will reduce women's rights.

Whatever your opinion on the war in Iraq, everyone can agree that at this point the safety and security of the Iraqi people is what is important now. We are there- rightly or wrongly

- and now is the time to help Iraq emerge from its painful past and into a hopeful future.

You only have to look at the news reports coming out of Iraq to see that it won’t be easy. If you join the new Iraqi police force or army, you’re a target for insurgents. If you go to the market or travel through a checkpoint, you’re just as vulnerable. And if you allow your kids to take candy from American soldiers, you run the risk of watching them killed before your eyes.

Being a woman in Iraq is not easy - and it could get much harder in the near future.

To pre-empt any comments to the effect “you bleeding heart fem-nazis loved Saddam and hate our troops,” let me say that I am so unbelievably glad that Saddam is gone. He was a brutal, murderous tyrant who - along with his unimaginably cruel sons - subjected his people to years of suffering. As the State Department’s website points out, as a woman in Saddam’s Iraq, you would have faced:

Beheading. Under the pretext of fighting prostitution, units of "Fedayeen Saddam" (the paramilitary organization led by Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son) beheaded in public more than 200 women, dumping their severed heads at their families' doorsteps.

Rape. The regime used rape and sexual assault of women to: Extract information and forced confessions from detained family members; Intimidate members of the opposition by sending them videotapes of the rape of female family members; and Blackmail Iraqi men into future cooperation with the regime.

Torture. Saddam Hussein's thugs routinely tortured and killed female dissidents and the female relatives of Iraqi oppositionists and defectors. Children were imprisoned if they or their parents were not viewed to be faithful supporters of the Saddam regime.

Murder. In 1990, Saddam Hussein introduced Article 111 into the Iraqi Penal Code. This law exempted men from any kind of punishment if they kill their female relatives in defense of their family's honor.

(source www.state.gov/g/wi/c8973.htm)

Living in a democracy should allow Iraqi women a real chance at freedom and give them the oppurtunity to get involved in their government in a meaningful way. However, as with many things in Iraq today, things have not gone to plan.

Earlier this month, IRIN News reported that women in Baghdad and the province of Anbar are increasingly becoming the victims of acid attacks if they don’t wear the black abaya, a long black garment that covers most of the body. The Feminist Majority Foundation recounts the experiences of some of the woman affected.

Hania Abdul-Jabbar, a university student, had acid thrown on her face and legs by three men for not wearing the veil out in public. “They cut all my hair off while hitting me in the face many times, telling me it’s the price for not obeying God’s wish in using the veil,” according to IRIN News. Today Abdul-Jabbar is blind in one eye, and her face is completely deformed due to the acid attack.

Since Hussein’s removal in 2003, at least five women have been killed in Anbar for not obeying orders by religious extremists to wear the veil and women continue to be threatened today, IRIN News reports. Despite such threats, many Iraqi women refuse to be intimidated by religious extremists.

Hiba Zuheir, who is 24 years old, explained, “I won’t force myself to use something that I don’t feel comfortable with. Women in Iraq are losing their place in society and we have to fight that and determine who we are and how we should dress, despite these dangers,” according to IRIN News.

(source www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=9145)

We could write these incidents of as the actions of extremists who wish to limit women’s freedoms by intimidating them into submissiveness. However, when drafts for the new Iraqi constitution started leaking out, it become harder to believe that women’s rights are taking a high priority in Iraq.

At the moment, the interim constitution is still in effect and guarantees that women will occupy 25% of the seats in the National Assembly. Thanks to this measure, 31% of the seats went to female candidates during the elections. But the new draft indicates that this provision will be withdrawn, prompting many to fear that the female voice will be drowned out.

In addition to this, the new constitutions only guarantees equal rights for women as long as these rights do not "violate Shariah," or Koranic law. For the past forty years, Iraq's civil code has had legal protections for women. For example, it prohibited marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce, and polygamy. Women's rights advocates argue that moving these laws under Islamic law will destroy the status of Iraqi women's rights regarding marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody rights. In February Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) expressed concern that a US backed regime could wind the clock back on women’s legal rights even further than Saddam’s awful regime if the proposed drafts become law.

One of the critical passages is in Article 14 of the chapter, a sweeping measure that would require court cases dealing with matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance to be judged according to the law practiced by the family's sect or religion.

Under that measure, Shiite women in Iraq, no matter what their age, generally could not marry without their families' permission. Under some interpretations of Shariah, men could attain a divorce simply by stating their intention three times in their wives' presence.

Article 14 would replace a body of Iraqi law that has for decades been considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East in protecting the rights of women, giving them the freedom to choose a husband and requiring divorce cases to be decided by a judge.
…

Critics of the draft proposal say that in addition to restricting women's rights, it could also deepen the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites. The draft also does not make clear what would happen in cases where the husband is from one sect and the wife from another.

Religious Shiite politicians tried once before, in December 2003, to abolish the 1959 law. As is happening now, women's groups and secular female politicians took to the streets.

(source New York Times)

I understand that Iraq is a dangerous, difficult place to try and create a functioning democracy right now. Politicians are doing their best to prevent people getting blown to pieces and that is no easy task with an insurgency hell bent on sabotaging Iraq’s progress. However, as Hillary Clinton said in her famous speech in Beijing, "...women's rights are human rights--and human rights are women's rights." The Iraqi government must ensure that no woman is discriminated against because of biology.

And if America and Britain truly do care about the human rights of the Iraqi people they will pressure the Iraqi government to give women equal rights in Iraq.

From NY Times

2005-07-11T17:13:00.000-05:00

This was published in the New York Times yesterday.

_______________________________

July 10, 2005

India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor

By SALMAN RUSHDIE

IN honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.

Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.

For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.

Dr. Khalid says that she was subsequently "threatened so many times" that she was forced to flee Pakistan. "I was hounded out," she says, expressing dissatisfaction that the government neither brought her attackers to justice nor protected her from the threats that followed.

That is the same government, led by President Pervez Musharraf, that confiscated Mukhtar Mai's passport because it feared she would go abroad and say things that would bring Pakistan into disrepute; and it is the same government that has allied with the West in the war on terrorism, but seems quite prepared to allow a war of sexual terror to be waged against its female citizens.

Now comes even worse news. Whatever Pakistan can do, India, it seems, can trump. The so-called Imrana case, in which a Muslim woman from a village in northern India says she was raped by her father-in-law, has brought forth a ruling from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom ordering her to leave her husband because as a result of the rape she has become "haram" (unclean) for him. "It does not matter," a Deobandi cleric has stated, "if it was consensual or forced."

Darul-Uloom, in the village of Deoband 90 miles north of Delhi, is the birthplace of the ultra-conservative Deobandi cult, in whose madrassas the Taliban were trained. It teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today. In one fatwa it suggested that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Not only the Taliban but also the assassins of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were followers of Deobandi teachings.

Darul-Uloom's rigid interpretations of Shariah law are notorious, and immensely influential - so much so that the victim, Imrana, a woman under unimaginable pressure, has said she will abide by the seminary's decision in spite of the widespread outcry in India against it. An innocent woman, she will leave her husband because of his father's crime.

Why does a mere seminary have the power to issue such judgments? The answer lies in the strange anomaly that is the Muslim personal law system - a parallel legal system for Indian Muslims, which leaves women like Imrana at the mercy of the mullahs. Such is the historical confusion on this vexed subject that anyone who suggests that a democratic country should have a single, unified legal system is accused of being anti-Muslim and in favor of the hardline Hindu nationalists.

In the 1980's, a divorced woman named Shah Bano was granted "maintenance money" by the Indian Supreme Court. But there is no alimony under Islamic law, so orthodox Indian Islamists like those at Darul-Uloom protested that this ruling infringed the Muslim Personal Law, and they founded the All-India Muslim Law Board to mount protests. The government caved in, passing a bill denying alimony to divorced Muslim women. Ever since Shah Bano, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge the power of Islamist clerical grandees.

In the Imrana case, the All-India Muslim Law Board has unsurprisingly backed the Darul-Uloom decision, though many other Muslim and non-Muslim organizations and individuals have denounced it. Shockingly, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also backed the Darul-Uloom fatwa. "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought," he told reporters in Lucknow. "The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments."

This is a craven statement. The "culture" of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can.

In Pakistan, the Supreme Court has taken one small but significant step in the matter of Mukhtar Mai; now it is for the police and politicians to start pursuing rapists instead of hounding their victims. As for India, at the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom.

Salman Rushdie is the author of "The Satanic Verses" and the forthcoming "Shalimar the Clown."

Protecting Women - Or Not

2005-07-01T00:12:00.000-05:00

I thought that in light of Zoe’s post, this article raises several important issues.

Supreme Court Decision Weakening Restraining Orders Short-Shrifted
in the News

6/28/2005 - In its last day before summer recess, the Supreme Court
issued decisions on six cases, only two of which, the decisions to outlaw
copies of the Ten Commandments at a Kentucky courthouse and to protect copyrighted material in Internet file sharing, were widely covered by the media. In a troubling but all too familiar trend in media reporting, Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales – a case that weakens enforcement of restraining orders in domestic violence cases – was largely ignored.

In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled that Jessica Gonzales did not have a
constitutional right to police enforcement of her mandatory court-ordered
restraining order against her husband. Gonzales had filed a $30 million
lawsuit against the Castle Rock, Colorado police department for failing to
respond to five phone calls she made reporting a violation of the
restraining order.

The town of Castle Rock, backed by the Bush administration and several police
organizations, won their argument that it would be unrealistic to enforce
every restraining order. With the vast majority of restraining orders requested by
women, according to the National Center for Violent Crime, the Castle Rock
decision puts women’s lives in jeopardy and potentially lets police departments
off the hook for failing to enforce mandatory orders.

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswire.asp

I read this article and could barely believe it. Do we really live in an age where file sharing and the Ten Commandments are more newsworthy than the fact that the Supreme Court just made the decision that its perfectly acceptable for restraining orders not to be enforced?

It only gets worse when you read the details of this disturbing case.

In the early evening of June 22, 1999, Simon Gonzales violated the restraining order his estranged wife obtained against him and abducted his three young daughters while they were playing outside of their home in Castle Rock, Colo.

Once Jessica Gonzales realized her daughters were missing, she
suspected that her husband, who had a history of erratic and suicidal behavior, had taken them. At about 7:30 p.m., she made her first phone call to the Castle Rock Police Department, requesting that the restraining order against her husband be enforced.She produced a copy of the order for the police officers sent to her home, but they told her there was nothing they could do. They suggested she call the police department again if her daughters did not return home by 10 p.m.

Soon after the officers left, Jessica Gonzales spoke to her husband on his cell phone, and he told her he was with the girls at an amusement park in Denver, about 40 miles north of Castle Rock. She called the police department again and demanded that police find and arrest her husband. The officer she spoke with refused and again told her to wait until 10 p.m. When 10 p.m. came and there was no sign of her daughters, she again called, and the dispatcher told her to wait for another two hours. At midnight, she again informed the dispatcher that they were still missing and went to her husband's apartment, finding no one home. From there, she placed another call to the police department and was advised to wait for police.
She waited until 12:50 a.m., then went to the police station. There, an officer took an incident report but made no effort to enforce the restraining order or locate the children.

He went to dinner instead.

Nearly eight hours after Jessica Gonzales first contacted police, at about 3:20 a.m., Simon Gonzales arrived at the police station in his truck and opened fire on the station with a semi-automatic handgun purchased after abducting his daughters. He was fatally shot during the shootout, and police found the bodies of the three young girls, who were murdered by their father earlier in the evening, in the cab of the truck.

http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/~secure/docket/

mt/archives/001896.php

Mrs Gonzales followed all the legal procedures she could have - she got a restraining order, she notified the police when it was breached - and still, she was failed by the system. She trusted the police and her government to protect her and her children - they let her down.

And now, nobody even wants to take responsibility.

“Why doesn’t she leave him?” society sneers at women who stay in abusive relationships.

“Why won’t the Supreme Court support the rights of women who do?” feminists everywhere should reply.

A Mother's Heartache

2005-06-23T07:53:00.000-05:00

Last night our daughter talked with us about her ex-boyfriend. Her dad was present for part of the conversation & I was present for it all. She broke up with him in January of this year. She had been struggling to do so for about a year prior to doing so. I knew something was up right about the time of the break-up, but it was three weeks before she let me know.

The break-up occured at the start of semester & she put in a difficult four months though she was able to maintain a 4.00 GPA (A's & A+'s.) I'm not sure how she pulled that off because her stress level was off the charts.

Her boyfriend (just a little over two years) really had not been a jerk that she could ever see. Her dad & I were very concerned about him from the start because he domonstrated no ambition & his energy level didn't match hers at all. I was also concerned that being too young to realize it, she was in a way, his counsellor.

Unfortuantely, after the break-up the young man fell apart emotionally & as a result, started to emotionally taunt her, verbally abuse her & stalk her. He also engaged their mutual friends in this attack on our daughter.

When she shared in the spring, the details, her dad & I were very upset. We were very close to calling the police & reporting him. As it turned out, he eventually apologized for his behaviour & we thought it was over. We were very relieved. (As it turned out, this was just he honeymoon phase. If you've worked in abuse, you know what the 'honeymoon phase' is. I can explain it later, if you'd like me to.)

Last night, she shared more of the story. She's home for the summer & the ex lives only two blocks away. She avoids him, though living in the same town means they have crossed paths a little. The last situation involved him following her home after a baseball game in May. She dropped her friend off & he came up behind her flashing his car lights & waving his arms like a madman. She ignored him & promptly came home.

She has lost almost all of her friends over this because they have all taken the side of the ex. They tell her she broke his heart & that she was in the wrong. As I sat & listened, I was sickened.

How sad. An intelligent maturing young woman grows to understand that a relationship has run it's course & it was over. She ends the relationship. The right thing to do for both of them. Then the ex goes abusive on her & the friends don't get it or see it. They keep saying, you were wrong & look how you've hurt him.

Finally last night I passionately said: "I don't get it! Why do they keep saying this? What, they want you to get back with him? They think there's a chance? It's over. My goodness, a young woman decides a relationship is over & the friends tell her she's wrong?" (I haven't taken the time to write this out beforehand, so pardon me if it appears disconnected & all over the place. I'm so angry.)

Her dad & I are very concerned. We are livid! Here she is at home, trying to calm herself after a rough year & he's here & apparently continuing to taunt her. She should be relaxing (though her summer job keeps her very busy) & enjoying a breather. Instead, last night, she opens up about the fall. Already she's stressed about returning to school in the same city where he will be living in the fall.

This is driving me crazy. Even as I type I feel like I'm losing my mind. I've worked with & counselled abused women. Our daughter's education is in social work. She's at the top of her class & because of that has obtained a position in mental health (a prestigious position & not given to just any student, you have to come highly recommened by your teachers.)

Here's what drives me crazy. In typical fashion our daughter, the abused is scared to death to report him or have us report him because the abuse will get worse! OMG, where have I heard THAT before!? Yes, from the mouths of every single woman ever abused. 'You don't understand, it will get worse, you don't understand, he'll be all sweet & wonderful to everyone else & no one will believe me & then they will abuse me, you don't understand, he'll kill me." Time out for some tears. Damn...all these years helping the abused, educating my daughter, her helping others & crap, the shit has hit the fan with our own daughter. And you know, she's right.

The abuser does go stark raving nuts when they are outed. Look at how many women get restraining orders & end up dead within a week or two of the order taking effect! Wow, big hunky doo doo, that restraining order did piddly squat to protect her. I know countless women who reported abuse & telling the police did nothing to help their cause.

I cannot believe that I so easily feel powerless. I think, damn, look at that, he's got us.

Thanks for letting me share this. I've got to stop writing for now. I'll be back.

Introducing Zoe

2005-06-19T14:19:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone. This is me. I'm a 49 year old human being that happens to be inhabiting a woman's body. Lucky me! *Big Grin* In love & married to him for 28 years. Mother of two young adult children who are busy finishing & getting degrees. We are looking forward to the empty nest!

My current interests are writing, gardening, motorcycling, knitting/crocheting & living. Some current issues are being 49 years old, & feeling caught between the emancipation that comes with that age, peri-menopause & wondering where I put my brain. *Sigh* Eternal issues of interest involve humankind, abuse, & issues relating to women, especially within a religious context.

For several days I have been trying to write something totally awe-inspiring. I have pages of stuff written here. I'm not connecting any dots though. Blame it on the peri-menopause & the loss of cognitive function. :-)

I would like to thank Stellar for the invite & I look forward to participating here.

Starting Out

2005-06-14T13:23:00.000-05:00

Although I don’t usually believe that personality traits are genetically inherited, I have a feeling that if you looked hard enough, you’d see “feminist” ingrained into my DNA.

The women in my family left their homes to start fresh in other countries. They raised children alone when they were young widows and served their communities in the best way they knew how. They started their own businesses to support their families and went to court to liberate themselves from abusive husbands. They were strong in a time when society said a woman should be seen and not heard, should cook, clean and launder till their hands bled but never work outside the home.

And I like to think that a little bit of their courage and resilience lies inside me.

I’m 19 years old and live in London, England where I’m pursing a BA in Media Studies - Journalism. After I graduate, I intend to pursue a Masters degree and then I hope to join the legions of reporters badgering politicians for answers to tough questions. Getting to do that in America would be the dream - I’m not sure there is a country with a political scene as complicated and vibrant as that of the USA.

I’m just starting out in life, forming my opinions and learning about the world around me through the eyes of an adult rather than a child. Feminism to me is about exploring that world being proud of who I am and knowing that I have potential to achieve my goals be they large - writing a book - or small - learning to drive without causing damage to people and/or property.

Hopefully, this blog will be a great place to begin.

We are so different, yet we are all women

2005-06-14T06:13:00.001-05:00

We have a great start here ladies. I don't know very much about most of you, and I know you don't know much about me. I do know we are geographically dispersed and that we come from different backgrounds and age groups. That much was by design. There are still a handful of invitations pending, but in the meantime I thought it would be nice for each of us to share a little about who we, where we are from and what drives us (our passions, interests, etc.).

I am 34 years old, I have four children, live in the DC area in the United States, and I just started a small business doing design/layout work and writing services.

I grew up in the Midwest, married at 16 years old, and had my first child by the time I was 18. I was raised in a very conservative home and went to a very conservative church. Somehow in the midst of all of this, I still had a strong will and couldn't accept the idea that men were any better than me just because I was a female.

My husband was not the type that would try to rule my life, though parts of the patriarchal system did find its way into him as much as it did me. We both stayed very true to our religious roots by serving in our church, serving as missionaries, and by starting our own church. In time though, we both couldn't reconcile our conscience with certain teachings in the bible, so we have moved away from fundamental christianity. I don't really claim to be anything right now, but my spiritual journey is long from over.

In the process of this spiritual evolution, I realized how much christianity, judaism, and islam oppresses women. I went back to school when the kids were all out of the house and started seeing the world through the eyes of a woman with lots of potential - instead of a slave expected to take care of her lord and his kids. Now I have a world of possibilities just waiting for me and I want to share this world with as many women as possible. That is why I started my site, newsparade.com, and the reason for this blog.

I'd love to hear something from each of you as well. For this little adventure be sure to post your thoughts as a new post (using your blogger dashboard) and not as just a comment to this one, that way your story is on the home page for all to easily read. Feel free to share as much or as little about yourself as you want.

For future reference, be sure to post your thoughts, articles, essays, or whatever on women's issues/interests as frequently as you want and share your comments on the posts from our other participants. We are here to support and challenge each other and other women. There is no pressure to be anything except yourself and to do what makes you feel comfortable. We are the ones who decide how to mold this blog, and with all of our great minds, I can see this going in a million wonderful directions.

Regards,
Stella

Are you ready to defend your rights?

2005-06-13T07:32:00.000-05:00

Rallying women to fight for their rights is no easy task. There are some women who underestimate the importance of the cause and simply mark it off as being a waste of time. There are others who are ignorant of their rights altogether and take it for granted that they can vote (for instance), should they even want to vote. Also, there are women who are still trapped in the patriarchal system because they have been taught that submitting to a man is godly and right. These are the ones who snub their noses at the very activists that helped women achieve the measure of freedoms and rights enjoyed today.

We need to get the word out. We need to let women know that they have an essential role to play in the continued development and protection of their rights. One thing is for sure, this is definitely not a one woman job. I believe it's time for us to start banding together again in one focused and concerted effort for our own rights and the rights of our daughters.

My attempts at finding a way to get involved in a feminist group or organization have been frustrating to say the least. There's not a whole lot to choose from and many of the groups that are out there are either un-organized or not active. While I'm sure thriving feminist groups do exist, I just haven't been able to locate one yet (aside from Planned Parenthood, of course).

Therefore, I thought this blog could be a great way to start bringing feminist thought and energy together in one place. My hope is to see a group of diverse women, of all ages and backgrounds, gather together for discussion, brainstorming and activism. Ladies, no one else is going to fight this battle for us. This is our fight and we have to be trained and ready to take on anything that stands between us and equality. When intelligent, strong and capable women unite in one cause, there is nothing we can't do.

Are you ready to defend your rights? Can you make a viable contribution to a blog for women? If so, welcome to Feminism Online...