Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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@AKA Smith and the world
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have never said that brighstar 65 had two X chromosomes. I said (elsewhere) that possession of two X chromosomes seems to disqualify any potential partner he might find. In other words, he would find something wrong with any woman available to him.
Having said that, he is about the only poster on this thread who has said anything that makes sense so far.
This Muslim cleric has said that having women dressed in what by the standards of his society is a revealing and sexually alluring manner is an arousing and distracting experience for the men who are around them.
I should think it would be, because men in such sexually repressed societies are operating on a sexual hair trigger, and even the sight of a well-turned ankle could keep them awake at night thinking of knees and all points north.
It is all very well to titter at the more primitive, less liberated notions that prevail in such societies, but withough having any statistics available to me, it is apparent that sexual crimes are incredibly common in our society--just get on a Web site and check how many sex offenders live in the county where you live, you will be surprised--and quite possible that there are less sexual crimes aganst women in more traditional societies, especially if you don't count marriage as a sex crime.
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@Juliebird
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, I never denied that our society is more advanced. But only by a generation or two. Women in the US only got the vote within my mother's lifetime. When I was born there were still people alive in the US who had been born slaves.
And although we are all virtuous good people in the US, unlike people in other countries, most of the progress we have made is as much because technology has made it possible as because of our innate virtue.
In some senses it was the Industrial Revolution that facilitated the end of slavery, and the need for more workers for industry that led to women working outside the home and gaining the vote. Developments in contraception made recreational sex a possibility, instead of sex being necessary to produce more children to pick the crops and support their parents.
Antiseptic surgery made childbirth and abortion much less of a potential death sentence. The invention of antibiotics made killer diseases like syphilis extinct, though AIDS has sort of filled the gap for a couple of decades.
The idea that women can have autonomous recreational sex lives is relatively new and by no means universally accepted, even in the USA.
Not every society has caught up, not even close.
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@Lola
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't disagree. You won't find me advocating punishment for women just for being women.
I'm just saying that the injustices that exist in various societies can only be eradicated by bringing the whole society into the modern age, which is incredibly hard to do.
Imnprovements in the West were the result of processes that took hundreds of years, including the development of Protestantism as a reform movement in Christianity that eventually enable heretical beliefs like the earth going round the sun to be accepted without people being killed for holding them.
Islam has not had a Reformation and there is little doubt that many within Islam are entrenched in maintaining the status quo. Social progress, when it comes, will come along with material progress. It is coming. Just the very fact that this cleric is making these comments shows that the way of life he and his ilk want to preserve is coming under pressure.
Oppressing women and subjecting them to unfair and arbitrary punishments is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness, a last desperate struggle to maintain control.
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@Colt
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yours was one of the finest letters I have seen here.
No I live in the USA, but have lived 37 years of my life in other countries. Now I don't travel much and have not been outside the US more than 30 times in the last 3 years,and only 7 times this year. However one can stay in touch with the outside world via the Internet.
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@SB4609
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, it is a combination of economic and social factors.
Consider William Wilberforce who for many years promoted his bill to abolish the Slave Trade in the British parliament, which was eventually passed in 1807--hence the celebrations this year.
Wilberforce's radical political agenda followed an evangelical religious conversion as a young man, after which he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to righting wrongs that he had done before.
He introduced a bill for a very pro-women revision of the criminal law which included something that many Salon readers would loudly cheer--that rapists should be dissected after execution, a privilege previously reserved for murderers. Not only that, but women convicted of treason were to have their sentence reduced from burning to hanging. Unfortunately this progressive piece of legislation was vetoed, no doubt to the chagrin of treasonous women.
Wilberforce would probably be seen as something of a conservative in today's political marketplace, but the interesting thing about his Slave Trade Act (1807) is that although he was motivated by his religious beliefs, the bill only passed after twenty years of campaigning at a time when sugar plantations were still profitable, but the switch to an industry-based economy meant that it was no longer the only game in town for budding entrepreneurs.
Wilberforce suffered from a stress related illness, probably ulcerative colitis for most of his life--for some reason.