The Danish health minister should “get on a plane and visit” some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenland’s gender equality minister has said.In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone...“For us this story plays into the story about children being adopted without parental consent, about children being sent to Denmark, forgetting their language and their culture. It’s about stories of Danish men coming to Greenland and fathering children that they then did not assume responsibility for,” she added...She said writing off Denmark’s contraceptive practices on girls as young as 12 as the product of another time was “a very white way of thinking”, “because yes, that’s just easy to say when you’re not directly affected”. For those who know people who were “cut off from the possibility of becoming mothers”, it’s an entirely different perspective, she added.Although the coil is now a safe and highly effective form of birth control, lawyers for the Greenlandic women say that for many the forcible fitting of unsophisticated devices that were often too big for the girls’ young bodies went on to cause a lifetime of medical difficulties.
And in other, marginally-related news...
The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said...In an audio broadcast on the Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan last Saturday, Akhundzada said: “We will flog the women … we will stone them to death in public [for adultery]...“You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles,” he said, adding: “[But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan.”..Most recently, in February, the Taliban executed people in public at stadiums in Jawzjan and Ghazni provinces. The militant group has urged people to attend executions and punishments as a “lesson” but banned filming or photography.
... revisiting a memorable scene from The Kite Runner.
“[But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan.”
ReplyDeleteIn that case: HAIL Satan! Glad to be with Satan if he's the one not stoning women.
Good job Satan, you're not the worst anymore.
See, the problem is that religious people do not understand that Satan is as much a fantasy figure for non-religious people as God is.
It's like saying: “[But] I represent the Easter Bunny, and you represent the Yeti.”..
Whatev's bro. Just stop hitting women, you neanderthal.
(the joke here is that religious people don't believe we come from apes via neanderthals, so I'm using the same oratory trick back)
Headline "...renewing public stoning of women..." and yet, "In the past year alone, Taliban-appointed judges ordered 417 public floggings and executions, according to Afghan Witness, a research group monitoring human rights in Afghanistan. Of these, 57 were women."
ReplyDeleteIs the flogging and execution of men, here about seven times more common, just a footnote? Why is this a female oriented headline in the Guardian other than for purposes of working a tired identity agenda? How about this headline, "Afghan men seven times more likely to suffer medieval punishment"
Why is this a female oriented headline in the Guardian other than for purposes of working a tired identity agenda?
DeleteBecause the news is that they are RESUMING the killing of WOMEN, not that they are CONTINUING the flogging of MEN.
So, to put it in your terminology, the Taliban realized that they had gone woke by not flogging and killing enough women thereby creating the very difference between men and women that they so desire, so they are now going for full equality by starting to flog and women again, making them basically feminists.
Or,
The Taliban realized that they were creating a difference between men and women the wrong way around, by no flogging and killing enough women. Someone must have done the math (a local invention) and realized that if you keep killing only men, then you end up in a world with only women, and that's not what the Taliban wants, because who is there then to suppress the women? So, like the secret feminists they are, they are resuming to kill women, thereby taking the hit from some mistaken westeners that they are sexist pigs, because really they hate women way more than men and just made a small policy error in their hate laws.
If that's confusing, you're getting the point.
Let's make it more clear: Nearly universally, globally and historically, as the powerful dump on the powerless, it's men that take the brunt. This is not a convenient fact for feminists. War is a great example, as it fell on the poorest men of Afghanistan to fight and die seeking to repel invaders for millennia. (The same is true today as young Ukrainian and Russian men die by the hundreds of thousands while women have the option of leaving or not enlisting.) If Afghani men suffer more than women, why the focus on women, decade after decade? The whole Three Cups of Tea nonsense that dominates NPR-type coverage. As if men don't exist. The answer lies in the current Western obsession with identity in politics and academia. Cherry picking is an ideological necessity. How else do we keep avoiding looking at justice by class?
DeleteHuh. You're right. I didn't know about this war in Afghanistan where men suffered. Had to search Wikipedia to find out about this war, that was started by the USA apparently, had lasted a mind-boggling 20 years!
DeleteCrazy that the news never ever reported on that war and all the male casualties that it caused.
If only someone would have had the idea to slap the number of casualties on a building in DC for all those 20 years so that people who walked by would always be confronted by the death count (only of the American wounded and casualties, of course, the Afghan men didn't count).
It is a show of modesty that the American media never reported of the triumphant victory over the Taliban as the mightiest military of the world crushed a bunch of rag-tag terrorists.
My idiotic country spent 2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan (300 million a day for 20 years) and LOST (but God knows what winning would even mean)! My idiotic country has about 650,000 homeless people. The spending on just this one military misadventure is about 3 million dollars per homeless person.
DeleteFollow the money. Who has profited? And who will pay as our federal debt accumulates? The poor. But none of this domestic economic suffering holds a candle to the misery we've inflicted worldwide, war after war.
Nepkarel, I appreciate your looking into the Afghanistan subject. We certainly agree on the question of the barbaric treatment of women. But I tend to be a "class reductionist." Looked at through this lens, I see identity evangelism as part of WHY we spent 2 trillion in Afghanistan.
That is, identity warriors on the left seek to impose their values, as identity ideology missionaries. I heard an Afghan woman on NPR one day and she was clear about one thing and it shocked her savior-oriented interviewer--in essence: "We are not feeble, weak women and we don't need your rescuing by the West. Please Stop!"
I hated Three Cups of Tea long before it was exposed as a fraud.