Afghani man murders wife for giving birth to a daughter

Mother and Daughter by Élisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun (1789)

The United Nations estimates that there are around 60 million fewer women alive on planet Earth than there should be.  The culprits are femicide, the murder of a woman or girl specifically because of gender, and the selective abortion of female fetuses.  The problem exists in many parts of the world, even in the US.

  A study done by Unicef in India in 2002 tracked the rates of abortion after an amniocentesis.  Of those fetuses aborted 99.99% were female.  You read that right.  9,999 out of 10,000 were female.  It is arguable that those may have been the lucky ones given the utter hell that can befall women for the simple crime of having a vagina in India.  It's another post for another day, but what is happening in India is disgusting, disgraceful and wrong.

India is not the only country with this problem.  Among others, Guatemala, China, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan are also apparently hell-bent on eradicating anyone without a Y chromosome.  This  week, an Afghan man named Sher Mohammad strangled his wife, Estorai, to death after she had the sheer audacity to give birth to a second daughter instead of a son.  He had threatened to kill her if she had another daughter, and made good on that threat.  Apparently his mother helped him kill his wife.  Awesome.  So, girls are good enough to help you murder people...

You can read the full story here on The Blaze:  Woman murdered after having daughter

What is a rape?

This week the FBI announced that it is changing the definition used to define rape for the compilation of crime statistics. The FBI has been using the same definition since the 1920s.  It defined rape as: “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”    This definition essentially means that an act is only rape if it involves vaginal penetration and if there is physical force. So, if the victim is only threatened verbally it was not counted as rape.  If there is force, but the penetration is not vaginal, it was not counted as rape.  If the victim was male, it was not counted as rape. 

Obviously there were some serious problems with this old-school definition.  Why should we care?  A shocking percentage of American women are sexually assaulted or raped.  We need to be aware of this problem in order to change it.  When the statistics more accurately report what is happening, it will hopefully translate to the creation of a safer world for our daughters and sons!

It's Hard Out There for a Sorcerer

On Monday, Saudi Arabia beheaded Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar.  She was found guilty of practicing sorcery.  Yes, sorcery.  In Saudi Arabia they like to party like it's 1692.  She was arrested by the religious police after claiming to be able to heal the sick.  She was apparently charging people $800 to do so.  So at worst this woman was a scam artist.  Maybe she really thought she could heal people, who knows?

What I do know is that Saudi Arabia is a tough place to be a woman.  In 2006, the Saudi Labor Minister, Ghazi Al-Qusaibi, said the following:

"...therefore no woman will be employed without the explicit consent of her guardian. We will also make sure that the [woman's] job will not interfere with her work at home with her family, or with her eternal duty of raising her children..."

 So, let's say you are a woman and you need money for some reason.  There's a 30% chance you are illiterate, you may have been married off as early as age nine, you have only limited property rights, you aren't allowed to drive, and you are basically at the mercy of your closest male relative.  Yeah, think about that.  You could be completely under the control of your dickhole brother.  Sweet!  So, anyway, you need some money.  What are your freaking options?  Running a little hustle is kind of understandable under these circumstances. 

It certainly makes me grateful to live where and when I do.

You can read the full story on the Telegraph here.

Besmirch this!

Saudi Arabian women are not allowed to drive.  Before you jump to conclusions, this is not a direct result of Islam.  It turns out that Islam, being thousands of years old, doesn't specifically say anything about whether women can drive.  In fact, Saudi Arabia is the only Muslim country that bans women from driving, and the ban was not enacted until 1990. 

Saudi women with valid driver's licenses in other countries are planning a protest on June 17th.  They intend to drive while under the influence of estrogen. 

In advance of the protest, a 32-year old  Manal Asharif  (called the Saudi Rosa Parks by Aol news, and pictured left) decided to drive, and to record herself doing so.  She then posted a video of her engaging in this illicit, immoral act on youtube.  Not surprisingly, she was arrested.  According to Human Rights Watch, the reason for the arrest was that she was, "...besmirching the kingdom's reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion."  Uh-huh. 

It's not just being forbidden from driving that makes Saudi Arabia a really awesome place for women.  Saudi women can't vote.  That sucks, right?  How about this?  They are also required to have a male guardian.  If you happen to have a vagina, your need your husband, brother or father to give his stamp of approval if you want to travel, open a bank account, have surgery, or do silly things like attend college or have a job.

I'm glad that Saudi women are protesting, but I don't really see how this is going to end well for them.  They are going to need more than just a grass roots protest to win back the God-given rights that have been stolen from them by their government.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

On June 17th, women in Saudi Arabia are planning a revolution.  They are going to risk losing jobs, being ostracized, and even going to jail.  You won't believe their audacious plan.  They want to get into cars, and drive them.  You can read about the protest at this article on Bloomberg.

For how much I complain about problems women face in our country, it's important to remember that there are still places in the world where women cannot vote, cannot drive, cannot vote, leave their homes without a male escort or even show their faces. 

I'd love to say that I have great hopes for a coming women's rights revolution in the Middle East, but I don't.   I suspect things are going to get worse there for women before they get better.  I am sending hopes and prayers to the women and girls who live in places where they are so blatantly treated as second class citizens.