It’s all about Eve. Where did the creator go wrong at the beginning, or has human kind never understood the value of equality and human right?
In the western world, it appears society has reached a stalemate between conservatism and progressive values. Due to advanced technology taking possession of people’s time and agenda, what effects does social media have and the assertiveness of people around the globe. Politics has tried to harnass journalism and the media, by controlling publications they control the people. Fascism has utilized the tool of propaganda to perfection in demonizing a people on race and sell a war based on falsehoods taking the lives of millions. It looks like the advanced technology has unleashed the might of the individual as is often seen negative aspects of agression or transgression on the freedom of other individuals. National laws have no bearing on how Internet develops or the global villagers communicate.
The global village with 7 billion citizens is a runaway experiment, I have no idea how it will end. What I see today is a return to patriarchal society without any inhibition. I have great worry … the position and rights of the world’s majority WOMEN ARE UNDER ATTACK!!
There are numerous examples in just recent weeks that takes my breath away. I’ll start with an alarming article by Juan Cole on Informed Comment but the underlining issues are more severe. Most harmful terror on society are the sexual attacks on children and girls/women.
Pope Francis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Women’s Equality: Why Must Religion be Patriarchal?
The selection of the new pope was carried out by a conclave of elderly men, and the only candidates were men. The new pope is a staunch social conservative who opposes women’s ordination as priests and women’s right to control their own bodies and limit family size, key issues for women’s health and well-being. It is no wonder that the church hierarchy is so tone deaf on women’s issues, since its highest counsels are all-male.
Now comes the sharp intervention from Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood that the draft statement of 57th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is incompatible with the Brotherhood’s understanding of Islamic law. Interestingly, the Vatican also voiced objections to the document, as did the Russian Orthodox Church via the government of Vladimir Putin.
The Brotherhood statement objected to the following points:
1. Women’s right to reject marital rape
2. equal inheritance rights for women
3. equality of men and women within the family
4. allowing women the choice of mate (implying that Muslim women could marry non-Muslim men), abolition of polygamy and dowry
5. Depriving men of the right of unilateral divorce and giving discretion to judges as to whether to grant a divorce; equal sharing of communal property after divorce.
6. Removal of restrictions on women’s travel and work that depend on permission of their male guardian
7. Right of a woman to marry another woman.
8. legalization of abortion and provision of free contraception
9. equal rights for illegitimate children with legitimate ones, and civil rights for adulterous wives
10. Equal rights for gays
Steubenville, Ohio Schools In Football Rape Case
(WOMENSENEWS)–Since Jan. 8 guards have been posted outside each of the four schools in Steubenville, Ohio, where a high-school football team is at the epicenter of a notorious rape scandal, The Huffington Post reports.
Next month Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, both 16-year-old members of the Big Red High School football team, are set for trial in juvenile court. They were arrested Aug. 22 for raping a 16-year-old classmate and kidnapping her by taking her to several parties while she was too drunk to resist, The New York Times reported at the time.
Publicity about the case is linked to @KYanonymous on Twitter, a person releasing hacked information via LocalLeaks and playing a key role in the leaking of information about the case. His Twitter account was suspended Jan. 9 allegedly after a death threat a student saw from some Anonymous person on Facebook or Twitter.
After the group LocalLeaks posted a full detailed profile of the case, and the alleged cover up conspiracy by the town to protect the local football heros, officials in Steubenville, Ohio, have launched a website entitled “Steubenville Facts” in response to the national attention to defend their efforts, Time reported.
Continued below the fold …
However the department is under severe criticism, particularly Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla, accused of shielding the football program from a more rigorous investigation, who told reporters Jan. 5 no one else would be charged in the case, rattling the community presented with strong evidence that there were likely more than just the two offenders, Reuters reported.
The evidence is a disturbing video posted Jan. 2 by the hacker group Anonymous. Taken at 2 a.m. Aug. 12, the 12-minute video is of Michael Nodianos, a friend of the accused, joking about the victim as “deader than OJ’s wife” and saying you “don’t need any foreplay on a dead girl. If it ain’t wet now it ain’t never gonna be wet.”
Although the case gained some media attention last month, the more recent release of the Anonymous video garnered the real national outrage and outlash.
After the video release, on Jan. 7 Nodianos’ lawyer said Nodianos was ashamed and embarrassed about his comments in the video and the effect his behavior has had, especially on his family, CBS reported.
Ohio State University, where Nodianos was a student on an academic scholarship, announced on its Twitter feed Jan. 7 that he is no longer a student at the university, The Huffington Post reported.
Grief And Rage In India: Making Violence Against Women History?
(AWID/Open Democracy) – There is uproar in India at the brutal gang rape of a 23 year old student on her way home from the cinema. Can we harness the international attention to this case to demand that the world’s leaders commit themselves to a policy of zero tolerance of violence against women in the post-Millennium Development Goals agenda?
When the international community came together in 2000 to agree the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that it would prioritize over the next 15 years, it did not include the issue of violence against women. Perhaps the problem did not appear sufficiently important or perhaps it was hoped that progress on the gender-related goals and targets that were adopted – education, labour market opportunities and political representation – would take care of the problem.
The horrific gang rape of a 23 year old para-medic student in Delhi on 16th December 2012 suggests that such hope is misplaced. Yes, the gender gap in education in India is closing. Yes, many more women are now in the labour force than ever before. And yes, political quotas and reservations have increased the percentage of women in elected office. But blocking the transformative potential of this evidence of progress is an age-old patriarchal system which regards women as inferior to men and its toxic interaction with the new global culture of consumerism and its relentless sexualisation of women’s bodies.
The young woman who was raped had been one of the few from her village who had made it into college, she had promising professional career ahead of her and she was the citizen of a country with a long track record of democracy and increasing numbers of women elected into office. None of this was sufficient to protect her from a sexual assault the sheer ugly brutality of which has brought thousands of horrified and grieving protestors onto the streets across the country.
Named ‘Nirbhaya‘ (‘without fear’) by some of the press who, in an unusual show of sensitivity have not revealed her real name, the woman was returning home from the cinema with a male friend at 9 o’clock in the evening. They boarded a bus in the belief that it would take them closer to home. Instead her companion was beaten badly and she was subjected to an extended period of rape and violence that left her brutalized and unconscious. Their naked bodies were thrown out of the moving bus to be found by passersby. Nirbhaya recovered sufficiently to give a statement to the police but died on the 29th December. She was named `fearless’ because of the fight she put up against her attackers (she left teeth marks on at least one of their bodies), because of her determination that her attackers be brought to justice and because of her struggle to live, despite horrific injuries to her internal organs.
US to honour Indian rape victim Nirbhaya as woman of courage
