Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)

(Trigger warning.)

Photo caption: “Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him,” Tahani (in pink) recalls of the early days of her marriage to Majed, when she was 6 and he was 25. The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah.

National Geographic have compiled a series of photos about child brides. I was discussing with a colleague the other day the problem of western feminism trying to colonise the Middle East and women in that region. We western feminists often have a very set view of what is acceptable and unacceptable, what is oppressive and problematic, and what needs to change.  But those views are generally based on western experiences which are embedded in western cultural and societal norms. In short: it is very likely that these norms do not apply to non-western women. And nor should they. The most glaring example of such colonisation is the on-going discussion of the wearing of the Islamic veil. We in the west tend to disagree with the veil because we see it as a symbol of the oppression of women and evidence of their mistreatment in Islam. If we’re France we ban Muslim women from wearing the veil. That’s colonisation.

So when it comes to the discussion of child brides in non-western cultures, it’s fundamental to remove our western lens and to consider the practice within non-western culture. (Maybe it’s the case that we shouldn’t be having this discussion at all?) But that’s easier said than done, even on an abstract level. And when you see pictures such as those on the link above, it becomes harder still.

Photo caption: Kandahar policewoman Malalai Kakar arrests a man who repeatedly stabbed his wife, 15, for disobeying him. “Nothing,” Kakar said, when asked what would happen to the husband. “Men are kings here.” Kakar was later killed by the Taliban.

This is not a quandary that I can solve here and now.

From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)

I didn’t hear about this case until this morning (trigger warning for image).

In a literal application of the sharia law of an eye for an eye, Iran is ready for the first time to blind a man with acid, after he was found guilty of doing the same to a woman who refused to marry him.

Majid Movahedi, 30, is scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran’s judiciary hospital at noon on Saturday while Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, drops acid in both his eyes, her lawyer said.

The first part of the story I heard was about the proposed punishment. I felt sickened upon hearing it – the barbarism of such a punishment (particularly as we know that it’s habitually used to punish Muslim women for their lack of “compliance”) could never be justified. When I heard about the rationale for the punishment a few seconds later, however, I felt conflicted. Movahedi is due to receive this punishment from his female victim, whom he blinded with acid. This decision is taking eye-for-an-eye to a whole new level.

But that’s the rub. I am vehemently opposed to the death penalty, which is arguably the most extreme eye-for-an-eye punishment that exists. Research tells us that the death penalty has neither a general nor a specific deterrent effect, and it offers little cathartic or healing effect to victims’ families. (Its system costs a fortune to run in the US but that issue is unimportant, in the scheme of things.) However, I can’t help but think that the punishment Movahedi is due to receive is warranted and deserved. Because this time, it’s personal. Women in too many places are living in fear of acid attacks for doing something as minor as being seen in public without a male chaperone. Movahedi’s victim, Ameneh Bahrami, suffered such an attack for refusing to marry him; for making a decision about her life and her future that women the world over make every day, without fear of repercussion. But not Ameneh Bahrami; she had to be punished for not doing as she was told.

I defy anyone to tell me that they’ve not had desire for retribution when they’ve been wronged – it’s as human an emotion as joy and sadness. This is retribution for a horrible, vicious, life-changing wrong, and I don’t think I’m going to bother apologising for feeling that it’s deserved. Are there lots of “what ifs”? Certainly. Will it achieve any deterrent effect? Unlikely. But will it help Ameneh Bahrami? Very probably.

That women in Iran might now be given a stronger voice, and that female victims there might be allowed a real say in the judicial process, is a whole other debate (heck, we still don’t know what we’re doing with victims in our “civilised” justice system in the west), but that’s something that won’t be clear for a while. For now, if one woman gets to throw acid in some patriarchal, violent fucker’s face, and in doing so achieves one tiny little bit of liberation for her sisters, then she can have at it as far as I’m concerned.  

Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).

Ok, yes, I possibly have been on the Interbets all week. Here’s some of what’s been happening:

• It’s quite unbelievable, still, that France passed the “Ban on the Burka” law last week, but it did. Needless to add, there was outrage. The irony of telling women that they’re not allowed to wear what a patriarchal culture tells them to wear is not lost on Sarkozy, I’m sure, even if he is brainless. You cannot beat oppression with oppression. (Though we shouldn’t fool ourselves that Sarkozy et al were thinking of the women at all here. No, this is thinly veiled - pun intended - Islamophobia at its best.) And as if it’s not offensive enough as it is, the Guardian reported that refusing to comply with the ban will result in a fine or a condition to have lessons in “French citizenship”. Arrange the following words in a sentence: off, fuck. Within hours of the ban coming into force, women were being arrested for continuing to wear the veil. Well, you would wouldn’t you! There are several excellent blog posts around the Interweb which discuss this issue in much more detail than I do here: thefword, delilah-mj, msmagazine, and lattelabour for starters.

• Budget 2011 leaves women out in the cold (fawcettsociety). The 2011 budget spells trouble for women in Britain. There’s been talk for a some time now of how the vast array of cuts introduced by the coalition government will affect women, and the picture is now becomnig clearer. First, a piece from the Guardian reveals that job losses have affected women the most and, second, a report produced in partnership with the Fawcett Society (‘The Impact on Women of the Budget 2011’) highlights the following issues. It is not looking good.

- The current economic strategy looks set to undermine gender equality in the labour market: if current trends continue, more women than men in the UK will be unemployed, for the first time since records began. - The bonfire of regulations will remove the protections that women and men with caring responsibilities need in order to be able to work. - The increase in the Personal Tax Allowance threshold will not touch the most vulnerable, and among those who will benefit, men will gain £140 million more than women. - Without action to tackle entrenched gender inequality within the apprenticeship sector, where women earn on average 21 per cent less than men, the Government’s flagship expansion in apprenticeships and training opportunities will not improve the employment opportunities young women face and do nothing for older women. - The businesses set to benefit most from new tax breaks and other incentives are typically owned and invested in by men while schemes to support women in business are scrapped.

• The Ivory Coast standoff ends, but the nightmare for women continues (msmagazine). Most mornings when I wake up, I’m inclined to be rather discontent with my lot for a few minutes before I come to (I’m tired, it’s cold, I have too much to do; that sort of thing). Reading about the women in the Ivory Coast reminds me that I don’t even know I’m born. Though the conflict in the Ivory Coast has come to an end now, women and girls there are still being persecuted (kidnapped, beaten up and raped) daily. They’ve been through all of this before in 2004 and they’re going through it all again. And we don’t know the half of it.

Pender [a gender-based violence Technical Advisor for IRC] conveyed reports from women of gang rapes, rapes of entire families and sexual slavery, as women and girls are “taken as wives” for weeks at a time. “These women have experienced things that we cannot even imagine–and many for the second time,” said Pender. The collective memory of rape and violence from the last Ivorian war, in 2004, is still fresh. In fact, the recollection of “what happened last time,” and the threat of new violence has driven many girls and women to flee.

• Finally, Americans seem to [want to] forget slavery (prospect). When a research centre asked why the American Civil War took place, a frightening number of respondents answered that they thought it was about the rights of states. The reason for the war is disputed, of course, but even I (a European) know that slavery was as central a reason as any other.

That so many young Americans believe a revisionist account of the Civil War is, if anything, another sign of our collective refusal to deal with our difficult past. Slaves built the White House and fueled Wall Street, but we want nothing more than to forget slavery and the central role it played in our nation’s history.

Couple this finding with the recent revisionist adaption of Huckleberry Finn (to remove the n-word) and one wonders if America wants to forget all about its sordid past altogether. I hope not.

redlightpolitics:

Posted on the BBC a couple of hours ago, Afghan Taliban ‘end’ opposition to educating girls:

The Taliban are ready to drop their ban on schooling girls in Afghanistan, the country’s education minister has said.

Farooq Wardak told the UK’s Times Educational Supplement a “cultural change”…

Also sceptical.

A 23-year-old unmarried woman was awarded one-year prison term and 100 lashes for committing adultery and trying to abort the resultant fetus. The District Court in Jeddah pronounced the verdict on Saturday after the girl confessed that she had a forced sexual intercourse with a man who had offered her a ride. The man, the girl confessed, took her to a rest house, east of Jeddah, where he and four of friends assaulted her all night long. The girl claimed that she became pregnant soon after and went to King Fahd Hospital for Armed Forces in an attempt to carry out an abortion. She was eight weeks’ pregnant then, the hospital confirmed.

(Source: viviano)

Wardak plays down Taliban attacks on women and girls because he has become a leading government proponent of the need for reconciliation with the Taliban. It suits his agenda to whitewash continuing Taliban crimes. And, like many Afghan politicians, he prefers the conspiracy claims – that the Taliban are an entirely Pakistani creation, rather than confronting the messy reality of a home-grown movement that is as much a product of Afghan reality as of Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

There is a risk that some politicians in the UK, US and elsewhere, nervous about mounting casualties and dwindling public support for the war in Afghanistan, will seize on such claims. Governments seeking an exit strategy may also find it convenient to play down Taliban abuses against women and girls.

While most women in Afghanistan desperately want peace, they don’t want a peace deal that is blind to the price they may pay. That requires realism about the nature of the insurgency. Although a comprehensive peace deal seems distant for now, small local deals are already taking place under the name of “reintegration” of Taliban fighters, with the promise of jobs and other enticements. But there is no vetting system to stop a commander who is notorious for attacking girls’ education from becoming a local security chief, or even a district governor, with all the obvious risks to women and girls.

Instead of trying to soften the image of a group synonymous with the oppression of women and girls, the education minister should focus on increasing opportunities for their schooling, and on protecting girls’ education from attack. Attacking schools is a war crime and should never be glossed over. Those who threaten, bomb and burn down schools should instead be held to account.

(Source: thefeministhub)

With one of the largest Muslim student populations in the country, last March George Washington University set aside one hour per week that the pool would only be open to women. The decision was an attempt to allow Muslim female students a chance to swim without breaking Islam’s rules about modesty. For one hour a week, a tarp hides the pool from onlookers and a female lifeguard is on duty. But recently, fears of “creeping Sharia” — the idea that Muslim custom is slowly taking over American life — has raised an online hell storm over the all-female swim-hour.

This is a situation where a school has decided to allow Muslim women, a demographic whose gender and religion means their participation in sports is relatively low, to be physically active and take advantage of the facilities that every other student is free to use, and which their tuition already pays for. One hour a week is not a big inconvenience to anyone, and for a small group of women, it means the ability to swim. “Although I wouldn’t really mind, it would be satisfying to me religiously to swim only with girls,” a Muslim student told the GW Hatchet, who had given up her swim regimen when she arrived at George Washington.

Of course, the irrational frenzy on the Internet can’t understand why normal Americans are being forced to change their lifestyle to accommodate someone else — something our country has been doing for religious minorities for centuries. Under pressure, George Washington University is reconsidering the policy — meaning a kind and sensible policy, despite campus support, could be derailed by the intolerance of people carrying the torch of anti-Muslim intolerance. Seriously, flip their logic around and you’re arguing that in accordance with “our ways,” we should force women either to disregard their religion and expose their bodies to men, or not exercise. That sounds like an oppressive environment for Muslim women and no one else.

Petition on linked piece.