Where are the feminists?

I started off pissed off, but now I'm sitting here giggling.

JJ the Unrepentant has a blogpost about an evil Iraqi woman. In it, she links to these chuckleheads, with the quote 'Where are the feminists?' I thought she was kidding until I clicked the link.

Indeed, we feminists are somehow to blame for Islam's treatment of women. Or for not speaking up about Islam's treatment of women. Or something.

Curious about other issues on which we feminists were AWOL, I googled 'Where are the feminists?' and got my answer.

Everything.

I'm not going to put in all the links -- I clicked only on a couple -- but here's a partial list of things we're either to blame for or we're to be taken to task for not doing something about.

Linda Tripp

New England Patriots

Terri Schiavo

Martha Stewart

sex-selective abortion

prostitution

Michelle Obama

Sarah Palin

Aboriginal women

polygamy

Islam

And I only browsed up to page 5 of search results.

Everybody into the pool! Fill in the blank: Where are the feminists on _________?

These are the faces of "honour" killings.

Anti-feminist rightwing religious zealots like "Debra Moore" are using the language of feminist activism to vent their xenophobic spleen.

"Women are being brutally murdered throughout the world in the name of Islam, and the mainstream media is totally silent. Someone needs to stand up for these women who are being executed by those whom they should be able to trust the most: their family members, through a crime known as an “honor killing”. And it is not unique to the Middle East; it is taking place in the West, including the United States.Where are the feminists? MIA once again. If there ever was an instance when feminists should speak up, this is clearly the case. But, it is not politically correct to insult Islam. The result is more and more women will die because no one is willing to confront this abominable practice."

From here. Moore is a self-styled fundamentalist christian crusader. She could be describing garden-variety 'domestic' femicide (except for the strident islamophobia), a form of violence against women and children that is tolerated in many cultures and countries. Until feminists in the 1970's started diligently and systematically dedicating themselves to the establishment of shelters and to reforming criminal laws, "family" violence was largely viewed as a private matter in North America. Even when women and children died. Even now, Antonia Zerbisias writes here:

Toronto author Brian Vallee points out in his 2007 book The War on Women, nobody counts the dead, nobody connects the dots, nobody calls out the problem. "Compare the raw numbers," he writes of the period 2000-06. "In the same seven-year period when 4,588 U.S. soldiers and police officers were killed by hostiles or by accident, more than 8,000 women – nearly twice as many – were shot, stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. In Canada, compared to the 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers killed, more than 500 women – nearly five times as many – met the same fate."

These are horrific numbers; where is the rightwing christian fundamentalist outrage?

Dennis Gruending thoughtfully yet rigorously dissects a type of news reporting that’s little more than floridly opinionated and pretentious tabloid coverage. Respected for his well-researched and eminently knowledgeable writing on spiritual and political matters, Gruending observes:

The unfortunate truth is that men have used the power of religion for millennia to force women into submission. Some fathers of the Christian church, including Pope St. Gregory, Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, said women should be ashamed of themselves for merely being women, that they were slow, unstable, naïve and useful only for “animal sex and motherhood.”

Some will argue that Christian churches don’t hold those views today. I would respond that while most Christians do not view women as inferior, a fundamentalist minority continues to do so.

Has it finally occurred to you who the murdered/missing women in the photographs are? Those are the confirmed and presumed victims of Robert 'Willy' Pickton's religious mission. Those are "honour" killings, as defined by the terms of his christian upbringing. The defense argued that Pickton suffered from diminished intellectual capacity yet in his letters to a pen-pal, he clearly lays out the inspiration, the reasons behind his campaign to eliminate evil, as he understands the Bible to tell him so.

Two letters The Sun obtained ... may provide the public with the first real insight into what motivated the mass murderer. ... “I know I was brought into this world to be hear today to change this world of there evil ways. They even want to dis-re-guard the ten command-ments from the time that Moses in his day brought in power which still is in existence today,” wrote Pickton ...The letter was written Feb. 26, 2006, at the beginning of Pickton's voir dire, to California resident Thomas Loudamy who has a hobby of corresponding with prisoners and collecting their return letters. The second letter, written Aug. 22, 2006, is also replete with biblical references and Pickton provided his own interpretation of Ephesians 5:5. “You can be sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will in-herit the kingdom of God .... Don't be fooled by whose who try to excuse these sins, for the terrible anger of God comes upon all those who disobey him,” Pickton wrote.

The Sun looked up Ephesians 5:5 in The Jerusalem Bible and found a chilling interpretation, given the fact Pickton has been convicted of killing sex-trade workers: “For you can be quite certain that nobody who actually indulges in fornication or impurity or promiscuity — which is worshiping a false god — can inherit anything of the kingdom of God.” ... In the religious portions, Pickton refers to himself as a “condemned man of no wrong doing” just like his “father.” Pickton also referred to Acts 14:22, which he interpreted as: “In each city they helped Christians to be strong and true to the faith. They told them that we must suffer many hard things to get into the holy nation of God.”

Altering a quote from Mark Steyn, plucking at one of the islamophobic chords in his MASSIVE repertoire: "Must be convenient to have a [biblical] code that obliges all your pathologies."

The photo montage came from Montréal Simon's blog, here.

Fetus Freaks React to Sex-Selective Abortion Study

Fetus freaks reacted predictably to the news of a large study confirming that sex-selective abortion probably accounts for a significant male/female birth ratio imbalance in Ontario's Indo-Canadian community. (Note that freaks call it "gendercide.")

There are three categories of reactions.
1. Generalized hand-wringing, tut-tutting, and slamming of abortion.
2. "Where are the feminists?"
3. Calls to action.

1. Generalized hand-wringing. Two in this category: Focus on the Family's astroturf site and LieShite, which manages to pack in a bunch of buzzwords, including "cultural profiling" (whatever that is, but sounds bad, doesn't it?), "political incorrectness" (I think they mean "political correctness" but hey, they're just buzzwords, right?) and of course "gendercide." This one goes on for quite a bit but this is its only point:

Gendercide, or sex-selective abortion, shows everything that is wrong with abortion – all abortion.

2. Where are the feminists? The freaks clearly think they have a gotcha here that runs something like this: "If feminists really cared about women, they'd be up in arms about female fetuses being aborted."

Why they think this is a gotcha is a mystery to me. Duh, the reason we are feminists is because we are excruciatingly well aware of the bias against girls and women in society. And we're working to do something -- a bunch of things, actually, ranging from pay equity to universal day care to expanded reproductive care, etc etc etc -- about it. That's what makes us feminists.

Two in this category: Amateur Statistician and Robyn Urback in the NatPo, a truly loathsome, hypocritical piece (q.v.).

Aside: I left comments at both the Focus on the Family and Amateur Statistician blogs, asking politely what they would suggest be done about this. Focus on the Family declined to publish my question (though now there's an odd fragment of a tweet of mine in the comments) and AS said she wouldn't answer because I'm rude. OK then.

3. Calls to action. Here we have the Dominionist who is rather vague about what's to be done, because he doesn't actually have to say that his goal -- banning all abortion -- would fix the problem. But government should do something!!!!!!!

The other call to action is a media release from CampaignLie under the title "Campaign Life Coalition calls for legislation to ban sex-selective abortions."

The media release starts:

The barbaric practice of sex-selective abortions has resurfaced in Canada after further evidence has been published proving that gendercide does indeed occur in Canadian hospitals and abortion facilities.

("Barbaric," we all know, means "done by non-white people.")

But unlike the Dominionist, Campaign Lie has a plan. There's a quote from president Jim Hughes, referring to Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins' bone-headed knee-jerk, which I will address in another post.

“If he's truly disturbed by the killing of baby girls - just because they’re girls – then Hoskins shouldn’t hesitate to delist this type of abortion from provincial health insurance plans. Furthermore, every province’s Minister of Health should do the same.”

The title calls for a ban -- without of course getting into any of the messy details of how discriminatory, unethical, and futile such a ban would be, but the text calls for defunding the procedure.

Because that will help.

We know anecdotally that coercion -- general cultural pressure and/or specific pressure, threats, and worse -- is involved in at least some of these abortions. Here's an example from Jen Gunter, a practising OB/GYN (whose blogpost is essential reading on this topic).

"He beat me very badly after I had my last girl, I can’t go through that again,” a woman once told me. What exactly were this woman’s options who spoke limited English, had no job and depended on her husband for money. She took a bus to her abortion because she didn’t drive and would have to explain the money for a cab. Do I judge her? Do I with my upper middle class upbringing and the earning potential of a physician say, “Sorry honey, not tragic enough?” And what if she doesn’t get that abortion and is then beaten to death in her third trimester or after she delivers? I’ve seen that, but no one writing about the “evils” or “moral ambiguity” of sex selective abortion mentions maternal abuse or murder.

So, these kindly Christians ignore the circumstances of women in these situations and instead seek to punish them further and drive the practice underground.

Because, if they were "good" (even if non-white) women, they would instead undergo multiple pregnancies in the quest for a boy.

Jen Gunter again:

What about eight pregnancies in search of a boy, is that not harmful? Why does no one ever mention that when they discuss harm? I have delivered many women who sobbed and looked away in disgust when they saw they had delivered their fifth or sixth or eighth girl, because they knew they would be back year after year until they delivered that coveted boy or died trying. How is that not violence against women?

If women have to justify their abortion why shouldn’t they have to justify their eighth pregnancy? The latter is far more dangerous than the former.

And yes, six additional deliveries is a lot more harmful than six abortions.

How many pregnancies must a woman endure in search of a boy before the patriarchy decides she is allowed to have an abortion? Three? Five? Eight? Fifteen?

Whatever you call it, we need to look hard at this practice. To rewrite LieShite's line:

Gendercide, or sex-selective abortion, shows everything that is wrong with society in all its loathsome sexism, misogyny, classism, and racism.

All of which the fetus freaks are delighted to enable.

Fun with Fetus Fetishists

Me, I'm bored with SUZY CAPSLOCK. http://www.bigbluewave.ca/ And not just because of HER juvenile habit of redirecting any links to HER blog to fetal pr0n sites (hence, plain text url). Sure, SHE is occasionally hilarious, but mostly just boring, not to mention ponderously Catlick.

Now we haven't exactly ignored the 'new wave' of anti-choice/anti-feminist sites like Signal Hill, aka ProLife BC, and ProWoman ProLife, but I intend to pay more attention to them, starting a little while ago with PWPL's endorsement of the abusive, violent, father's rights guy Greg Fultz, aka The Billboard Guy.

These new wave efforts (mostly) eschew the old blame the sluts women, they-should-keep-their-legs-together, religious/legal approach. Instead, they adopt a treacly concern for women, maintaining that abortion 'harms' women.

PWPL is more interesting than Signal Hill/ProLife BC because it tries a lot harder to pretend that it is a real blog and not an astroturfed initiative by a fundy religious group.

It claims that its goal is not legal recriminalization of abortion but moral and logical suasion. Its motto is 'Canada without abortion. By choice.' (Note co-option of our language; there's a lot of that.)

From the site's The Story page:

…Pro-woman because we are pro-life…

The idea that abortion is a woman’s right was always just an opinion. There’s no basis in law, in logic or in our constitution. And there’s certainly no basis in early feminist thought.

The early feminist thought bit is true. Early feminists were, sensibly, more concerned with voting and property rights than reproductive rights. First things first, after all. Margaret Sanger was herself anti-abortion, a fact antichoicers omit when they are excoriating her for her (quite progressive at the time) views on eugenics.

More from The Story:

The idea for ProWomanProLife was developed by founding director Andrea Mrozek. “It’s not a woman’s right to have an abortion,” says Mrozek. “There’s no such thing as a right to an abortion, not for women, not for men. It doesn’t contribute to women’s rights and freedoms at all, because having an abortion is, put simply, not a right.”

That's a bit twisty, innit? Doesn't contribute to rights and freedoms because it's not a right? Well, if one considers bodily integrity and autonomy a right -- as sane people do -- then it bloody well is a right.

More:

* ProWomanProLife is a home for all women who believe that being pro-life is compatible with women’s rights and freedoms.

Trans: PWPL is for women with the ability to hold diametrically opposed opinions at the same time.

* ProWomanProLife celebrates women’s legitimate choices, freedoms and rights.

Trans: 'Legitimate' as our lords and masters decide.

* ProWomanProLife believes abortion is bad for women and that women will be integral in removing abortion from our cultural landscape.

Trans: For 'bad', see 'legitimate' above.
DJ!: Fine, remove it from 'cultural landscape', whatever that may be, as long as it is left in the medical landscape.

* ProWomanProLife desires to bring an end to abortion, not by coercion, but by choice.

Trans: See? We worked the magic word 'choice' in again.

* ProWomanProLife believes abortion is a human, social issue, not a religious or faith matter, whereby women and men of any faith or no faith at all can stand up in support of women’s rights and life, at the same time.

DJ!: That's just a great big porky pie. See below.

* ProWomanProLife understands the fetus is a new and unique human being from conception, separate from, though dependent on, the woman.
* ProWomanProLife believes that the fetus is deserving of protection.

Trans: We reserve the right to display gory fetal pr0n anytime we get backed into a corner.

Here's the porky: From The Women section:

Andrea [Mrozek] currently works at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada as Manager of Research and Communications.

That Institute is the wholly owned subsidiary of the evangelical, Xian Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family Canada is "committed to helping families thrive." Its mission is to "encourage and strengthen the Canadian family through education and resources based on Christian principles"; its purpose is to "love God and our neighbours by serving Canadian families and encouraging them to pursue a growing relationship with Jesus Christ"; and its guiding principles include the preeminence of evangelism, permanence of marriage, the value of children, the sanctity of human life, the relationship of church, family and government.

The other Women are painted as young, dynamic career women, who just care so darn much about (benighted) other women that they devote their spare time to propagandizing against promoting women's rights. Short of the right to bodily integrity and autonomy, natch.

Since they're all about respectful dialogue, yadayada, they are not so quick with the 'delete comment' button. I've posted comments, usually with pertinent links and usually ignored, over there. Viz, their Billboard Guy post. And Mrozek's belated and evasive response.

More recently, I chimed in on their latest attempt to appear relevant, in this case on the Saudi women's campaign to drive.

Commenting on true infringements of women’s rights is something PWPL likes to do.

'True' infringements like a ban on driving. In a Muslim country, note. Many more 'true infringements', in their view, seem to occur in Muslim places than Western places, but no matter about that.

Another new post over there (sorta) takes on the gender imbalance caused by sex-selective abortion in some parts of the world. Just to show you how serious they are, they quote Kathy Shaidle who SHRIEEEKS about how such an imbalance is imminent in Toronto because of all the -- you guessed it -- Muslim immigrants.

Anti-feminists/fetus fetishists love sex-selective abortion. They consider it the ultimate Gotcha! If feminists defend it, Gotcha! The evul feminazis are condoning killing 'unborn women' (no shit, that's how they refer to female embryos). If feminists don't condone it, Gotcha! Evul feminazis believe there should be some restrictions on abortion. If feminists don't address it, Gotcha! Haul out the 'where are the feminists?' refrain. (There is a new book about this generating some comment. I'm working on a response.)

So. An invitation from DJ! to like-minded readers: pop over there occasionally. Leave a (respectful) comment, with irritating links to facty-sciency stuff.

Let's show them some love.

Maybe a coupla iterations of the 'you know, you DON'T speak for me' refrain that anti-feminists love to throw at feminists wouldn't be outta line either.

(It's gonna be a loooong four years of The Harper Regime. I'm trying to find some fun where I can.)

On Those 'Missing Girls'

Joe Biden has stepped in it. Again. (What a dork that guy is.)

Under fire from angry Republicans, US Vice President Joe Biden's office has said that he firmly opposes "repugnant" Chinese population control practices like "forced abortion and sterilization."

"The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China's coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization," Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff told AFP by email.

"The vice president believes such practices are repugnant," she said after Republican White House candidates blasted Biden for recent comments he made about Beijing's "one-child" population control policy during a visit to China.

Biden told an audience at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, Sunday that "your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I'm not second-guessing -- of one child per family."

(Go to the link to read the hyperventilations of the ReThugs.)

Fetus fetishists were already stoked about one of their perennial faves because a couple of months ago a book by Mara Hvistendahl called 'Unnatural Selection' was published. Which got further ramped up by the release of census stats from India.

In the world's largest democracy a massive crisis of missing girls is unfolding, according to India's 2011 census. The latest census shows that the gap between the number of girls per 1,000 boys up to the age of six has widened to 914, a decrease from 927 a decade ago, at the 2001 census.

With the SHRIEEEEKfest came, of course, the mandatory 'Where are the feminists?!!?' jab lament. Because, you see, we feminists should be outraged because half of all abortions are done on 'pre-born women' (that's their phrase), and with sex-selective abortion, 'pre-born women' are actively targeted. Their (idiotic) question is: 'If you claim to be about women's rights, what about pre-born women's rights?'

Sigh. So I thought about writing about it. We at DJ! have taken on the subject at least twice. Once when wingnuts in BC proposed that if the gender of a fetus is known through an ultrasound, the results should not be revealed. (You know, to put an end to that rampant Canadian practice of sex-selective abortion.) And once when Ujjal Dosanjh stepped in it from the reverse direction as Biden. First, he was against sex-selective abortion, then he hadda walk it back by adding: 'But I am totally absolutely pro-choice'.

DJ! argued and argues that this is not a problem in Canada. The communities that prefer boys to girls are small, and besides, they'll get their comeuppance when their sons can't find partners of the 'right' sort and maybe bring home sweeties of the 'wrong' sort. Or 'wrong' gender. Or both. *evilgrin*

But, yes. Sex-selective abortion has created a ginormous problem in the benighted countries where it is practised.

I was going to argue this time that back in the 1960s overpopulation was the big bugaboo. We hadn't yet realized that that was too simplistic. It's not sheer overpopulation, we now know, it's overconsumption plus growing population that's going to kill the planet.

But that's when China and India began to try to grapple with their poverty problems by trying to slow population growth. China, because it could, instituted the infamous One Child Policy. India, being a democracy, couldn't be quite so draconian and tried kinder, more innovative policies.

Besides, both countries were fucking sick of being poor.

And I was going to argue that the best way to lower population growth is to promote women's rights and in particular to educate women.

Ultimately, though, this shouldn't be seen as a medical dilemma, but as a social one. The way to prevent sex-selective abortion isn't to legislate against it or attack the women who seek it – it's to create cultural changes that transform the place of women. By offering girls education, training and opportunities for employment, femicidal traditions can be uprooted, and a world that values women and fully recognises their right to exist created instead. To get there, though, we must first accept that women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, on their own terms. Because if no one gives them autonomy in their own skin, why should they believe that their potential daughters deserve it either?

Aside: I really liked one of the comments there by hillbillyzombie:

Q: In what language is religion an anagram of misogyny?
A: All of them.

What Joe Biden stepped in is the relatively new contention that the developed West promoted the practice in China and India.

Much of the literature on sex selection has suggested that cultural patterns explain the phenomenon. But Hvistendahl lays the blame squarely on western governments and businesses that have exported technology and pro-abortion practices without considering the consequences. Amniocentesis and ultrasound scans have had largely positive applications in the west, where they have been used to detect foetal abnormalities. But exported to Asia and eastern Europe they have been intricately linked to an explosion of sex selection and a mushrooming of female abortions.

Hvistendahl claims western governments actively promoted abortion and sex selection in the developing world, encouraging the liberalisation of abortion laws and subsidising sales of ultrasounds as a form of population control.

"It took millions of dollars in funding from US organisations for sex determination and abortion to catch on in the developing world," she writes."

Roll out that whole 'feminist secularist Culture of Death' meme thingy!!!!!!

But again, it's a bit more subtle than your average fetus fetishist can cope with.

While it's true that the West did promote contraception and abortion, the purpose was ^NOT women's rights but population control. If they'd promoted women's rights with the same enthusiasm and money way back then, perhaps the problem of devalued and now missing women wouldn't have happened.

No one combating sex selection in China or India now argues that the appropriate reaction to decades of violating women's rights is to swing in the other direction and violate them further. Just as a woman should not be forced to abort a wanted pregnancy, she should not be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Yet more subtlety. Yes, it's a cultural thing, but more than that it's a 'rising expectations' thing.

In the mid-1970s, amniocentesis, which reveals the sex of a baby in utero, became available in developing countries. Originally meant to test for fetal abnormalities, by the 1980s it was known as the "sex test" in India and other places where parents put a premium on sons. When amnio was replaced by the cheaper and less invasive ultrasound, it meant that most couples who wanted a baby boy could know ahead of time if they were going to have one and, if they were not, do something about it. "Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later," reads one ad put out by an Indian clinic, a reference to the price of a sex test versus the cost of a dowry.

But oddly enough, Ms. Hvistendahl notes, it is usually a country's rich, not its poor, who lead the way in choosing against girls. "Sex selection typically starts with the urban, well-educated stratum of society," she writes. "Elites are the first to gain access to a new technology, whether MRI scanners, smart phones—or ultrasound machines." The behavior of elites then filters down until it becomes part of the broader culture. Even more unexpectedly, the decision to abort baby girls is usually made by women—either by the mother or, sometimes, the mother-in-law.

They don't want girls, yes. But more than that they want to live like us in the West. Simply put: girls cost money, boys make money. (And just as importantly, operating an ultrasound clinic is a nice little earner too.)

Yes, the developed West deserves some blame for the missing girls. But it is the capitalist West and its values that provided the technology and the profit for its operators that deserves the much bigger blame.

Feminism is not to blame for this. If feminists had been in charge of the Club of Rome, I daresay the outcome would have been quite different.

Commenter Ngoho at the MoJo link sums it up nicely.

It's possible that, since men steered culture into valuing their sex above females, perhaps a generation of lonely men will change that culture into one which values women.

Payback is a bitch, isn't she?

Chen Guangcheng

From the Pre-empting the Where Are the Feminists? Bleat File:

Have you heard of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng?

Probably not, unless you are a fetus fetishist or follower of China-US relations.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton no doubt hopes the diplomatically delicate case of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who escaped house arrest and then sought refuge with US authorities in Beijing, can be resolved before she and a high-level entourage including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrive in the Chinese capital Thursday.

Both American and Chinese officials are tight-lipped on their deliberations over the rights advocate, whose treatment has figured prominently in official Western protests of China’s human rights record. Mr. Chen, blind since childhood, is a self-taught legal authority and critic of the forced abortions he exposed through risky investigations.

At the White House on Monday, President Obama said during a press conference that he was "aware" of the Chen case but would not say how the US will treat Chen's case. He suggested, however, that the issue of human rights in China would come up in this week's talks, as it always does with Beijing, not only because "it is the right thing to do" but also because "we think China will be stronger as it opens up and liberalizes its own system."

The Fetus Lobby is spinning this sticky wicket as 'pro-abort Obama won't protect heroic baby-saver!!1!!1'

*sigh*

Nothing yet on Where Are the Feminists on the Persecution of Chen Guangcheng???!!??

For the record: Feminists are as opposed to forced abortion as we are to forced birth.

But unlike the zygote zealots, we recognize a diplomatic mine-field when we see one.


Image source and more about famous Chinese dissidents

UPDATE (May 2, 2012): Ah, there they are. SHRIIEEEK!!!!1!1

Anti-feminists tell lies about feminists.

Anti-feminists tell lies about feminists.

Not exactly an earth-shattering or tell-all statement, is it?

Here’s the thing: whenever SUZANNE, a.k.a. Blob Blogging Wingnut, the wannabe Sarah-Palin-lookie-like “Choice” for Childcare and ‘Hunter’ go ballistic with their anti-feminist screeching, MASSIVE lies are involved.

Distortion, spin, fabulating, obfuscation, falsehood, prevarication – call it what you will - it all boils down to big, fat lies offered up with the greatest of disingenuousness as reality. That reality for the close-minded, conservative, patriarchy-toadying anti-feminists is a load of fabrications cobbled from their fears, their inability to think coherently and their determination to slander the anti-violence work that feminists do.

Thus criminal charges against the alleged murderers of Zainab, Geeti and Sahar Shafia and Rona Amir Mohammed becomes an opportunity for a Blogging Tory anti-feminist to rail against feminists.

Hunter’s two-fold objective is muddled by her confused rhetoric, atrocious syntax, spelling mistakes and demented comments by her usual chorus of sycophants.

1) Discredit the decades of work that feminists have accomplished to ensure that all forms of familial/domestic/intimate violence against women is processed properly in the criminal justice system.

2) Attack people of islamic faith and/or culture.

JJ at unrepentantoldhippie did a formidable job of shredding Hunter’s sorry excuse for a blogpost to bits. She also has an excellent post about a recent femicide in Alberta.

The last words though belong to Sherene Razack.

"I get really distressed by the idea that a really terrible violence that has been done to girls and women is now getting framed as a kind of hate fest, something about Islam and Muslims," says Sherene Razack, professor of sociology and equity studies at University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Razack says the term also detracts from the real issue, which, in the end, simply boils down to violence against women.

Razack's dissection of the gynophobia that supports the murderous and violent actions directed towards all women is cogent and compassionate, whereas Hunter's raving is the disjointed and illogical shrieeeking of an apologist for christian neo-con wife-beaters, rapists and other abusers who are not brown-skinned and seemingly, in her belief system, allowed those social conventions that give them authority over the lives of their women.

Update: An ironic footnote to Hunter's "Where are the feminists?" screed. Yesterday she posted a YouTube video that has gone viral in the last week, with the inane comment "I suspect this will be a very happy marriage!". When you visit this 'lefty' (according to Hunter's definition) couple's website, they urge the fans of their joyful wedding ceremony to support a progressive organization working to end domestic violence. Duh!

Weaseldicks Vladimir and Kirill silence dissidents.

They are trying to muzzle the members of Pussy Riot and their supporters. To no avail, as this statement from Yekaterina Samutsevich goes viral, alongside their protest video.

During the closing statement, the defendant is expected to repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to express my views about the causes of what has happened with us.

The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.

Powerful, lucid, trenchant.

The Putin-controlled court may have sentenced the trio to prison for their challenge to his glorious national immanence, but the international media winners of this confrontation are clearly the women. Other dissidents, as well as those opposed to Putin's totalitarianism, are the windfall beneficiaries.

The Putin system has made a PR catastrophe out of a situation that could have been easily contained with an administrative fine for a public order offence. Its actions have also revealed its clear desire to align itself closely with the Orthodox Church as a source of political support. The visible price of this policy has been the fusion of the Church’s principles and values with the “legal” process in the trial of the Pussy Riot activists.
The result has been to sow divisions within the ruling elite about how to handle the case and, at the same time, to create new dividing lines in society, including among Orthodox believers, about the type of justice that should be applied to Pussy Riot and the form it should take.

The authorities have also gifted a rallying point to the nascent and amorphous political opposition. Paradoxically, this comes at a time when opposition forces are struggling to rekindle the protest mood that swept Moscow in March during the run-up to the presidential election.

How is it that the Putin system was able to produce these outcomes that run counter to its interests of dividing the opposition and demonstrating the futility of protest?

There is more. Unlike the New York Times which dismissed the Pussy Riot's deliberately engineered protest as a "stunt", other media have considered the dissidence, the trial and the outcome.

In a chilling passage of the verdict read aloud in a Moscow court today, three members of punk group Pussy Riot were said to be "motivated by religious enmity and hatred". A reasonable response might be that those who have locked up these young singers for the crime of blasphemy in Vladimir Putin's Russia were motivated by religious bigotry and fear.

Far from being hooligans, as the prosecution alleged, the three feminists were unconventional campaigners whose anti-Putin songs in a Moscow Cathedral achieved a much vaster audience than originally anticipated.

The Kremlin's foolish over-reaction, which included keeping the band members in custody and away from their families for five months, led it to a lose-lose situation today. Hand down the full sentence of seven years and incur the wrath of international condemnation; let them go free and appear weak.

No open society can brutally suppress free expression in the name of preserving other people from offence. If such suppression becomes the norm, it will inevitably be mobilised at the convenience of those in power. So it is, by all accounts, in Moscow now. The scenes outside the courtroom today, which included the bundling into a police van of former chess champion Garry Kasparov, suggest the country's slide into autocracy is, if anything, accelerating.

The Pussy Riot saga (DJ! original post last month).

It appears Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the three women sentenced today, has a Canadian connection through her husband.

The Revolution Will Not Be Gender-Specific

When the Arab Spring began, I started following on Twitter several reporters and journalists -- many of them Arabs of various nations -- covering the news.

I've continued following most of them, including the wonderful Egyptian-American writer Mona Eltahawy. She retweets a lot and today she is retweeting a series from Leil-Zahra Mortada, who witnessed an outrageous act of, sadly, not at all unusual sexual street harassment of women in Egypt. Here's the story from another source.

The outrage stems from the occasion and the victim's identity. She is iconic actress Sherihan, who has been a part of the uprising all along. (Photos here if you're curious.)

The occasion was another demonstration in Tahrir Square yesterday. Islamists had said they would not participate, so people were anticipating a secular, progressive event.

Ha.

If you haven't been following events in Egypt, you might think things are all rosy there. They're not. The army has turned out to be not such great fans of revolution. People are being arrested and detained for demonstrating and speaking up. 'Thugs' beat and harass people.

Progressives and the young people who started all this are pissed. Women in particular are pissed.

Hence, further demonstrations. Which the authorities are obviously trying to quell.

The assault did not happen in Tahrir Square but after Sherihan left. Leil-Zahra:

@monaeltahawy Plz spread, most Egyptian media is trying to taint Tahrir saying all happened in the square during the protest.

Tweeps are saying it was not the 'usual' sexual street harassment. Sherihan says she doesn't know who the men were, but calls them 'thugs'.

When Lara Logan was assaulted, the western media was alllll over it. And, of course, the usual nutbars got all shrieeky with their knee-jerk Muslim bashing and simultaneous 'Where are the feminists?' schtick. With the added frisson of victim-blaming, as in 'Well, what did a good looking blonde broad expect?'

I just searched for 'Sherihan' at Google News. This is what I got: *crickets*. (BTW, Sherihan is a pretty stunning looking brunette, i.e. media fodder.)

So, I'm a feminist and I'm here and I'm pissed. This reminds me of my young feminist/anti-war activist self. Just as now in Egypt and elsewhere, women were being told: 'Let's just get this war stopped/democracy going and then we'll get to your [teensy] concerns.'

Egyptian women are being targetted and used. They bloody well know it and are not going to stand for it. Here's Eltahawy again in a recent interview with Amy Goodman discussing Logan's experience.

You know, myself and every Egyptian woman I know have been subjected to groping or other kinds of street sexual harassment.
. . .
And, you know, what happened when Tahrir Square was opened was, those who didn’t join the revolution came out to Tahrir Square. So this kind of utopian atmosphere we had in Tahrir Square, you know, was ruined by people who came either from the Mubarak regime supporters or others who were not part of the revolution. So, women in Egypt and their male allies recognize that the revolution must continue not just politically, but also culturally and socially, as a way of ensuring that women’s rights do not disappear just because the Mubarak regime has been toppled and that women must continue this fight, along with their male allies.

Gonna be a long fight. But I'm counting on the courage and persistence of the people of the Arab Spring to get it done.

ADDED: Info (mostly Arabic) is being pooled on this Facebook page.

Where are the 'pro-lifers'?

Back here we examined the fact that feminists are nowhere to be found on all manner of important issues.

Let's start a new one: Where are the fetus fetishists/'pro-lifers'?

Like, where are the fetish fetishists on
the Catlick Church's opposition to an abortion for a 80-pound 9-year-old girl raped by her step-father and carrying twins that would certainly endanger her life and maybe kill her?

Hmmmmm?

Some 'culture of life' you got going there.

Let's get on it, shall we? Where are the so-called pro-lifers on this one?

ADDED: Go read A Midwife in Training on this.

Sex Selective Abortion: Latest SHRIEEEEK!

People are all up in arms because Rona Ambrose, Cabinet Moron Responsible for the Status of Women, voted in favour of Woodworth's Wank, aka The Motion to Determine When the State Gets Up Into Our Hoo-haws.

This should be no surprise. She has voted for fetal rights before.

But here her 'worry' is simply ridiculous.

The federal cabinet minister responsible for the status of women has offered at least a partial explanation for why she voted in support of a pro-life motion in the House of Commons.

Rona Ambrose says on Twitter that she's long been worried about discrimination against girls through "sex selection abortion."

One would need way more than 140 characters to get from Woodworth's Wank to sex selection abortion as it requires some spectacularly twisty gymnastics.

Then, right on cue, today CON MP Mark Warawa tabled a motion to condemn sex selection abortion.

We've been down this path at DJ! several times.

Is gender selection happening in Canada? Seems so, but the numbers are dodgy and the methodology controversial. (See above link for specific studies and reports.)

There is NO evidence that the at-birth gender ratio is skewed in Canada generally as a result, unlike in India and China where it is widely practiced.

There is some (questioned) evidence that there may be a slight gender ratio difference in 'some communities'.

But, as we've argued here before, so what? We've got lots of people in Canada. The few 'extra' boys in 'some communities' may be forced to look outside those communities for partners.

And that's a good thing. *evilsmiley*

Running with the sensational story though, back in June, CBC did an undercover gotcha on private ultrasound clinics to see whether any were willing to test for gender before the usual 20 weeks' gestation mark.

The notion is that if information is withheld until after 20 weeks, women and families inclined to select for males will not be able to. Abortion after 20 weeks is not done in Canada unless for pressing reasons.

The CBC did find clinics willing to perform ultrasounds earlier. Most of the cases seemed to me a result of sloppy training or an over-eagerness to please. One of the cases is indeed disgustingly venal and exploitive.

So, is that the whole story?

Seems not. In the US, where the same 'communities' are under scrutiny, the practice is getting coverage too. Like this recent story in Slate: How to Buy a Daughter.

Much of the evidence that Americans preferentially choose girls is anecdotal, as no larger body tracks gender selection procedures. But data from Google show that “how to have a girl” is searched three times as often in the United States as “how to have a boy.” Many fertility doctors say that girls are the goal for 80 percent of gender selection patients. A study published in 2009 by the online journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online found Caucasian-Americans preferentially select females through PGD [preimplantation genetic diagnosis] 70 percent of the time. Those of Indian or Chinese descent largely chose boys.

Some want boys, some want girls. Things even out.

But, of course there's more.

In this article, the author argues that sex selection is a parental right.

And why not? If we stand for reproduction by choice, why would we eliminate one category of choice? Me, I don't see a problem.

But there is.

Perhaps ironically, sex selection has caused some consternation among some feminists, a group usually known for their vocal support of reproductive freedom. Their objections to gender selection center around the possibility that the practice will encourage gender stereotypes. Girls made to be girls, they say, will face an undue burden to behave a certain way, to take up an interest in fashion instead of basketball, for example. That's certainly a possibility, but the complaint overlooks the fact that males and females are actually different in some important ways, as a lot of research has shown. Given those differences between the sexes, is it really such a bad thing that parents may prefer to raise a girl instead of a boy? 

Back in the Slate article, there is indeed some glurgey anecdotal crap about women wanting girls to shop, dress, and cook with.

Yuck.

But choice is choice.

You're for it or against it.

This issue is obviously the focus of the fetus fetishists' next gambit. It polls well for them.

From a January Angus-Reid poll:

Three-in-five respondents—including two thirds of women—believe there should be laws to outline whether a woman can have an abortion based solely on the gender of the fetus.

There oughta be a law!

I think Ambrose's idiotic justification and Warawa's Wank are just ploys to keep the fetus fetishists revved up and going for their chequebooks.

It may develop into something more serious and I'll woman the barricades again.

But I need a rest first.

Any Fix for Sex-Selective Abortion Would Be Discriminatory, Unethical, and Futile

Well, now at least we seem to have some decent research on sex selective abortion in Canada.

Previous studies indicated that it might be happening in "some communities," but there were quibbles about methodology.

This seems solid.

It’s the clearest evidence yet that abortion is being used to help parents have a son. A study has found that some Indian-born immigrants to Canada are selectively aborting female fetuses if they have already had two daughters. The researchers say, however, that action may not be necessary as the incidence is low, and the practice is likely to go away on its own as immigrants become settled.

Link to full study.

Yes, it's happening in Canada, but as we've said many times before: So what?

There is still zero evidence that the practice is skewing the sex ratio in general.

And if it is skewing the ratio in "some communities," we say again: So what? Parents who prefer boys may get a comeuppance when their precious sons bring home girlfriends (or boyfriends [!]) from other ethnic backgrounds.

But look at the hand-wringing going on. The normally sane Toronto Star has an unusually sensational piece about it.

Even my fave Matt Galloway of CBC's MetroMorning got into the "abortion is terrible" meme, trying really hard to get one of the study's authors to call the results "troubling."

@metromorning Well, that was disappointing. Matt tried twice to get author of #SexSelection study to say he was "troubled" by findings.

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) April 12, 2016

@metromorning Why "troubled"? Why not "what are implications?" Guy is a researcher. You want community reaction, ask them.

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) April 12, 2016

@metromorning Good. It's a complicated issue and I find it "troubling" you fall so easily into stereotypical tropes.

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) April 12, 2016

And while We Need a Law Like a Hole in the Head was ready with his SHRIEK!!!! (Title: Government needs to end pre-natal discrimination against women) and because somebody had to do it, Amateur Statistician asks WHERE ARE THE FEMINISTS????, it is very disappointing that mainstream media would prefer to point fingers and tsk-tsk.

(Other fetus freak sites are no doubt still working up their dudgeon.)

Also, this issue conjures up a disgusting stew of misogyny and racism. DO NOT read comments.

As an antidote, read this piece from the eminently sensible André Picard (from 2012) about the complexities of the issue.

Here's the thing: any attempted "fix" will be discriminatory, unethical, and futile.

Refuse to reveal sex of fetus until it's too late to abort? How exactly? Refuse to disclose all pregnant patients' own information? Or just "some" patients?

What about sex-related genetic disorders? Will we force people to carry blighted pregnancies to term because we're up in arms over possible sex-selection?

And it will all be futile because there are home sex-test kits, highways and airplanes, and unethical ultrasound technicians.

The only way to "fix" this is to value girls and women as we do boys and men.

That's a helluva long-term project, but it's the only way.

From New Scientist again:

In India, male preference has led to a shortfall of millions of female children, so strict legislation was necessary. But in North America, the problem is small and likely to resolve itself as immigrant communities become more integrated. “My suspicion is that in the second generation you would not notice this phenomenon at all,” [Anil Deolalikar, economist at the University of California] says.

Past DJ! posts on sex selection.


ADDED: Dr Brian Goldman weighs in and comes to the attention of Dr Jen Gunter, newly dubbed "Twitter's OB/GYN."

Get ready for a response big time https://t.co/ts1TyM6qie

— Jennifer Gunter (@DrJenGunter) April 12, 2016

This won't be pretty. :)


UPDATE April 13/16: Here is Dr Jen Gunter's response to Dr Goldman. Ouch!

Something Dr Gunter mentions that I -- and most other commenters on this subject -- have not is: multiple pregnancies in the quest for a male child. Since we know that pregnancy is 14 times more dangerous than abortion, why does no one consider the risk of multiple pregnancies for the "good" women who do not seek abortion?


UPDATE April 14/16: Yesterday, CBC's The Current ran an informative and hopeful segment on this issue, demonstrating how complex it is.

Money for sex, sex for money.

Time for a little self-disclosure.

Women, has a man ever offered you money to have sex with him?

It happened to me, twice.

About 10 years ago I was heading home after working late.  My Sandy Hill neighbourhood features some dilapidated buildings offering single rooms for rent to students and other transients.  There's also city-sponsored lodgings and transition housing.  Two men schlepping a 24 walked past me, one of them trying to engage me in conversation, for the purpose of checking out whether I'd like to "party" with them.  When I expressed my lack of interest in them or their plans, the other man offered me money as an incentive.

I walked into the lobby of an apartment building and waited 30 minutes before I felt it was safe to go to my own house where I lived alone since my daughter had graduated.

When I was young and silly, I crashed a private party with a friend of mine. It was the 80s; the theme was Movie Stars and Hookers. The two of us - decked out in tatty Rocky Horror Show duds - dropped into a Victorian era townhouse in Ottawa, checked out the activities and left after an hour.  Yes, there was "free" food, booze and blow - but as I suspected, those came with an invisible price tag.

I had heard about the party from an acquaintance at work, which is probably how The Lobbyist found me.  Out of the blue, I got an invitation, via the colleague, to have lunch with a man who had co-hosted the event.  Intrigued, I accepted and thus caught a glimpse of a most unsavoury side of politics.

He offered employment; attached to the impressive salary were ambiguous tasks and responsibilities that could be described as networking and maintaining favourable private relations with Important Men.

I declined.

Now, radical feminists and abolitionists believe that all "good" women should be offended by men who offer payment for sex.  I wasn't offended, I simply didn't want to engage in that kind of work.  Nor do I wish to be employed as a registered nurse, a zoo-keeper, a short-order cook or an early childhood educator although I have benevolently taken on some of the chores involved in the work these professionals do, as part of my commitment and willingness to care for those I love.

Was I concerned for my personal safety?  Of course.  In the first case, I didn't want those two men to know where I lived.  As for the second offer ... Sex work is work.  Like being a professional athlete, there are physical risks involved.  

In the 80s, the feminist therapist Dr Helen Kaplan, "a pioneer in the field of sex therapy and founder of the country's first clinic for sexual disorders established at a medical school", advanced a savvy comparative analysis of the working conditions of prostitutes and professional athletes.  When religious moralizing and weepy calls to rescue victimized fallen women are removed from the equation, professional sex-work and sports-playing are remarkably similar.

Truthfully, there are disgusting men that most women would never fuck for love or money but are compelled and coerced to do so by religious, political or social reasons.  Fear of economic reprisals as well as the threat of emotional and physical abuse are also factors.  

These "clients" are called husbands.  I hasten to add, those particular husbands who feel entitled, by virtue of marriage, to use their wives as flesh-holes.

And, à propos de rien, are Toronto taxpayers footing the bill for Rob Ford's trip to attend the Academy Awards?  Since the Mascot Mayor won't be "eating at home", will his sponsor Jimmy Kimmel pick up the tab for Rob and his entourage's entertainment suite in Hollywood?

Also, read this and this about the Harper government's attempts to re-criminalize prostitution.

*sigh* 'Female Feticide' Again

All right, all right. Here we go. The most recent outbreak of shock and appallment over 'female feticide' wearies, worries, and disgusts me in about equal measures.

Wearies because I've been on this particular beat literally for
fucking years.

Worries because of the oh-so convenieeent timing of it.

Disgusts because of the putrid stew of misogyny and racism generated by it. Here's a sample of the comments at the Toronto Sun.

They should just sterilize them all and start deporting all Muslims and Canada would be a safer place to live and we would get our Merry Christmas back and our Canadian traditions back . Trudeau ruin this Country with his imigration policy

Read the comments on any media story and there will be gems like that.

And the normally sensible Toronto Star is not helping with tidbits of info like this:

Female feticide — the widely-condemned practice of aborting female fetuses due to a preference for sons — happens by the millions in China and India, where the practice has been deemed a “crime against humanity” by the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India.

Both the Star and the Globe at least consulted another expert in the field -- the same one, Dr Jha -- to critique the research.

But the study’s greatest weakness is failing to determine the genders of the women’s previous children, said Prabhat Jha, chair of Disease Control at the University of Toronto. He also works at St. Michael’s Hospital as director of the Centre for Global Health Research.

“To really understand what these stats are, you have to understand what was the gender of the previous children in the family,” said Jha, who has done extensive research on female feticide in India.

“Selection happens at higher birth orders, which means you let nature decide the first child and if you have a girl, then a small number of homes say, ‘Well, we want a boy.’ That’s when they turn to sex-selective abortion.”

Even if this latest study proves that female feticide is happening in Ontario, it would reveal that it is occurring in very small numbers, Jha said.

Using the study’s findings, Jha calculated that there were about 245 “missing girls” for Indian-born mothers with at least two prior children — that’s less than one per cent of the 31,963 babies born to Indian women between 2002 and 2007.

“Important but subtle biases, such as higher migration of women who are about to give birth to a son might well explain this finding and suggest that selective abortion is not the explanation,” Jha said.

Typical, right? Media leading a SHRIEEEK-fest over a small, flawed study.

Here's the Star revealing that GTA hospitals are breaking the law in concealing patients' medical information. (Well, actually, the Star does NOT point out that law is being broken, just that information is being withheld at hospitals catering to large populations from 'certain' communities.)

And here's CTV with the SHOCKING fact that US clinics are advertising sex-selection services in ethnic media in Canada.

(Wanna bet the next cycle will bring the HORRIFYING news that one can order gender tests online? Since 2006?)

To recap: if it is happening, the numbers are small and restricted to 'certain' communities. The practice will NOT affect Canadian society.

And if it is happening, there is exactly ZERO than can be done about it by regulation or current law.

Abortion is legal. No woman has to give a reason.

On the other hand, concealing medical information is illegal.

It is pointless -- and insulting -- to restrict access to products or services that are available online or a short car journey away.

The problem, as we sane people have to keep pointing out, is patriarchy.

And, as we keep repeating, 'female feticide' is NOT a big gotcha for feminists. We're cool with all choices. Of course, we'd prefer that all choices be accurately informed and freely made.

We're working on that.

Is Chen Guangcheng 'Pro-Life'?

When DJ! wrote about Chen Guangcheng, he was largely unknown beyond fetus fetishists and China-watchers.

Now he's the subject of some delicate negotiations between the US and China.

But is he really 'pro-life' as we in the blighted New Republic of Gilead understand it?

According to Lindsay Beyerstein, nope.

Anti-abortion news and opinion websites have taken to calling Chen a “pro-life dissident,” which is fundamentally misleading. Chen is not opposed to abortion, per se, he is opposed to forced abortion. Though he’s been described as an opponent of the One Child policy, he hasn’t campaigned to overturn the law. In fact, unlike most Chinese dissidents, Chen’s target is not the central government; he wants to enlist Beijing’s help to enforce the law of the land and to check the power of local government officials who have terrorized him and the women of his community for years.

“I think it's important to note that he's not anti-abortion per se,” wrote Jin Zhao, a freelance journalist who blogs at Things You Don’t Know About China. “He is critical of the local authorities' forced abortions which he believes to have violated women's rights.”

That seems straightforward enough, doesn't it?

Nope. The lying liars are continuing to bleat about 'pro-abort' Clinton and Obama not helping the heroic baby-saver with the complicity of the 'liberal press' in what Beyerstein calls 'the pro-life spin cycle' and 'the perfect dog whistle'.

Where, oh where are the feminists?????

Right here.

The anti-abortion movement isn’t alone in its admiration for Chen. In a post on Feministing, one of the most influential feminist blogs on the web, Lori Adelman argued for a more precise label: “More apt than the whitewashed ‘human rights activist’ label he’s been given in the news is ‘reproductive rights activist’ and perhaps even ‘feminist.’”

Cue the shriEEEkkking

and pearl-clutching from the usual rightwing xenophobic reactionary bloggers who will be asking "Where are the feminists?" any minute now.

A spurned ex-wife started a fire at the second marriage of her former husband which killed 43 women and children, according to police sources in Kuwait. Maids saw the woman, 23, pouring petrol over the marquee in which the women's celebration was taking place in a town west of Kuwait City. She was later arrested and made an immediate confession saying she was upset over her "bad treatment" from the groom, who had divorced her.

From here.

The English-language Kuwait Times said the arsonist was arrested after witnesses said they had seen a woman setting the tent on fire using kerosene-soaked rags. The new bride was uninjured but her mother and sister were killed, the paper reported, citing an unnamed source. Kuwaitis celebrate weddings in separate parties for men and women, with children attending the women's event. In tribal regions the parties are often held in tents, a custom rooted in the country's nomadic heritage.

From here.

Oh, and the rightwingnuts will somehow interpret this heinous criminal action as proof that women are inherently more evil than men. Which then justifies in their view, all fundamentalist patriarchal religious ideologies. Women's reproductive capacities must be controlled, women must be forced to breed, women must be kept in domestic servitude and women must obey the rules of God the Father. The women who dare evade or challenge male authority must be punished. Only men can stop the abomination and great evil that women can do. See what that woman did? Oh and by the way she's a muslim too!

I'm taking bets on who will lead the charge. Kathy Shaidle? Mark Steyn? Dodo?

Lakritz Wears Her Envy Proudfully.

What is it about anti-feminists? Not only are they MASSIVELY envious of other women's accomplishments, not only do they lie baldly and badly, but anti-feminists also appear incapable of doing adequate internet searches.

In this CanWest opinion piece, Lakritz - yet again - gets her knockers in a knit .... errr, her knickers in a knot over patriarchy. But not over your judeo/christian patriarchy. Oh no no no. She gives religious clerics a free pass when it comes to gynophobia justified by a male-centered and thus self-interested, reading of the Old and New Testaments.

... when members of another culture engage in evildoing, we're supposed to pretend it all just falls under the rubric of domestic violence. Since domestic violence occurs in all cultures, honour killings can be conveniently lumped into that category and we can keep pretending it's not particular to certain cultures.

Nobody's even mentioned the fact that Mohammad Shafia was living in this country with two wives, one of whom died with the girls. Let's just pass completely over that form of oppression visited on these two women, for fear of offending someone.

Wrong, Naomi. I mentioned it here, when the story broke.

Basically what Lakritz says is this: Violence against women is worse, much much worse, and more evil when muslim men do it - oh, and "Where are the feminists?"

Oh really? Regardless of which gynophobic religious zealot ideology informs the child abusers, pedophiles, rapists, wife-beaters and serial murderers the end result looks and feels the same, doesn't it? Such as "honour killings" by William Pickton, Colin Thatcher and other upstanding christians.

Naomi, you are either 1) deliberately lying or 2) deliberately uninformed. In that you join other CanWest opinionists slagging feminism this summer.

Delicious update: From Dr Dawg, we read that an earlier Lakritz shrieeek has been thoroughly smacked down by Gisele Harrison, here.

The basis for "Honour Killing" ...

has the exact same origin as the blathering of antichoice concern trolls.

Yesterday on Twitter I had to smack down "lettingsmokeout" who spouted pseudo high-minded crap about *Western civilization* defending human rights; eventually his tweets devolved to the point where it was apparent that the only right he defended was that of men controlling women's fertility and their capacity to breed.

There's "tedgurk" who seized upon the idea of appropriating one sentence from Madame Justice Bertha Wilson's complex judgement and cross-dressing it up as an excuse for Wankworth's M312.

The creepiness of male antichoice trolls - whether they slip themselves into the skin of a powerful woman to put their dicks words in her mouth or to flog the disingenous CON Attack Parrot©™ re-framing of issues to fit their fundamentalist religious ken - is boundless.

They manipulate the realities of women violated in many, many, many ways by patriarchy. They chose to ignore the pervasive social, political and religious forces that pressure women to behave in the ways that serve the needs of the men in their families, their husbands and their communities. Those who try to disobey their cultures' misogynist dictates are mutilated or killed.

So this CONvenient shrieeeking about the termination of pregnancies within specific ethnic communities, and using loaded words "missing women", "exterminated" and "snuffed out" is surely not happenstance.

Just imagine if these rightwing apologists for their own cultures' gynophobia were as MASSIVELY outraged over the thousands of Aboriginal "missing women" and girls, "exterminated" and "snuffed out" by the likes of Robert Pickton and his brethren of christofascist gynophobes. And directed their fury towards the cops who deliberately screwed up the original investigations with their racist, sexist behaviour.

Meanwhile, this.

Men who kill female family members tend to be treated more leniently by the courts if they are white, rather than non-white males perceived to have committed a so-called honour killing, a study suggests.

University of Ottawa law professor Pascale Fournier and two researchers analyzed 54 cases where men were convicted of killing their wives or close female family members.At trial, the men all argued the killings had been committed in the heat of passion after they were provoked and lost control.

Under the Criminal Code, this "defence of provocation" can reduce a murder charge to one of manslaughter.Fournier said that when the men in the study were divided according to ethnicity, the courts differed in how often the defence of provocation was accepted. "It was more likely that it would be accepted by judges, by the courts, when the individual was a Western white male," she said.

Chris Little didn't use that "defence of provocation" since he claimed that his estranged ex-wife had been killed by someone else. Fortunately a jury rejected his preposterous fabrication.

And then, there's Richard Wills, another entitled, privileged, pallid "honour killer".

It's only fitting the Maurice Vellacott Award be bestowed upon those who defend Motion 312 by piously proclaiming that feminists are murdering female and gay "preborn children".

Gadhafi & Van Susteren: Where are the feminists?

Together in spirit, though not on the same continent and likely not even in the same universe: Moammar Gadhafi and Greta Van Susteren.

Gadhafi lectures Italians on women's rights - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave Italians a contradictory take on women's rights Friday, criticizing Islam's treatment of women but then suggesting it should be up to male relatives to decide if a woman can drive. ... At times he appeared to strike out for women's rights, but also backed some of Islam's strictest tenets and criticized the history of women's emancipation in the West.

Gadhafi, a self-styled feminist on his first trip to Italy, arrived at the auditorium dressed in traditional robes and surrounded by his female bodyguards. After his speech, he reached out to the veil of a woman in his entourage and used it to wipe the sweat off his brow.

Meanwhile, back in the US, Greta Van Susteren played the indignant feminist card on Fox News Infotainment, citing first Rush Limbaugh's faux-trage as he spins his claim that Letterman suggested

"that Palin's daughter was raped at 14 years old during a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. And who's denouncing it? Who denounced any of the hatred against Sarah Palin?"

Disregarding the fact that Letterman didn't actually say that, Van Susteren then brought on as guest Jane Swift, the former governor of Massachusetts as some sort of expert on feminism, or perhaps to proclaim that Limbaugh is now a champion of women's rights. In fact, Swift's authority appears limited and specific to the role she played during the Republican presidential campaign as the head of a "truth squad", with the purpose of debunking false rumors about Sarah Palin. Is that the odour of a well-greased political machine grinding away to keep Palin in the news or the stench of Limbaugh roasting in his own fat under the TV studio lights that we can smell?


Oh, and by the way Greta, how's that Best Friends Forever thing with Sarah working out for you?