Letters to the Editor
MWise
Published Letters: 253 Editor's Choice: 19
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It is all fun and games
[Read the article: When are male sex abuse victims "conquerors"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]until that hot teacher ends up on your thirteen years old doorstep and announces she's pregnant. Or she passed along an STD. Or until her husband finds out and tells the school board and then your son is dragged through the embarassment of a scandal. Or what happens when hot teacher is a man? Is that okay? Even if your son is gay? I mean in that case he's just being initiated into the way of love, right? Isn't that the excuse abusers use to justify themselves? I'm really aghast that any parent thinks it's okay for their CHILD to be molested by an adult. That a mainstream publication would celebrate child abuse. Thoroughly disgusted.
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only if you want to
[Read the article: Forcing pre-abortion peek at ultrasound]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If looking at a picture of an ultrasound is enough to stop you from having an abortion, then you aren't ready to have an abortion. Then again you also probably aren't ready to raise a child, but I'd rather that women think through their decision rather than add to the "I really didn't know what I was doing when I terminated my pregnancy" camp. Now I'm against forcing a woman to look at an ultrasound when she doesn't want to.
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Did any of you actually read the article?
[Read the article: Failing Iraqi women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Where the author talking about working with women's groups to get representation in gov't, training for jobs and how they had a list of 350 woman-owned small business that were trying to garner contracts? It sounds like there was a lot of hard work and risk taking done by Iraqi women to regain some of what they lost when Saddam brought in the religious conservatives and then the losses they had due to the war. Iraq does have a feminist community and has had one for quite a long time. There are several reports that their leaders have been targeted by insurgent groups. If I remember correctly, there was an assassination of a female lawmaker and the female head of one of the ministries. So to say that those women didn't sacrifice for women's rights is rather cavalier.
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Mr. Franklin
[Read the article: Failing Iraqi women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And I quote from your first post:
"What are Iraqi women doing to promote their own equality? As far as I can tell, not much...Where's the mass movement of half the population of that country?"
There are some very active women's groups in Iraqi, they have staged protests against the conservative parties in the gov't that are trying to repeal the rights that women had under Saddam and those that are trying to impose Sharia. They've succesfully lobbied and won (smaller than what they wanted) quotas in the new parliment. They were able to hold off a complete repeal of family laws that gave them those right. Women in Iraq have had (close to) equal rights since 1959 and were far more advanced in employment and education than other countries in the region. There are several groups like (Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq,Iraqi Women's Network) working to improve conditions. They have founded women's shelters, staged several protests agains the implementation of Sharia law, have started a feminist newspaper, and have founded local chapters to educate women. So why haven't they achieved equal rights? Targeted assassinations, al-Sadr's thugs going around and beating them for violating Sharia law, the US support gov't selling them out for a compromise between competing religious groups, the US refusal to staff a women's initiative office in Iraq, and trying to avoid being killed, maimed, raped, feed their families, etc.
I think it's disingenuous of you to lump all Iraqi women together, like the men, they also have religious and ethnic ties that are competing interests. Several of the women elected to parliment are actually hard-liner Islamists and would happily turn the new gov't into an Islamic theocracy. Are those women mere puppets of the conservative Shiites, true believers or just plain stupid? I have no clue. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to help those women that do work for their rights and are trying the best they can under horrific situations.