Jan 13, 2006

*WARNING*
This topic involves discussion of upsetting topics, including rape.

OH MY WORD!

Now, I know that holding others to the standard of your own beliefs isn’t “right” in a humanist world, but I’m sorry, I can’t help it.

Apparently, Iran is condemning a woman to death by hanging for accidentally killing a man that was trying to gang rape her with two other men. These are the same courts that hung a 16-year-old girl for committing what they termed “acts incompatible with chastity”.

Does this sound like a catch-22 to anyone else? So you can be killed for being unchaste, but defending your chastity isn’t OK either? Or, was it that the chaste thing to do in this situation was to just lay there and be raped? How is a woman supposed to win in a system like that?

What I’m wondering is “Where are the US Feminists?!” Why aren’t they crying out in complete outrage at the injustice?

OH! That’s right. They are too busy being “Enraged and Engaged” by the Alito nomination to do anything about it. Do a search on the National Organization for Women’s website for Iran – amazingly enough, you’ve got to go back all the way to 2003 to find anything referring to Iran that isn’t just a lame attempt to bash President Bush. And trust me, what you find in 2003 and prior isn’t anything great either.

One may say that they are the “National” organization for women, and therefore what happens outside of the US isn’t really any of their concern. Point taken. But, NOTHING? I mean, not even a simple mention of these outrages to empower their members with knowledge? Not that they necessarily have to officially organize something that is funded by NOW, but you’d think surely their constituents would be interested in doing something…

One could also say that other groups (from both the left AND the right) aren’t doing anything about it either – another good point. The only thing is this – I don’t know of any other group whose mission statement contains the words “[our] goal has been to take action to bring about equality for all women.” Hmm.. All women? Or, is it that they only care about their own equality? And frankly, “no one else is doing it either,” really isn’t a strong argument.

Now, maybe someone is wondering what a white male could possibly know about feminism. I would respond – “A fair amount actually”. Believe it or not, I was an “attending member” of the feminist club in my high school. Was I tremendously active? No – in fact, I often disagreed with those who were present – but it was an open meeting where real discussion was favored over baseless rhetoric. Beyond that, my wife was a strong feminist when we met and was largely following a Women’s Studies track at Brandeis University. Don’t worry, she’s reformed. I can’t count the number of hours we discussed issues ranging from abortion to women in the military. Maybe one day I’ll get her to write a piece on some of the half-truths that she used to firmly believe.

WOW! It just hit me! I don’t know why I’m surprised that NOW isn’t outraged at the murder of innocent women. In fact the more I think of it, the more it really makes perfect sense, because NOW actually campaigns for the “right” to murder innocent women.

You read that right – NOW campaigns for the “right” to murder innocent women. They just call it abortion.

I guess it sounds better that way…