Letters to the Editor
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Yet another example of how the WOT is bungled by Evilbush
We should have sent batallions of scantily clad women into Iraq and watch as bastions after bastions of resistance simply cease to exist when shiite, sunni and other sundry (yes, for the rhyme) terrorist thugs turn into ash in huge numbers. Then cross the border into Iran and watch Mahmoud Iminajihad collapse like a huge sack of flour without the sack. Then onward, and onward, brave American boobs and tooshies, into Saudi Arabia, and even further to the West, to solve the Palestinian question once and for all.
PS: A positive side effect would be the fertilization of the Arabian desert.
PS2: Another the sudden influx of single women into the dating scene in large numbers.
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"Cleric: Unveiled women burn men to ash"
Honest to Gawd, when I saw that headline I first thought a bunch of Uppity Women in Afghanistan had finally had enough of veils and beatings and had taken some guys out and doused them and lit them up!
Sort of like something Ogden Nash wrote back in the 1940s: he said that just once he wanted to see a headline that read "Georgia Negro Lynches Mob."
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Fire
Well, women in America are always trying to be so "hot", aren't they? Seems like if one does mess with fire one does run the risk of being burned.
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Wait a minute jfwlucy,
Do you mean to say that men, more so than women, have biological urges that lead them to sexual attraction and arousal as a response to the human body?
And that, unchecked, these biological proclivities can lead to boundary violations, aggression, even worse, when the female is not consenting?
But that all males are capable of transcending and controlling these most ingrained of biological urges?
And the way to their mastery and transcendence isn’t through repression, or denying the existence of (sometimes gendered) predispositions, but by accepting and experiencing them, as the only way to gain control?
All that without the distraction of “essentialism” or “evo psych”?
Damn.
Maybe there’s hope for all of us.
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Those crazy clerics
It’s easy to skewer the overt misogyny of the cleric’s statements, and part of their apparent absurdity derives from cultural distance. What’s more difficult and discomforting is getting an objective view closer in. More fundamentally than religious code, the veil represents evolutionary remnants of once-adaptive mating and reproductive systems – but no more so than do monogamy and marriage.
“But here we don’t punish women, or men, for deviating from arbitrarily prescribed norms for social and sexual behavior.”
Really? Maybe not overtly or with religious law. But you might ask the Spitzers, or Clintons, or review our public treatment of female figures who deviate in any way that operationalizes “sexual freedom” as more than a leftover buzzphrase.
We know a fair amount about behavioral change in humans: for example that shaming, judgment and humiliation are likely to elicit temporary compliance or resistance, not internal change. Social modeling is potentially very effective, but only if the model (or model culture) is trusted, congruent, admired, and authentic in observed behaviors and attitudes. That is, the culture purporting to serve as model for others would need to be held in positive esteem, and demonstrate that the values it operationalizes actually result in greater freedom, equality and well-being for women and men. That would be an admirable culture.
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Really, tomreedtoon? REALLY?
> Smearing a fundamentalist with what a
> female guard claims is her menses, and
> watching him flinch, must seem like
> justified feminist revenge, especially
> to Salon readers
Can you please provide a quote from a feminist, Salon reader or otherwise, that would lead you to believe that this "must" be true? Because I suspect you're way off.
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@jfwlucy
"So if a Christian young man sees a teen temptress in Daisy Dukes but is still able to put a lid on his fiery loins and return to his copy of the "National Review," has he not had his moral strength TESTED and PROVED thereby?"
Listen, if a teen hottie in DDs walks by and I go back to reading the (ugh) National Review, the pope should nominate me for sainthood NOW.
Either that, or call up my "friend" Bruce to go shopping at Pottery Barn...
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Pathetic
All I can say is that men in Iran must be the most useless little wusses on the planet, if the sight of a woman's hair can murder them on the spot.
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This is so
..insulting to men.
As if they cannot control themselves. I wish they would change these archaic outdated modes of operating, but I know better.
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Once Again
Religion Poisons Everything!
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@ stackey-dackey
Your Christian neighbors are actually not going far enough.
"Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of makes herself guilty of that many murders, just as with the woman who tries to injure herself after conception."
- St. Augustine
See?
I'm assuming this includes refusing sex for anyone when she is not pregnant. See, St. Augustiine supports rape. Cookies for everyone!
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We can only wish
Close your eyes and picture it for a moment: Extremist Islamic Cleric says, "Get out of that car, woman! You are not accompanied by a male relative! The penalty is to be flogged by professionals until your spirit is properly broken!"
Woman lifts her veil. Cleric falls into a little ash pile.
Woman drives off.
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regarding American extremists
You have my sympathy, stackey-dackey. I have some Fundies as inlaws and I'm constantly surprised by them.
True story: little white clapboard Baptist church not a mile from my house has a sign out front. It gives the time and date for an emergency prayer meeting to discuss how gays are destroying marriage. To be followed by a fellowship breakfast for recently divorced members.
I don't agree with tomreedtoon that Fundamentalists can exist in America without threatening all the rest of us. They do threaten us. Bush wouldn't have been elected without Focus on the Family. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
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This doesn't make sense
If Muslim men have enough self-control to submit to the discipline that is Ramadan, they surely have enough control to not go up in smoke at the sight of a woman's face.
Unless, of course, they're the murderous characters in Saudi who refused to let schoolgirls who didn't have abayas flee a burning building. They -have- self-control for what they want to have self control -for-.
The whole thing reminds me -- rather provocatively, I admit -- of a story told of Golda Meir. After some assaults on women, some protective gentleman proposed a curfew on women, so they wouldn't be out at night.
Golda replied that the women hadn't done anything. "Curfew the men," she said.
This sermon insults men and endangers women.