Saturday, January 05, 2008

"There Must Be Violence Against Women"

Jill of Feministe links to an article of that title in the Yemen Times, with the statement: "Sometimes, words fail."

But, but....I thought feminists don't talk about human rights in the Arab world?

Can't process....must go watch Fox....

UPDATE: One of Amber's commenters raises a good point: if this is just about preserving Islamic mores, why don't women ever get to beat their brothers for their own sexual transgressions, imbibing alcohol, etc.? Or do they and we just don't hear about it?

Not that I want to expand the sphere of domestic violence as religious enforcement, but it does show at least some of the disingenuouness behind the assertion that this has nothing to do with gender hierarchy.

11 comments:

PG said...

There have been incidents of men committing violence against other men in order to keep them in line, particularly if the victims are gay.

David Schraub said...

That I did know.

Cycle Cyril said...

The fact you had to highlight this indicates that it is unusual for the liberal community to bring this up as an issue.

The violence is definitely to perpetuate male supremacy. Also included in this is the difference in inheritance (a daughter gets half of what a son receives), reliability of being a witness in legal proceedings (2 women literally equal 1 man) and of course who gets multiple spouses. These are all delineated in the Quran and Shira.

But more important is to continue Islamic supremacy.

As for the violence against gay men in islamic cultures it is endemic and they are lucky if they are only maimed.

David Schraub said...

No, the fact that I highlighted it was mockery. Feminist websites are consistently at the forefront of awareness on Muslim women's rights (as well, of course, as women's rights the world over).

Cycle Cyril said...

If you go to the NOW web site and search "Honor Killings" you will get 12 hits (and that is being generous by including a UN report) over the past six years.

If this is the forefront then I'm glad I'm a man, but sad for my daughters if Islam reigns.

What's with the ?'s?

David Schraub said...

Pop quiz:

1) In the acronym "NOW", what does the "N" refer (be specific!)?

2) What nations are the honor killings largely occurring in?

Cycle Cyril said...

If this is the case then why are there 341 hits when you search "Iraq" or even 4 hits for "Palestine" let alone 22 hits for "Israel".

Even if you reduce the numbers somewhat (because of people's names that include Israel or rankings of nations done for comparison) it is clear that NOW extends itself beyond the "N" in its name when it suits its political bent.

Finally haven't you heard that honor killings has arrived in Texas though not on the NOW web site.

David Schraub said...

I could swear there's some important national project/policy going on in Iraq now, but I just can't put my finger on it....

Ditto with Israel -- there are all sorts of policy programs we have implemented with Israel (and 22 isn't all that much higher than 15, the number I got when I searched for "honor killings").

Cycle Cyril said...

I'm disappointed.

Now you are saying that this nation's "national" policy definitely has extensions beyond the borders of this country. And thus NOW, being "National" has every right to refer to Iraq et al.

But above you were stating that the "National" in NOW does not extend beyond the borders of this country.

Which is it?

The answer lays in what your political belief (liberal/left) is at the moment and not what the truth is. This is a problem of the extreme right but unfortunately occurs in most of the left.

This is one of the reasons why much of the left is becoming more and more anti-Israel and anti-Semitic let alone anti-American.

David Schraub said...

I'm disappointed that you're being so willfully ignorant that you can't conceive of the relative national implications between domestic human rights violations in other countries, and a country which we invaded, toppled the government of, and are currently occupying with a 6-digit troop deployment.

This shouldn't be difficult for a 5th grader, let alone a putative adult.

Cycle Cyril said...

Since honor killing is now clearly in the USA and since it is, or should be, a feminist issue why is NOW spending so little time on it and so much on Iraq which at best affects feminist issues indirectly?

Further your question above as to what the "N" represented was clearly an attempt on your part to excuse NOW of not commenting on it. But you have every explanation why they should comment on Iraq.

But the basic pattern is to minimize non-western faults or excuse them (such as FGM) and maximize western faults and find the west culpable for all of the faults in the world.

Using the above paragraph as a basis of prediction one can be certain about 90% of the time what a leftist will say.