The boys and the banned

This is old news, but I'm still steamed about it.

U.S. "ally" Saudi Arabia is preparing to hold its first nationwide elections early next year in a vote for municipal councils. In a country that was heretofore unencumbered by anything resembling democratic rule, these elections are considered a huge step forward.

Unless, that is, you were born with ovaries.

The Saudi government has hung a "men only" sign on the ballot boxes. Not only can women not run for office, they can't vote, either. And just to pour salt in the wound, prisoners (unlike in the U.S.) will be allowed to vote in the Saudi elections - provided, of course, that they're male. In other words, Saudi women have less of a voice in their government than criminals.

Which shouldn't amaze us, I suppose. Heck, I still marvel that these theocracies haven't made it illegal to have breasts.

Amnesty International points out that this discrimination is not explicit in Saudi Arabian law:

Saudi Arabia's electoral law is clear about women's participation. The law uses the word "citizen" -- in Arabic, this refers to both men and women in indicating those eligible to vote. Despite this, Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz announced last month that women would not be allowed to take part in the elections, saying "I don't think that women's participation is possible."

Nonsense; of course it's "possible." It would take some work, but it's possible.

Unfortunately, it would also require your country to view women as people and not property.

Especially depressing is the way Saudi women seem to aid and abet their oppressors. For instance, one of the reasons cited for the "impossibility" of allowing women to vote is that many of them don't have the photo ID cards required of all voters. And the reason they don't have them, according to CNN, is that many women "have balked at getting the ID cards -- introduced three years ago -- because the photographs would show their faces unveiled."

Democratic reform comes slowly to the oppressed ... but it always seems to come more slowly to women than to anyone else - and even more slowly to those who oppress themselves.

Oh, one more thing: foreign observers will not be permitted.

But hey, what are a few human rights violations between friends, right?

Feminist bloggers jailed in Iran

Via Pinko Feminist Hellcat, news of an Iranian government purge of human rights activists and progressive bloggers - including a pair of feminist bloggers:

Ampersand has a heads up about Iranian feminist and human rights bloggers being jailed. (He got it from Oxblog). The World Movement for Democracy put out the word, and I will print their post here below. Please write a polite letter of protest and concern to the officials listed below to support human rights, women's rights, and your fellow bloggers.

I'm also including the post from The World Movement for Democracy below, and encourage anyone who reads this to write a polite letter to the officials listed. "Polite" is the key here - this is one of those instances where venting your spleen might make you feel better, but it won't help the people who've been imprisoned. Years of writing letters as a member of Amnesty International taught me that however much you want to throw a grenade into their foxhole, polite is the only thing that has a positive effect on repressive governments.

Please, write. For American bloggers sitting comfortably at home in our bathrobes and fuzzy slippers, getting thrown in jail for posting our opinions on the "Internets" is unthinkable. But in countries where free speech is neither a right nor a privilege, expressing your opinion in a public forum is an act of real courage. The blogosphere is a truly global community, and these women are an important part of it. Let's support them.

The World Movement for Democracy would like to express its concern for the safety of two Iranian women leaders, Fereshteh Ghazi, an online journalist, and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, editor of a women's rights journal "Farzaneh." According to the Women's Learning Partnership, Abbasgholizadeh has contributed to the strengthening of Iranian civil society by conducting capacity building programs as Director of the NGO Training Center in Tehran, and was arrested at her home on November 2, 2004. Ghazi has used her skills to create an increased awareness of the status of women in Iran using the Internet, and was arrested in her office on October 28, 2004. Both women have been denied the right to legal counsel. Over the past two months, a string of Internet writers and civil society activists have been arrested for "propaganda against the regime, endangering national security, inciting public unrest, and insulting sacred belief," according to Jamal Karimi Rad, the judiciary's spokesman.

Amnesty International reports that Ghazi and Abbasgholizadeh are among 25 internet journalists and civil society activists that have been arbitrarily arrested in recent weeks. The Women's Learning Partnership, a World Movement participating organization, has been contacted by colleagues in Iran asking them to help bring attention to the plight of civil society activists in Iran.

Suggested Action: To demand the immediate release of Fereshteh Ghazi and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh and express your concern for the rise in human rights violations in Iran, please write to President Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mohammad Khatemi, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the President of the European Parliament, and the Iranian embassy in your country:

His Excellency Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mohammad Khatemi
The Presidency Office
Pasteur Avenue
Tehran 13167-43311, Islamic Republic of Iran
E-mail: Khatami@president.ir

Her Excellency Louise Arbour
High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Fax: + 41 22 917 9022
E-mail: tb-petitions@ohchr.org

His Excellency Josep Borrell Fontelles
President of the European Parliament
Division for Correspondence with Citizens

Iranian Embassies

Additional Information:

Women's Learning Partnership: "Alert: Condemn the Iranian Government's Crackdown on Civil Society and Women's Rights Organizations"

Human Rights Watch: "Iran: Web Writers Purge Underway"

Amnesty International:"Iran: Civil society activists and human rights defenders under attack"

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML): "Iran: Call for the unconditional release of Mahboobeh Abbasgholizadeh"

She-blog

There's a perception out there in the blogosphere that women aren't blogging - or that they're only blogging about family and personal stuff.

Typical.

What, you think we don't have anything political to say? Or that we're too shy/modest/afraid/busy getting our nails done to say it?

Check out Feminist Blogs, which syndicates - take a guess - feminist blogs (yours truly included) and several that are feminist-friendly. (If you have a blog that fits those criteria, join up - it's free). There's a wealth of smart, incisive, and often funny must-read stuff to be found there.

Mad props to Rad Geek for starting it, and a big shout-out to the hell-raisers who populate it.

More proof feminism hasn't outlived its usefulness

I have two smart, talented, wonderful stepdaughters, one of whom is a first-year medical student (the other is finishing her master's in voice pedagogy - and they both impress the heck out of me). It seems there have been some problems between the first-year (M1) and the second-year (M2) women this semester; according to the M2s, the M1s dress and behave "like sluts" and - get this - are a distraction to the M2 men, who've been acting like drunken frat boys around them. The M2 men support this assessment by blaming their behavior on the M1 women's style of dress.

So how does the school respond to this fracas? By calling a meeting of the M1 and M2 women, wherein one of the female instructors tells them they all need to behave more professionally - at which point one of the M1 women asks why the men aren't having this meeting, too. The answer: Because the women are held to a "higher standard." Because they won't be respected in the "real world" unless they behave more professionally than the men, so they're going to have to straighten up and fly right or risk career consequences down the line.

(My stepdaughter relayed this info to me over a family breakfast at Cracker Barrel. When she got to the "higher standard" part, my husband started snatching sharp objects off the table and placing them out of my reach.)

Aside from the patronizing aspect of the entire exercise, the thing that made my brain spontaneously combust is the way the school is propping up the male-centric paradigm. Heaven forbid we show the male med students and doctors that we have a zero tolerance policy for sexist behavior! Instead, let's tell the women to button up - wear oversized clothes if you have to! - so the guys won't be distracted.

Seriously?

And this came on the heels of an article in BusinessWeek about a report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) - a report that shows the gender gap is still as wide as the Grand Canyon:

Given current rates of change, it will be 50 years before women achieve equal pay with men and nearly 100 years before they gain equal representation in Congress, estimates the think tank on issues affecting women. Currently, females earn 76 cents for every dollar males earn (up from 73 cents in 2002) and have only 79 representatives in Congress out of a total of 535 seats, despite representing slightly more than half of the U.S. population. [Emphasis added.]

If you're wondering why things don't seem to have improved for women all that much, allow me to direct you to Exhibit A: the aforementioned med school meeting. On the surface, it might seem that those M1 and M2 women were being offered practical advice on how to succeed in a male-dominated field - advice from women who've been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. Seems reasonable, right?

Um, no. It's twaddle.

It's also feminism's version of Uncle Tommery - "go along to get along" and similar flavors of tripe. The truth is that as long as women buy into the notion that their behavior needs to be modified in order to keep men in line, things will never improve. As long as they believe that their professional success hinges on making themselves less enticing to men - read: less female - they will never be considered equal to men, and the paradigm will never shift.

Of course, some will argue that women aren't considered equals anyway, whether they behave like men or not. After all, hasn't the problem always been that when women behave like, well, women, they're not taken seriously? Indeed, that's been true in many respects. But what's also true is that we've spent years defeminizing ourselves in order to move up the business ladder, and what has it gotten us? What good does it do to redesign our femaleness so we can fit into the male business mold? What do we gain by unsexing ourselves?

Enough already. Time to stop accepting the way things are as the way they're always going to be. And it's way past time to stop ceding the business field to the guys. They don't get a free pass just for having a penis and a Y chromosome - and if they can't keep their inner horndogs in check, that's their problem. Once and for all, it's not our responsibility, no matter how much they try to tell us it is.

Because this isn't about sex; it's about power. It's about who dictates the rules of engagement. And the minute we agree to play by men's rules, we've lost.

Yasser Arafat is dead. Now what?

Yasser Arafat, who died on Thursday, was buried this morning in the ruined Ramallah compound to which he was confined for the last three years. Palestinians are in mourning; the rest of the world is wondering what happens now.

Steven Erlanger has an excellent analysis in today's New York Times about Arafat's passing, in which he observes:

His death early Thursday morning presents an enormous set of challenges to his own people, to the Israelis, to a re-elected American president and to the world at large.

It is a test, first of all, for the Palestinians themselves, to move from a revolutionary ethos of victimhood and military confrontation with Israel to a more responsible and legitimate government, able to care for its people and to negotiate for them.

It is a test for Israel and its prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to move beyond the dismissive response that there is "no negotiating partner" and to work to help the emerging Palestinian leadership consolidate and maintain authority and control.

All of that is true. But let's also remember that Arafat didn't dictate Palestinian ideology so much as reflect it. Although new PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas had issues with Arafat's refusal to loosen his grip on power, causing Abbas to resign as the Palestinian Authority's prime minister after only four months, there's still no guarantee that Sharon will find Abbas any more compliant a "negotiating partner" than Arafat was. And Sharon has internal battles to fight, which puts his own negotiating partner status in question.

No wisdom to offer here, I'm afraid. Just a fervent wish that Arafat's death might be a step toward renewed peace negotiations, and not another step further back into the abyss of violence and horror these last few years have wrought.