Iranian feminism, Islamic-style: Women can be as free as they want—as long as there are no men around.

A woman clad in a red T-shirt plays an Iranian drum in a Tehran park as her teenage daughter dances nearby, her hair flowing in the air.

Anywhere else in Iran they would risk being stopped by the police and possibly arrested. Here, in the first female-only park in the Islamic country’s capital, a dozen women in summer garb have gathered on the grass to watch and applaud.

“We’re having great fun without men,” Setareh Sabzevari, 40, said.

Mothers’ Heaven opened in May as a place where women can cast off their Islamic headscarves and dress to enjoy the sun, jog and play without offending anyone. Embraced by many visitors, the park has also sparked concern it may encourage segregation after a decade in which women gained more freedom to interact with men and participate in sports in public — albeit with their hair and bodies fully covered.

Such initiatives are “positive as long as women have the freedom to choose,” said Rosa Gharachorloo, assistant professor in human and women’s rights at Tehran’s Azad University. “I just would not want this to turn into a law or to become the norm. What if it extends to public libraries or cinemas?”

Yeah, what if? Why, the next thing you know, boys and girls will be dancing together, and after that, well, it’s–trouble! Right here in River City!

Tell me again how free women are under Islamic law. Because I’m still not getting it.

They are practical solutions that respect religious beliefs and are in line with the Islamic Republic’s laws, said Mahmood Maniei, a spokesman and adviser to the mayor’s office for Tehran’s third district, where the park is located.

“Would you prefer doing sports in an Islamic coat or without?” he said. “This is not about segregation. It’s giving women equal opportunities in the city.”

Sociologist Nayereh Tavakoli said she was concerned that some activities women had already gained acceptance for could “again be viewed as abnormal.”

“This is giving opportunities, but it’s not giving equal opportunities,” she said. “Equal would mean that they would have similar access to any park in the city.”

Yes, but that won’t fit into the Islamic laws of Iran. Or Saudi Arabia. Or Kuwait. Or Egypt. Or Pakistan. Or—well, you get the idea.

Exit quote:

“Every Iranian woman dreams of being able to walk under the sky like this,” said the 22-year-old design graduate in a pink tank top and a miniskirt, who came for a tanning session.

Really? Well, dreaming doesn’t do squat. Rights, once removed, are never again given freely. They must be taken, usually by force. Until the average Iranian is truly unhappy with his or her lot, nothing will change.

Saudi Arabia is breaking ground for the world’s largest women’s college.

Here’s the funniest part of the article:

The declared aim of the Women’s University is to promote women’s education in the kingdom, improve the situation of Saudi women and make them a more integral part of Saudi Arabia’s development.

The reason it’s so funny? Men can’t teach. And women can’t drive.

Saudi Arabia practices a strict form of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism, and men and women are for the most part segregated. In universities, male lecturers cannot stand in front of a classroom of women, so teaching is done through a screen or a phone line, which can pose technical problems.

But yes, people like Jimmy Carter should totally go after Israeli “apartheid,” and ignore utterly the sexism of much of the Muslim world.

I found something that both Camille Paglia and I agree on: Sarah Palin, and the way she’s been wronged by the mainstream feminists (those would be the radfems). Via Hot Air.

The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother — without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive.

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey’s witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin’s cadences and charm, she can’t capture the energy, which is a force of nature.

As I keep ending my podcasts: Amen, Sister Suffragette. And that’s a Gilmore-ism, which was a show that featured not one, not two, not three, but four strong female major characters, and endless strong female minor characters, without emasculating the men on the show.

Click here.

Laugh.

Don’t be drinking or eating.

Jon, I want that on a t-shirt.

Let me try once again to explain to the doubters out there why I don’t care that Palin’s views on abortion are different than mine. Or that she’s a “Christianist,” as Asshole Andrew Sullivan keeps calling her. Or that she and I may not see eye to eye on many issues. The fact is, it’s 2008, and it’s about damned time a woman was a member of at least one of the two national presidential tickets.

The pundits are telling us that angry would-be Hillary voters won’t vote for Palin. The pundits are wrong. They will vote for Palin, and they are moving to the right for this election—the polls keep coming up McCain, after having been Obama, Obama, Obama. It’s not just a post-convention bounce. It is the excitement that having a female candidate is engendering (pardon the pun).

Those of you who don’t get it simply aren’t going to get it. It’s the same reaction I get when I try to explain the difference between Judaism the religion, and Judaism the culture. If you don’t get it, I am wasting my time trying to explain the differences. But let me try once more.

Year after year after year, women watch as the leaders of this nation, the leaders of corporations, and the leaders of the world all look pretty much the same: They’re men. There are precious few women in world leadership positions. And it’s not because we haven’t been out there for the past forty years. The feminist revolution has been around for long enough for women to be in leadership positions. And yet—we are not. And part of that reason is that the old boys’ network does exist. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. Name the last powerful woman in the Senate or House of Representatives whose name isn’t Clinton. Tell me what happened to Geraldine Ferraro after her run for VP. Tell me how many women are serving in the Senate now.

Sixteen.

How many women Senators have there been?

Thirty-five.

How many women Presidential candidates? Vice-Presidential candidates?

Governors?

Twenty-nine.

How many women have been the heads of the DNC or RNC? Secretaries of State? Ambassadors to important countries? Chiefs of Staff?

There has been a dearth of female leadership in this nation, but there has not been a dearth of women on leadership tracks to choose from—in spite of the constant refrain that is so. It’s almost like the same old stupid “Gee, where are all the women political bloggers?” discussion that gets rolled out every time some idiot wants to troll for links. We’re here. But that glass ceiling exists. It’s not our imagination. I work for a company that only has a female executive because they bought a company with a woman president. In 2008, I work for a company that had no women executives at all. Not. One. So do not tell me that women are simply imagining the barriers that still exist for women in the corporate and government structures. It’s pretty easily proven by the numbers.

Sixteen women senators. Women make up half the population of the United States, but only sixteen percent of the Senate. Granted, representation isn’t a one-for-one deal, but it’s effing 2008, not 1978. We’ve been in politics for long enough to have better representation than that.

So now perhaps you begin to see why Sarah Palin is so exciting to ALL women, not just women whose politics already agree with her. Even the women who hate her are secretly glad to see a woman on the ticket for the highest office in the land.

Women are going to vote for McCain for various reasons. But a fair amount of women are going to vote for him because he put a woman on the ticket. If you think that’s tokenism, if you think that’s patronizing, if you think it’s hollow symbolism, you haven’t been paying much attention to what most women feel.

We want to see Sarah Palin succeed, because it will move us forward in ways equally as important as Barck Obama’s candidacy has moved African Americans forward.

It ain’t tokenism. It’s about effing time.

Oh, this is rich. The nations that don’t blink an eye at sex and nudity in films are thinking about banning “sexist” commercials.

MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes.

[...] The new rules come in a report by the EU’s women’s rights committee.

Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson urged Britain and other members to use existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to control advertising.

She wants regulatory bodies set up to monitor ads and introduce a “zero-tolerance” policy against “sexist insults or degrading images”.

[...] Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson urged Britain and other members to use existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to control advertising.

She wants regulatory bodies set up to monitor ads and introduce a “zero-tolerance” policy against “sexist insults or degrading images”.

Ms Svensson said: “Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys by restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles that are often degrading, humiliating and dumbed down for both sexes.”

To be fair, it’s probably just the yapping of an annoying woman bureaucrat in the world’s most annoying bureaucracy. The European Union is a frightening thing to behold, George Orwell’s 1984 practically come to life, and a sample of the nanny state that America must never allow (yes, I’m looking at you, Obama and Democrats).

I’ll have to do a little research, but I’m dying to know what the EU’s women’s rights committee has to say about the Islamic misogynists in Europe’s midst, and the practices of forced marriages and the like.

This is pure Rush Limbaugh material. My gut tells me that this suggestion will go nowhere. Unless the EU determines that Israeli companies are behind the sexist advertising. Then, look out. It’ll be adopted in a heartbeat.

Spare me from conservative analysis of feminism. Because when you let most conservatives yammer away on the topic, you get a great, heaping, stupid load of sexist bullshit purporting to be an analysis of feminism. Note to Weekly Standard: You’re embarrassing yourselves.

For the post-1960s, post-socialist left, the single most important breakthrough has been the alliance between modern feminism and the sexual revolution. This was far from inevitable. Up until around 1960, attempts at sexual liberation were resisted by most educated women. In the wake of the success of Playboy and other mass-circulation pornographic magazines in the 1950s, men were depicted as the initiators and main beneficiaries of sexual liberation, women as intolerant of promiscuity as well as potential victims of predatory “liberated” men.

With the introduction of the Pill around 1960, things abruptly began to change. Fears of overpopulation legitimated a contraceptive ethic throughout middle-class society in North America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet bloc.

[...] The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex. “No fault” divorce, a term borrowed from the field of auto insurance, in reality amounted to unilateral divorce and began to undermine the idea of marriage as a binding mutual contract oriented toward the procreation and nurturing of children. Contrary to nearly every prediction, the ubiquity of far more reliable methods of contraception and the growing ideological separation of sex from reproduction, coincided with a huge increase in unwed pregnancies.

So let’s see. Jeffrey Bell says that prior to the 1960s, women were prim, proper, and properly in fear of repercussions of sex outside “proper” channels, a.k.a., the marriage bed. Prior to the 1960s, the fear of overpopulation stopped educated women (note the elitism of the thought that uneducated women are too stupid to care about the earth having too many people on it) from having premarital sex. Prior to the 1960s, women didn’t do things like, say, have affairs with married men, have sex with their fiancé before marriage (or six-month-after-the-honeymoon babies, no, that never occurred before the 1960s), sex in high school (shyeah, right), sex with unmarried men, or, well, I guess “educated” women simply didn’t have sex until the clock struck twelve on the wedding night. At least, in Jeffrey Bell’s world, that’s what happened.

Then along came The Pill, that awful, awful object that suddenly turned educated women from virtuous, moral, guardians of chastity (or frigid bitches, depending on the point of view of the disappointed suitor) into wanton whores, just like those uneducated masses who never gave a thought to the consequences of having sex. It destroyed the idea of marriage, because let’s face it, prior to 1960, no one ever had sex outside of marriage. And it gave people an excuse to have children out of wedlock. It’s almost as if the devil himself took hold of those virtuous, educated women, forced The Pill down their throats, and then waited for the aphrodisiac effect of being to have sex without pregnancy.

The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex.

Spare me from the sexist, condescending ignorance of men like Bell. It isn’t the fact that the Pill is taken only by women that gives women a “feeling” of control over their sexual activity. Taking the Pill does give women control—over their reproductive ability. It does give women control over their sexual activity. It allows women to decide how many children they want, and when they’d like to have them. It eroded our “social and psychological resistance to premarital sex”? Really? It didn’t become popular because men and women are at the height of their sexual activity in their teens and twenties, and women didn’t necessarily wanted to start families that young anymore if they didn’t have to? Are you sure about that?

The thing that bothers me the most about conservative analysis of feminism is how they put all the blame for sexuality on the women’s shoulders, and utterly ignore that part of the formula which requires a male partner in order to achieve potential childbirth. If society’s mores are so important, why aren’t men refusing to have sex with the wicked women who ingest the Pill and want to go for it?

Funny how that never seems to come up in these discussions. Men refusing to have premarital sex because they don’t want to have children, or because it’s socially unacceptable. But it’s not socially unacceptable for men, really. Only for women. Is anyone blaming the boy that got Bristol Palin pregnant, or are they all, as always, thinking it was her fault for having unprotected sex with him?

Put the blame for the changing of social mores square on the shoulders where it belongs: On both genders, right and left. The right is no more moral than the left. How many times have you heard conservative men utter a variant of this: “I loved going to protests in the sixties/seventies/eighties. You could always get laid if you told chicks you were against the war/Reagan/nukes.”

These same men are now blaming the “moral breakdown of society” on the women they had sex with, while not taking any responsibility for their part in that partnership. The hypocrisy factor is so high here, I can’t even quantify it. This is why I will always be a feminist. And I will never consider that word an insult.

Sarah Palin is a feminist, too, and a conservative. How much you want to bet that she and Todd didn’t wait until the wedding night? But let’s blame that on Sarah’s eroded social and psychological resistance to premarital sex due to women taking the Pill starting in the 1960s. Because Jeffrey Bell says so, that’s why.

Oh, please.

Any idiot can get a blog on DKos. And this ridiculous accusation is proof that many idiots do.

Oh, wait. That was Andrew Sullivan’s link.

Here’s the Daily Kos moron’s blog.

These unerring detectives have Photographic! Evidence! that will shock you!!

And they’ve been slammed to the mat by—facts.

Unless Bristol was pregnant for fourteen months, the baby is Sarah Palin’s. And it’s been confirmed by Kos Kiddie “Red Pen”:

Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now. Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight. Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.

That is all.

Morons. Sexist, misogynist sons of bitches. STUPID sexist, misogynist sons of bitches.

Way to prove how progessive you are, lefties. Way to keep women wanting to vote for your candidate. Just keep on slamming Sarah at every opportunity, sinking lower and lower as you go, and you will drive me firmly into the arms of the right. You’ve already lost me for two Presidential elections. That’s right, you lost a feminist who was a lifelong Democratic voter. At this rate, you will never get me back.

Update: Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. Doesn’t change a word I wrote in this post.

This is the sentiment, exactly, on what many women feel about Obama not choosing Hillary for VP:

“If 18 million votes is not enough, what does it take in the Democratic Party to get a woman on the ticket?”

Time was, when the two top candidates were in a statistical tie, no one was “anointed.” They fought it out on the floor of the convention, and then the loser became the VP candidate.

Then again, this is also the fault of the arcane rules the Dems chose so that they could take the choice away from the voters and put it back into career politicians’ hands (read: Superdelegates). One person, one vote? Not for them.

What people don’t understand when they fling around the easy label of “identity politics” is that like it or not, identity politics exist. When we see the sexist and misogynist comments on blogs and online news sites, we tend to get angry. It’s something that comes up every single time. I have never seen a discussion on any kind of women’s issue that doesn’t devolve into sexism and/or misogyny. Or, worst of all, the pretense that white males are being discriminated against as much as, if not more than, women and minorities. Shyeah. How many white male Senators are there again? How many female and minority candidates for VP and president have there been again?

But I’m getting off the point. The point is, the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s VP underlines the perception that women were slighted, yet again, by the Democrats. And that isn’t really what the Democrats want.

As I said, I was going to vote for McCain anyway. The addition of Palin has made me want to pay attention for the rest of the campaign. And the reaction from the Democrats and progressives?

Despicable.

I received an email today from a disaffected Hillary fan who plans to vote for McCain come November.

I am a died-in-the-wool Democrat, but when Obama turned his ass to Hillary and called her “sweetie,” I didn’t know what to do. I thought that I would write Hillary’s name in.

But McCain has given me a choice. While I disagree with most all of their policies (except for the honesty and integrity part), I’m voting for Sarah.

Can you start a women for Sarah group? That I’d like to join and work for!

Really. You cannot overestimate the negative effect that the naked sexism and disrespect shown towards Hillary during this campaign has had on women. I expect to be getting more emails like this as the sexism lands on Sarah Palin as well (and of course, it already has). Witness the comments over at John Cole’s Balloon Juice, a site where the reading comprehension is so great that the commenter who linked me there called me a Hillary voter. (Shyeah.)

Ninerdave Says:

She looks like a stripper in teachers garb. I keep expecting her to rip off her glasses and grab a pole.

And then there’s this charmer:

r€nato Says:

this pick just REEKS of desperation. I can’t wait to see Biden wipe the floor with her in the Veep debates.

And yes it is creepy to see old man McCain standing next to a cute chick 30 years his junior.

Even creepier when you remember that McCain’s second wife, Cindy Hensley McCain, is 18 years his junior.

I think the Obama campaign should definitely consider pushing an undercover ‘McCain digs chicks young enough to be his daughter’ meme.

I mean, great for the old guy that he can get young chicks… everyone else pretty much thinks it’s creepy.

Or this.

AkaDad Says:

When I think of Palin, I’m thinking “Drill Here Drill Now.”

You stay classy, progressive Democrats. And try to wonder why women are unhappy with your party these days.

You know, I always hated Cole’s site. This garbage reminds me why.

A word to the men who read this blog: While I don’t claim to speak for all women, I can claim to give you a woman’s point of view on what John McCain choosing Sarah Palin for his vice presidential candidate means to me. And remember that I voted for Al Gore in 2000. (W. in 2004.)

It tells me that the Republicans believe that a woman can do the job equally as well as a man.

It tells me that John McCain isn’t going to demean the women reporters around him by calling them “Sweetie” and brushing them off.

It tells me that the Republicans think that now is the time for women to step up to the podium they’ve been aiming for for decades.

It tells me that 18 million voters, who were essentially ignored by the Democratic party, are not being ignored by the Republicans.

It tells me that politics are forever changed in America, and love her or hate her, you have Hillary Clinton to thank for the choice of Sarah Palin.

I simply cannot describe to you what a difference the choice of Palin makes for us. I watched the McCain news conference, and as he walked onto the stage, I found myself thinking that this boring old man had managed to make me feel excited about his campaign. And I am someone who intended to vote for him since he was assured the nomination. Two of my closest female friends feel the same way. There is a groundswell of excitement for McCain now, and next week’s convention suddenly got a lot more watchable.

Sarah Palin has made me excited about politics again, so much so that I’m contributing to the McCain campaign. So much so that I’m going to try to get to any and all of her appearances in Virginia. So much so that I can ignore the issues that she and I disagree on—and there are many—because it’s about damned time that women had a shot at the Executive Suite to top all Executive Suites.

American history changed today every bit as much as it changed with Obama’s nomination—but this one means more to me, for obvious reasons.

Obama can go home and grow a little in November. He’s not ready to be president. But Sarah Palin is more than ready to be VP.

And if she and McCain win, four or eight years from now, there could be an all-female presidential race. Now how cool would that be?

Susie B. is smiling.

Fox News confirms that John McCain has chosen Alaska Governon Sarah Palin for his vice presidential pick.

This is the BEST pick possible. It shows that the Republicans are just as progressive as the Dems this time around, and I’m betting that a lot of angry Hillary voters will now give a lot more thought to voting for McCain.

I’ve been hoping for this for a while. I don’t care that she’s more conservative than I’d like. What I like is that women have not been shut out yet again. I loathe Hillary, but I do agree with those who resent the rise of Obama, the far less qualified [male] candidate, over the woman who’s been around a lot longer, and working a lot harder.

I was already going to vote for McCain, but this would have locked it up for me.

Sarah Palin may become the nation’s first female vice president. Awesome.

Reuters has a puff piece that pretends to be reporting about the “liberalization” of Saudi Arabian cities. Let’s take a look.

The Saudi government has a project to develop at least four “economic cities” where many expect the religious establishment will be kept at a distance from social life, the workplace and education.

Women will be able to drive in them and there may even be cinema houses.

There are already some spaces in the country of 25 million people where the religious police — charged with maintaining “public morals” — are nowhere to be seen.

Premise one: Saudis (and by extension, foreign nationals) will be able to live normal, mostly-Sharia-free lives in at least four places.
Premise two: Women will be able to drive.
Premise three: There may be movie theaters. (Hoo-boy, the Saudis are going to join the twentieth century!)
Premise four: Areas already exist where the religious police “are nowhere to be seen”.

Now let’s take apart these premises, using the rest of the Reuters piece.

Jeddah carries the slogan “Jeddah is different” and Riyadh residents spend summer holidays in the Red Sea city, where local women with uncovered faces swan through shopping malls or sit in late-night shisha-pipe dens.

“Uncovered faces” is not exactly able to drive, work, and relax in public without fear of the religious police beating them and hauling them off to jail. And we discover that the zealots are chomping at the bit to take down these dens of iniquity.

Islamists constantly fulminate against the situation in Jeddah as if it was Sodom and Gomorrah.

The religious police generally also avoid the diplomatic district in Riyadh and Dhahran in the Eastern Province that houses Aramco.

Residents of the Eastern Province say the vice squad generally also leaves the city of Khobar alone, but has a strong presence in the neighbouring city of Dammam.

Please note the words in bold. If the religious police “generally” avoid areas, that means that there is a presence, and that they are not “nowhere to be seen.” So these women are at risk of being arrested pretty much at any time.

Premises one, two, and four have all been disproven by the very words in the rest of the Reuters article. As for premise three, again, well, gee, movie theaters. That’s so 1900.

Way to shill for the Saudis, though. Yes, that liberalization of Saudi Arabia continues apace. How long before the new, and highly touted coed university is attacked by either terrorists or the religious police?

From the headline until nearly the last paragraph, this condescending, sexist piece of drek willl go down in my Feminist Hall of Shame. And it’s from AP. It figures.

What a ride: Woman, 82, inducted into Hall of Fame

Wow. A woman was inducted into the Hall of Fame. What, the first one ever? Is that why you don’t identify her in the headline, like you would any other inductee into the Hall of Fame? Does she not have a name? Well, let’s look at the lead.

Betty Skelton Erde is 82 and lives in a retirement community where many are content to putter about in golf carts. Not Erde: She drives a blazing red Corvette to match her red hair and really means it when she says, “I like fast cars.”

An auto racing pioneer, Erde (Uhr-Dee) once was the fastest woman on Earth, setting female speed records at Daytona Beach and Utah’s Bonneville salt flats half a century ago. On Wednesday, she reaches a new milestone as only the fifth woman inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit.

Oh, she has a name. You even tell us how to pronounce it. And she’s not the first. She’s the fifth woman inducted. So the headline is just, gee, sexist. And those “female” speed records? Aren’t they supposed to be either “speed records” or “women’s speed records”?

Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry’s first female test driver, in 1954; the first woman to set a world land speed record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and then the world land speed record for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.

Funny, those aren’t all “female” speed records. I do believe the word “world” was in front of some of them. And here’s what the writer describes as Erde’s first drive in a fast car:

In February 1954, at France’s invitation, Erde went to Daytona. She climbed into a Dodge sedan, went 105.88 mph on the beach - that’s when folks still raced on sand - and set a stock car record.

That’s a record. Not a “female” record. What a bunch of condescending, sexist crap.

The AP also manages to quote one of the more sexist remarks from the time period when sexist remarks were, well, unremarkable. So when you read this, you nod your head and say, “How quaint. So glad men have learned not to be such morons today.”

“I would venture to say there is no other woman in the world with all the attributes of this woman,” France once remarked. “The most impressive of them all is her surprising and outstanding ever-present femininity, even when tackling a man’s job.”

But when you read the AP article, which includes this:

But if Erde was aware of how different she was for a woman at the time - unmarried, without children - she didn’t show it.

“I had to do what I wanted,” she said.

You have to wonder what century the writer is living in. And what is wrong with her. Because this drek was written by a woman. Perhaps she’s aiming for one of those “female” writing prizes.

We have reached the height of irony. Who needs sexist male writers when a woman will do the job for him?

Well done, Sister Suffragette.

Come back, Ilyka. Come back.

I have no one else to hang with while tweaking the boys on feminist issues.

The magazine co-founded by Gloria Steinem doesn’t seem to like Jews when they’re Israeli Jews. Or at least, that’s the impression they’re giving after rejecting an ad for Israel that the AJC wanted to place.

The magazine has turned down an AJCongress advertisement that did nothing more controversial than call attention to the fact that women currently occupy three of the most significant positions of power in Israeli public life. The proposed ad (The Ad Ms. Didn’t Want You To See) included a text that merely said, “This is Israel,” under photographs of President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

“What other conclusion can we reach,” asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, “except that the publishers − and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers − are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?”

When Director of AJCongress’ Commission for Women’s Empowerment Harriet Kurlander tried to place the ad, she was told that publishing the ad “will set off a firestorm” and that “there are very strong opinions” on the subject − the subject presumably being whether or not one can say anything positive about Israel. Ms. Magazine publisher Eleanor Smeal failed to respond to a signed-for certified letter with a copy of the ad as well as numerous calls by Mr. Gordon over a period of weeks.

A Ms. Magazine representative, Susie Gilligan, whom the Ms. Magazine masthead lists under the publisher’s office, told Ms. Kurlander that the magazine “would love to have an ad from you on women’s empowerment, or reproductive freedom, but not on this.” Ms. Gilligan failed to elaborate what “this” is.

I’d be very interested in getting an answer to what “this” is. Because running an ad about three powerful Israeli women saying, “This is Israel,” is an example of women’s empowerment. The magazine ran a cover story on Nancy Pelosi in the winter 2007 magazine, with a headline that seems, well, familiar.

An excerpt:

This Is What a Speaker Looks Like
Nancy Pelosi has finally cracked the marble ceiling of the Capitol. Now what will she do with the unprecedented power she has earned?

Ms. is proud to be the first magazine to feature on its cover Nancy Pelosi, the first woman and first self-identified feminist Speaker of the House. This 2002 Ms. Woman of the Year gives Ms. an exclusive interview in our cover story, “This Is What A Speaker Looks Like,” by Marie Cocco, in which we focus on her substance, rather than her clothes and jewelry.

The headline is parallel to the title of the ad that the AJC wanted to place: “This is Israel.” Click on the link. Look at the ad.

Of course, Ms. Magazine has published many articles about Arab and Islamic women in power.

Mr. Gordon noted that while Israel was apparently too hot to handle, Ms. Magazine did not extend that taboo to Arab and Moslem women. “What is even more amazing is that, while refusing to publish a simple ad praising three very notable women, women who embody the ideal that Ms. Magazine seemingly espouses, Ms. has run a cover article in the Fall 2003 issue on Queen Noor of Jordan, has featured a number of articles on Muslim women, and even ran an article in the Winter 2004 issue entitled, ‘Images of Palestine,’ which discussed the Ramallah Film Festival and gave sympathetic reviews to films concerning ‘the liberation of South Lebanon’ from Israel as well as numerous films which portrayed terrorism as legitimate ‘revolutionary’ activity against Israel and miscast Israel’s activities to counter terrorism as ‘oppressive.’”

And anti-Israel screeds, even at the height of the wave of suicide bombings during the bloody spring of 2002.

Jerusalem Spring 2002–Sharon seems to be our worst nightmare. Since this Intifada erupted, over 1,700 Palestinians and over 400 Israelis have been killed, with some 35,000 Palestinians and 4,000 Israelis wounded.* The terrorist attacks in Israel are horrible, but they have been used by Sharon to carry out deeds far in excess of “destroying the terrorist infrastructure.” The Israeli army deliberately trashed the inside of every Palestinian institution that it did not entirely destroy-schools, charities, health organizations, banks, radio and TV stations, even a puppet theater, [and] all the records of every government ministry. In a few locations, Israeli tanks even rolled over mosques and cemeteries….

(Note that the author glosses over the terrorist attacks, which were sometimes coming at the rate of two and three suicide bombings per day, and immediately attacks Ariel Sharon for sending in the IDF to stop the suicide bombings, shootings, and other attacks on Israelis. The rest of the article is devoted to the plight of the Palestinians.)

The pro-Palestinian side of the conflict is well-represented. Ms. Magazine covers women’s international political empowerment. There’s an article about the first women in the U.K. high court, one about Israeli mothers marching for peace, international legal discrimination of women, women who changed the face of politics in Northern Ireland, a Saudi feminist princess, a boatload of stories on peace activists, a female Israeli conscientious objector, and a ton of stories on Iraq.

But Ms. magazine refused to run an ad with three pictures of Israeli women in high positions: A Supreme Court judge, the vice president of the country, and the speaker of the Knesset, Israeli’s parliament. The American Jewish Congress was told this was going to “set off a firestorm.” Really? Portraying powerful women in a Mideast nation is a bad thing?

Apparently, when that nation is Israel, and the magazine is Ms., the answer is: Yes.

Phyllis Chesler has written and spoken about anti-Semitism in the world of feminists.

Like men, women are not necessarily compassionate or even fair towards other women — especially if those other women are identified as “evil racist settlers” and the enemies of a beloved revolution. Feminists are no better but perhaps no worse than other women in this regard.

[...] Many feminists who are quite principled on certain issues (equal pay for equal work, reproductive freedom, gay rights, sexual and domestic violence, childcare, etc.) unthinkingly believe that their critiques of patriarchy and of specific American policies can and must be transformed into a generalized hatred of America — the very country in which they practice their dissent — and transferred to the Middle East. Many feminists are totally blind to their own Jew hatred and are now more obsessed with the occupation of disputed lands in the Middle East than they are with the occupation of women’s bodies worldwide.

It appears she was not wrong.

When I tell people that I am a feminist, I usually have to make the distinction that I am not one of those feminists. Because I am a feminist. I believe in equal rights and equal opportunities for women. I believe that we have not yet achieved equality in the U.S., although we have come farther than ever before. I believe that most women are feminists like me. But the ones who run the organizations and the magazines—those women are not my friends. And yes, there are a significant number of anti-Israel Jewish women in those organizations. Shame on them.

As always, when it comes to Israel, there is a double standard. If those women were from any other nation in the world, Ms. Magazine would have been happy to run an ad featuring the three most powerful women in that country. But not if the women are from Israel.

What time is it, folks? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time. It occurs every day of the week that ends with a y.

Looks like Hamas is all about equality for women, so long as they’re carrying out terrorist attacks.

Two armed Palestinians were shot and killed by IDF soldiers Monday after they approached an army post near the Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip and opened fire at the force.

The IDF is still looking into the gunmen’s identity, but Palestinian sources confirmed to Ynet that one of them was a woman, Asma Abu Fanuna, a resident of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

According to the IDF, the two were spotted moving towards the post holding hands, in an apparent attempt to look like an innocent civilian couple. When they got to a distance of about 50 meters from the soldiers, they began shooting at them.

The soldiers responded with fire, hitting the two terrorists. Searches conducted in the area after the incident revealed that the two were carrying weapons and an explosive device.

Just when you think they can’t get much more depraved, you find out how very wrong you are. Although I have to admit, holding hands and strolling near the border fence is not the brightest idea.

Oh those Afghan girls, the way they wear their clothes, they keep the mullahs warm at night…

Nearly six years after the overthrow of the strict Islamist Taliban government, almost all women in deeply conservative Afghanistan still only appear in public wafting past in the burqa’s pale blue, their dark eyes only occasionally visible behind the bars of its grille.

But in the relatively liberal northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, a local television station has started to show a different image of Afghan women with an extremely low-budget take on the hit “America’s Next Top Model,” a reality TV show in which judges choose prospective models from a group of contestants over several weeks.

Be still my heart! An Afghan “Top Model” show? Wearing skimply clothes? Like what?

Four girls in brightly colored traditional costumes with baggy pants and long loose-fitting shawls and headscarves strode down the impromptu catwalk decked out in traditional Afghan rugs. Seemingly less confident than their Western counterparts, they avoided the gaze of the all-male film crew and press.

Hold your camels, Omar! They’re not wearing the head-to-toe burqas?

A quick change later, the same four appeared in camouflage combat trousers, sneakers and embroidered smocks. Then came denim jeans, open-toed sandals and colorful lightweight jackets.

Holy crap! Toes! They exposed their toes! Ahmed, call out the morality police! Get the whips and canes! Beat them! Hurt them!

“According to Sharia law, Islam is absolutely against this,” said Afghan Muslim cleric Abdul Raouf. “Not only is it banned by Islamic Sharia law, but if we apply Sharia law and to take this issue to justice, these girls should be punished.”

Not to worry. The religious police will hunt them down and punish them.

Model Timour said she wanted the outside world to see a different image of Afghan women.

“I have seen outside Afghanistan they have a different kind of idea about women in Afghanistan — they think they are always wearing the burqa and sitting at home but it is not like that,” she said. “Girls in Afghanistan are beautiful.”

Yeah. Tell us about it when you get out of prison, honey. Gee. Why do we think you’re all sitting around in burqas? Could it be because, well, you’re all sitting around in burqas?

Who? Me? Skeptical? Well, yeah.

afghanistan burqa era feminism

Ah, those wacky Wahabbis! You just can’t beat the misogynistic regime of Saudi Arabia. Every time someone tries to tell me how free and liberated Muslim women are, compared to Western women, I have to laugh. Because Iranian women aren’t allowed to go to soccer games. And here’s what happens in Wahabbi World:

Two Saudi women called members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice “terrorists” and one sprayed the men with pepper spray after the men stopped them for not conforming to the Kingdom’s public dress code, the commission said yesterday in a statement.

One of the women filmed the incident, which took place in Alkhobar on Thursday, said Muhammad ibn Marshoud Al-Marshoud, head of the Eastern Province branch of the commission.

The commission’s teams patrol public places to ensure women are not harassed, sexes don’t mingle and shops close for prayers. “Two members of the commission were attacked, cursed and sworn at by two women, who were blatantly dolled up,” Al-Marshoud said, meaning the women were wearing makeup.

What? Women actually fought back against the repressive Vice Squads? What happened to them?

He said the commission’s officials stopped the women to give them advice and guidance after they noticed they were wearing makeup. “One of the women took out a black container and sprayed a substance at them while the other filmed what happened with her phone camera while making improper comments,” Al-Marshoud said.

He said commission members took control of the situation with help from security patrols.

“During questioning, the women apologized for attacking the two commission members, signed a statement and were released,” he added.

I wonder how many bruises it took to get those apologies.

And if that isn’t sickening enough, there’s this:

In a related development, commission members banned female shoppers from sitting in a makeshift outdoor restaurant to have their iftar meals in a low-income neighborhood in Jeddah because men were already seated at special tables set up for the fasting month, according to the daily Al-Watan. The paper quoted Muhammed Mehdawi as saying commission members forced his wife and children to eat their food while standing next to him. Other women stood by the stands that run the modest eatery.

Ali Al-Hayyan, head of the commission’s Jeddah branch, said the agents’ actions were meant as a deterrent, “especially since some of the women were dolled up, and also to prevent the mixing of the sexes that could happen at such events and which our religion rejects,” the paper said.

Siddeequa, a 52-year-old woman, said she had to eat her food standing after the commission’s members asked her to leave her seat at the restaurant. Owners of makeshift restaurants in downtown Jeddah feared the action of commission members would affect their businesses, as families would hesitate to visit them.

These are the same Saudis who blew a gasket during the first Gulf War when they saw American women soldiers driving Humvees. You’ve come a long way, baby.

Try not to laugh. Saudi women are fighting for the right to drive. It’s really not funny. It’s pathetic.

Women in the only country in the world which still bans women from driving want to put their best foot forward – on the accelerator.

Saudi Arabia’s newly established League of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars plans to deliver a petition to King Abdallah Bin Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud, calling for their “stolen” entitlement of free movement to be restored.

Love the scare quotes by the Indy. It is a stolen entitlement. In Saudi Arabia, men can drive; women cannot. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot travel without a male family escort, nor can they leave the country without their husband or father’s permission. There is no freedom of movement for Saudi women, and they are entitled to that freedom by sheer virtue of being born. There are such things as natural rights that are beyond the laws of any nation, and freedom of movement is one of them.

Mind you, I think nothing will come of this. The Wahhabi creeps that run the kingdom won’t allow women to be free. Which is why Saudi Arabia will never be anything but a third-world backwater with delusions of grandeur, funded by oil profits. At least when the alternative energies are developed, the Saudi’s ruling clan will end its death grip on the nation. Without the petrodollars keeping the poor happy and fed, revolution is certain.

Here’s hoping it’s soon.

Not that I ever intend to change my name at this point in my life, but this would be a great solution for me if it didn’t screw up the eponymous blog thing.

Jersey writers Alice Kirby and Larry Charny decided to marry in 1988, she refused to take his name, but so did he.

Kirby, 54, is a fiction writer and Charny, 48, is editor of The Story Prize. With a nod to the creative world of fiction, the couple abandoned their family names and adopted a new surname. Today, they are Alice and Larry Dark.

Smart. No muss, no fuss.

Many women keep their maiden names as a mark of independence. Still, an overwhelming 90 percent of all brides drop their surnames, according to the Lucy Stone League, named for the woman who refused to take her husband’s name in 1855.

But today, in a trend that is not new but growing, couples are constructing their own names — sometimes mixing syllables from both sides of the family and often just picking a name that has special meaning or rolls well off the tongue.

Kirby-Charny would have been a mouthful, notes Dark, who toyed with the sardonic moniker Dark Jr.

I am (and have always been) enough of a feminist that I think changing my name to match my husband’s would be a remnant of the days when women were physically the property of men (ergo the name change). Plus, I like the idea of both halves of the couple starting over. This makes a whole lot more sense than hyphenation.

Darcie Shapiro and Jeff Klein created a new name in preparation for their marriage in 2003. The New York City couple, both 28, constructed it from their mothers’ maiden names.

Darcie’s mother was born Behar and Jeff’s was Ruthberg. “Har” and “berg” mean mountain in Hebrew and German, respectively. So they opted for a blended name — Sharlein.

Darcie Sharlein, who is studying to be a Jewish cantor, said she never assumed she would take her husband’s name.

“It was important for us to have the same last name and one day our imaginary children would also have the name,” she said. “It was a way we could honor both families, a symbolic way of joining them together.”

Yep. I like this idea a whole lot. But at this point in time, I don’t ever see me changing my name. Not unless I have to perform some kind of life-changing act, have plastic surgery, and get a new identity through a black-ops agency of the U.S. government. Oh, wait. That never happens in real life. Yourish it is.

The AP ran a nice little fluff piece about how the Mad Mullah might accept some moves forward for women in Iran. Of course it’s all crap, but the AP never lets the facts get in the way of pretending that Iran isn’t the backwards, theocratic, misogynistic, insular little state that it is.

Iran Leader Signals Flexibility on Women
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran’s supreme leader has signaled a willingness to reinterpret Islamic law more favorably to women’s rights - but not by following Western conventions, state media and his official Web site reported Thursday.

“Some issues about women, which exist in religious jurisprudence, are not the final say. It is possible to interpret new points through research by a skillful jurist,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Web site quoted him as saying Wednesday during a speech to commemorate national women’s day.

The comments by the Shiite cleric, who has final say over all state matters, came amid international rights groups’ criticism of Iran for giving prison sentences to several women’s rights activists.

Yeah, those prison sentences? They’re not just prison sentences. They include whippings.

On Monday, an Iranian court sentenced a women’s rights activist to almost three years in jail and 10 lashes for attending a banned rally, her lawyer said on Tuesday.

Gateway Pundit quotes an Iranian blogger on the sentences:

This is not silliness, this is not making order. This is BRUTALITY, pure brutality. I know Delaram VERY closely.

She is a volunteer teacher for Afghan children who do not have the right of going to school in Iran. She is going to spend three years of her life in prison and be tied to somewhere and be whipped for 10 times in her back just for believing in “women should be equal to men”. This tyranny is Unbelievable.

This is on top of the beatings the women got last year for having the nerve to protest on International Women’s Day—for women’s rights. And this is how those rights are portrayed in the AP piece:

Iran’s interpretation of Islamic law imposes tight restrictions on women, such as requiring them to have a male guardian’s permission to work or travel. Women are not allowed to become judges, and a man’s court testimony is considered twice as important as a woman’s.

Yet Iranian women have more rights than their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and some other conservative Muslim countries. They can drive, vote and run for most public offices.

Oh, so that makes it all better than. Because Iranian women aren’t as oppressed as the Saudis, they should celebrate this? Eff you, AP, for even implying that. But wait, because the AP is an important propaganda arm of the Khameini regime in this article:

Khamenei praised the role of women in Iran and said the emphasis on their maternal role in Islam “does not mean opposition to the presence of women in various aspects of social life at all,” the Web site reported.

He also said Westerners had “discredited” women by using them to fulfill “illegitimate” sexual desires, apparently referring to prostitution and premarital sex, which are banned by Islamic law.

And thanks for that explanation. Damn those Westerners and their refusal to go back to the laws and ways of the seventh century!

And damn AP for writing a puff piece on the cruelty that is Iran.

Israel is swearing in more and more women judges.

A swearing-in ceremony for new judges at Beit Hanassi on Tuesday demonstrated that the the legal profession, once dominated by males, is gradually being taken over by women. Of the 36 judges appointed, 25 were female.

And they’re native-born, too. No more majority imports.

Whereas only a decade ago, most new judges were born abroad, only five of the judges appointed Tuesday were born outside Israel. Two American-born judges - Nava Ben-Or and Miriam Lifshitz - were appointed to the Jerusalem District Court, and a third, Pnina Lokitch, to the Haifa Magistrate’s Court.

Let’s see… about four years ago, I noted in a post that Egypt joined the 20th century by appointing its first female judge. I wonder if they’ve appointed any others since?

Once again, Israel proves itself a beacon of light in a region of darkness.

Update: Looky here, they are appointing more women judges in Egypt.

In a first for Egypt, last week saw a number of women appointed judges by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), the country’s highest legal authority. Although a number of prominent judicial figures have spoken out against the decision, rights activists and SJC officials praised the move.

“This is a defining moment in Egyptian history,” SJC chairperson Moqbel Shaker was quoted as saying last Tuesday after 30 female judicial appointees publicly swore to “arbitrate justly between the people”.

The move follows a decision by the SJC last year to allow the appointment of women, for the first time, as adjudicators in the nation’s courts. The decision was supported by Egypt’s state-appointed Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, who ruled that the appointment of women to judicial positions did not contradict Islamic precepts.

In mid-March, the SJC accepted 124 applications from female candidates, with the stipulation that applicants must have previous experience working in judicial agencies. After extensive examinations, 31 were chosen to preside over family courts (although one, citing personal reasons, turned down the posting).

And how are the Egyptians taking this?

In mid-January, the prominent Judges Club for the Council of State declared that the mufti’s decision was “in contradiction to the rulings of most Islamic jurists” and represented mere “pandering to the government”.

“The appointment of female judges contradicts Islamic law and therefore contradicts the constitution,” club president Yehia Dakrouri was quoted as saying in the local press. Dakrouri went on to point out that article two of the national charter clearly cites Islamic law as “the primary source of legislation”.

In March, the judges club for the middle-Egyptian governorate of Beni Sueif went so far as to urge President Hosni Mubarak to reverse the appointments. “We refuse the appointment of women as judges,” the club said in a statement, “because this contradicts both the majority of jurists and the constitution.”

Something tells me you’re not going to find Israelis asking to reverse women’s progress in Israel. But then, hello, Israel’s in the 21st century, not still mired in the seventh.

Why Joss Whedon writes strong women characters.

Ew! Girl cooties!

Iran’s foreign minister walked out of a dinner of diplomats where he was seated directly across from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on the pretext that the female violinist entertaining the gathering was dressed too revealingly.

“I dont know which woman he was afraid of, the woman in the red dress or the secretary of state,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.

You know, right now, I’m actually perfectly happy that the Iranians so disrespect women. It handicaps them in their efforts to take over the world, because they’re cutting out a large percentage of their potential scientists and engineers. That’s most of the reason why the Arab/Muslim world is so backwards. When you refuse to use half of your population’s assets, no way you’re going to keep up with, say, Israel.

I’m thinking a Nelson laugh is appropriate here.

It’s as plain as the nose on your face: Women don’t like men having multiple wives. And you know, it just doesn’t really work all that well, either. For the women, anyway.

RIYADH - A Saudi man lost part of his nose in a heated argument with his two wives because he threatened to marry a third woman, Shams newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Judaie bin Salim jokingly told his wives that he would marry again if they were unable to resolve their differences over how to divide their new house, the paper said.

Salim repeated the threat because of how ill-mannered his wives had acted.

This proved a provocation too far for the women, who then attacked him and left him with a part of his nose missing, a broken cartilage and needing seven stitches.

“I never thought my wives would respond to such a degree,” Judai told the daily, adding the only way to restore his diginity would be to go ahead and take a third wife.

No word on the punishment for the women, but I’m guessing they got their asses kicked by their husband once he got back from the hospital. Probably brought along some of his male relatives to help.

Yeah, those Muslim women. They’re really right up there with Western feminists in how free Islam makes them. Uh-huh. Sure.

Pakistan is introducing a bill to ban forced marriages, including the ones that use women as a payment to settle feuds.

Pakistan’s ruling party on Tuesday introduced a bill to outlaw forced marriages, including under an ancient tribal custom in which women are married off in order to settle feuds.

[...] Hussain’s party, which has a majority in both houses, strongly supports President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has vowed to give women more rights in line with his policy to project Pakistan as a moderate, progressive Islamic nation.

“Whoever coerces, or in any manner whatsoever compels a woman to enter into marriage shall be punished with imprisonment” for up to three years and a fine, according to the proposed law.

The bill foresees the same penalty to discourage “wanni” or “swara,” a tribal custom in which a woman is forced into marriage to settle a dispute between two families or clans.

Another provision bans forcing a woman into a “marriage with the Holy Quran,” a practice still seen in deeply conservative rural parts of Pakistan in which a woman swears on Islam’s holy book never to marry. Critics argue the tradition is used to prevent a woman from taking her share of a family’s land with her when she marries.

Illegally depriving a woman of her inheritance rights would be punished with up to seven years in jail, under the bill.

Woo-hoo! Those wacky Pakistanis! They’re going to join the 21st century!

Islamic radicals, who accuse Musharraf of trying to introduce Western secular values into the country, staged rallies across Pakistan to protest the changes, calling them un-Islamic.

Or maybe not.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said last week that at least 565 women and girls died in 2006 in so-called “honor killings,” nearly twice as many as the previous year.

Some men consider it an insult to family honor if a female relative has an affair outside of wedlock or marries without their consent, and view attacking or killing the women or their partners as a way to restore family honor.

You see? Pakistan is getting even more radicalized and backwards. Yeah, that radical Islam thing—it really improves the standard of living. As long as you’re not female or non-Muslim, and of the right brand of Islam or sect, of course.

This is why I laugh when people tell me that Islam has any relation to feminism.

The Saudi Gazette reported that a Saudi man who demanded SR100,000 from his daughter in return for allowing her to marry has been disallowed custody rights by the General Shariah Court, according to the Al-Madina newspaper.

The daughter, 35, who sued her father in court, said he had been turning away all the men who proposed to her until she came up with SR100,000.

Her father listed for the court all the funds he had spent on raising her, and stressed that he simply did not want any relationship with his daughter or to see her after she pays him the stated amount and would relinquish custody of her.

His daughter made it clear to the court she didn’t possess that amount of money.

The salient point: The woman is 35 years old. She cannot marry because her father never gave her permission. This is the Saudi version of Sharia law.

In his verdict, the judge mentioned the father had no right to ask for the money he spent on his daughter because it was his obligation as a guardian, as decreed in the Koran.

The judge will appoint her brother as guardian.

Now she is 35 years old and has a brother as a guardian. Wow, what progress! Maybe by the time her daughter’s 35, she’ll be able to drive in Saudi Arabia.

Naaaaah.

Hey, check it out! Saudi Arabian women are now allowed to sell cars! Except, well, when you read it, you see that they are only selling cars to other women. Which is a pretty bad deal, what with women still unable to drive in the theocracy.

Dec 3, 2006 (AP)— RIYADH, Saudi Arabia Saudi women still can’t drive cars, but they can sell them. Potential buyers can go to an all-women showroom where, for the first time, other women will help them choose a car and answer questions about horsepower, carburetors and other automotive features.

Neither the saleswomen nor the female buyers can take the car out for a test drive because women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia even though they have been allowed to own cars for decades and hire male drivers. Almost half the autos belong to women.

Just in case you think things may be changing in the homeland of the world’s Wahabbi-exporting oil ticks, you would be wrong:

So touchy is the issue of women driving that people who previously called for dialogue about whether Saudi Arabia should remain the only Arab nation that bans female drivers have been largely silenced by a wave of condemnation from conservatives. Mindful of those sensitivities, the Riyadh car dealership that opened the all-women showroom asked that its name not be used.

The seven female saleswomen at the spacious showroom insist they aren’t pushing for female driving but only providing comfort for women who want to buy cars and don’t like to go to dealerships run by men. With the sexes segregated in schools, restaurants and banks, interaction between salesmen and women customers is awkward for many Saudis.

Say, tell me again how Islam is more feminist than the American feminist movement. Go ahead, pull the other leg.

Yvonne Ridley, the woman who was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and ultimately converted to Islam (one’s mind does immediately jump to “Stockholm Syndrome,”) waxes poetic—and untruthfully—about the equality of women under Islam. Here’s my favorite part:

A careful reading of the Koran shows that just about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman’s gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute.

So, let’s see. In the 1970s, women fought for equal employment opportunities, equal pay for equal work, changes in the rape and sexual harassment laws, Title IX laws that enabled girls to play high school sports without having to put out a begging bowl, the ability for a girl to take Auto Shop (as well as a boy to take Home Economics, neither of which were permitted while I was in high school), equal opportunity in banking, credit, marriage, and divorce laws (married women were unable to get their own credit cards).

Now comes the disingenuous part. Ridley is clever enough to use the phrase “in the Koran” over and over again in this article, thus enabling her to argue that the Koran treats women with great respect, but that some Muslims screw it up. Let’s take a look at the above in context:

Having been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that most Western male politicians and journalists who lament the oppression of women in the Islamic world have no idea what they are talking about. They go on about veils, child brides, female circumcision, honor killings and forced marriages, and they wrongly blame Islam for all this — their arrogance surpassed only by their ignorance.

These cultural issues and customs have nothing to do with Islam. A careful reading of the Koran shows that just about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman’s gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute.

Again, I’ll let others argue the Koranic interpretations, though I keep on reading that a woman’s testimony in court is worth only half that of a man’s. I’m not getting how that makes women equal to men in Islam, but I’m sure Yvonne Ridley could straighten that out for me as a cultural issue. However, you have to look at the effect of the Koran on Islamic law in various Islamic nations, like, say, Saudi Arabia.

Who May Testify in Criminal Proceedings
The witness must be deemed sane, the age of an adult, and a Muslim. Non-Muslims may not testify in criminal court. Women may not testify unless it is a personal matter that did not occur in the sight of men. Actually, the testimony of a woman is not regarded as fact but rather as presumption. The court may decide whether the testimony is valid according to the circumstances.

And you simply have to love the reasons behind these Islamic scholars’ interpretations:

Why Women Are Forbidden to Testify in Criminal Proceedings
There are four reasons given why women’s testimony is not valid in a Saudi court:

1. Women are much more emotional than men and will, as a result of their emotions, distort their t