What marks a feminist?

[NOTE: I'M LEAVING THIS UP FOR NOW, BUT I'M INTENDING TO MODIFY IT SLIGHTLY - LARGELY BECAUSE I GOT SIDETRACKED AND CONVEYED SLIGHTLY THE WRONG MESSAGE. It's posted on Feministing somewhere, where someone's comment alerted me to the fact that I was, in terms of my intended message, talking bollocks.]

There are several saying out there which talk about how a true friend will support you through the hard times as well as the good, stick by you even when they disagree with you, that sort of thing. I've been drafting a couple of posts and they got me thinking about some feminist acts I've encountered recently:

• On the news last night, I saw Zahra Rahnavard, wife to the Iranian presidential candidate and reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi, stating her view that women should be allowed to choose what they wear without fear of recrimination by people like the current morality police. She herself was fully covered, with not a hair visible, though many of Mousavi's supporters are less strict about their headscarves.
  
• I have a few devoutly Christian friends who would never terminate a pregnancy unless their lives were at risk, but have no qualms with other women choosing otherwise.
• Feminists all over the place decide not to remove their body hair as both a political statement and personal preference, but don't chastise other feminists when they choose to be clean-shaven.
• Stay-at-home mothers are often uncritical of the decision of other mothers to join the workforce. Don't let the Daily Mail fool you, these women aren't in the minority.
  

It's all very well to be a feminist, or to follow any political or religious movement because it happens to agree with your own personal choices. But sometimes I just feel that the true feminists among us are those who, regardless of their own beliefs and practices, are willing to trust other women to make their own decisions in life without simultaneously making judgements and demoting them as 'less good' because of their choices. Opposing all attempts to restrict our freedoms, even if you yourself may never make use of them, preferring to spread honest information to allow others to make up their minds as you did rather than force everyone to follow your own line of thought. Allowing women to make truly free decisions.
In essence, supporting every woman's right to choose - in ALL areas of her life.

What would YOU define as truly feminist?

Full post tomorrow

But for now, a memento from Monday's protest in Glasgow and a message to all the anti-choicers out there:

Religion and Politics - Making A Bed To Tell Lies In.

Up here in Scotland we have just been receiving the latest news about our local elections, the missing votes, the recounts, the gains and losses. When my parents were readying themselves to vote on May 3rd, my mother an I sat in the living room looking through the various leaflets we'd received from all the hopeful candidates. There was the SNP, giving us a simplified version of their manifesto, and there was Labour, telling us not to vote for the SNP. The Conservatives echoed Labour's actions in the past few years in their own policies, then told us to make a difference by voting for them. Even the BNP tried their hand, with a big red-white-and-blue leaflet telling us that they were just like Labour but without the ethnic tolerance. But hang on, there are more parties than that. Where were the Greens? The SSP? Come, on, there are some gaps to fill in here.
A quick Google search yielded odd results. The Scottish Christian Party called the extra-liberal Greens 'eco-fascists' due to their plan to stop giving government funding to religious schools, and to merge them with non-denominational schools. The SCP says this will remove parental choice. Alright then, let's see what those lovely Christians have to say to convince us that a fully religious education (not just R.E.) is still a good thing. Off I trot to their website. Being an atheist, I have no intention of voting Christian when my chance comes. However, aside from that, the SCP gave me plenty to dislike.

I followed the sound of some cheesy music to a television spot that they had in Inverness, styled like a news broadcast. I was immediately faced with at least two reasons to oppose them:

According to research, teenagers who have an abortion are up to 800% more likely to develop breast cancer in later life, with abortions among under-16s reaching record levels. This spells a cancer crisis for Scotland in the coming decades...

Huh? What study was this? Last time I looked, the overwhelming evidence was that there is no link between having a safe, legal abortion and breast cancer. Look here (emphasis my own):

In February 2003, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) convened a workshop of over 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer risk. Workshop participants reviewed existing population-based, clinical, and animal studies on the relationship between pregnancy and breast cancer risk, including studies of induced and spontaneous abortions. They concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.

But wait, there's more! Cut to Dr. Murdo Murchison, former Director of Health for Grampian Health Board:

...There are other problems, much more immediate; there's the immediate psychological problem for the woman concerned, there's [sic] possible fertility problems, and these are all areas of considerable concern.

Where to begin?! Fertility problems are extremely rare - in fact, they're more a problem with unsafe abortions of the kind practised in back-alley terminations, and if abortion is legal and easy to obatain, if doctors are trained to perform them correctly... well. Suffering infertility from an abortion in such circumstances would be almost unheard of. Not to say that women shouldn't know the risks, but it's a risk that is far smaller than the report would have you believe here. There is a risk to every medical procedure out there, including getting tetanus jabs - and early abortions carry a smaller risk than later, surgical ones. The majority of abortions occur early on (I'll link when I find that). As for psychological problems, Feministing covered this one a while back. It links to a ten-page NY Times article that shows a lot of evidence that abortion itself doesn't have psychological implications, and is, in fact, no worse than carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term:

Academic experts continue to stress that the psychological risks posed by abortion are no greater than the risks of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. A study of 13,000 women, conducted in Britain over 11 years, compared those who chose to end an unwanted pregnancy with those who chose to give birth, controlling for psychological history, age, marital status and education level. In 1995, the researchers reported their results: equivalent rates of psychological disorders among the two groups.

Studies have also found that harmful psychological effects can actually be created by so-called 'abortion counselling' that basically tells the woman that she has killed a human being and must live with and atone for that for the rest of her life. If I can find the relevant links for that, I'll update this post later. On a related note, if they want to cut abortion rates, they might want to consider educating adolescents about safer sex and the like - from the insider accounts I get, the sex-ed currently on offer in some of the Catholic schools is beyond the pail. However, I doubt that's on the SCP's 'to-do' list.
...It isn't! Here's what their manifesto says on the matter:

The Scottish Christian Party will call for sex education classes to be given only to children on a parental opt-in basis. The Scottish Christian Party will fight for the promotion in school of chastity before marriage, and faithfulness in marriage, as the safest sexual practice, as and when sex education is taught.

What? They abhor abortion, but also don't want mandatory sex education? Does anyone else see a problem here?

So far, so bad... but we ain't finished, oh no. You can't have a party preaching the gospel truth without a hearty dose of sexual intolerance, can we? When telling us to vote for the SCP, the party's leader, Englishman Rev. George Hargreaves invokes Godwin's Law:

In 1933 Adolf Hitler passed a law saying that Kosher food should be banned. Within 10 years he was murdering millions of Jews. Next week on the 30th April, regulations come in that affect Christians. The Sexual Orientation Regulations come into force. We must stop this. Go out and vote for the SCP on May 3rd, it is the only way we can stop the Sexual Orientation Regulations from becoming law, which is the first stage of persecution of Christians in this land.

What, exactly, are the SORs? Well, another site, Christian Concern for Our Nation bemoans them and gives us an outline:

What are the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SOR)?
Using power they gave to themselves through the Equality Act 2006, the government are pushing through a new law (the SOR) which will make it illegal for providers of goods, services, facilities, premises, education or public functions to discriminate against the recipients on the grounds of their sexual orientation i.e. whether they are homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual.

Oh dear, Christian, Muslim or indeed any religious schools will not be allowed to say that gay children will go straight to hell, and are abominations. B&B owners won't be allowed to turn away gay couples. What is the world coming to, when we can't tell people to be heterosexual or die? Check the manifesto again...

The Scottish Christian Party will also call for the re-instatement of Section 2A, thus calling for the end of the promotion and “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship."

In essence, this party wants to turn the clock back on women's reproductive rights and to reserve their 'right' to treat 'undesirable' or 'unGodly' types such as homosexuals as second-class citizens. Then they have the audacity to say that others are persecuting them.

I sincerely hope these people didn't make any major gains this year.

Afghanistan's women, 5 years later.

If you feel like a bit of reading, Guardian Unlimited is running an article discussing whether the predicted emancipation of women in Afghanistan has been successful.
To summarise:
1) On the surface, things do seem to have improved, most notably in Kabul.
2) Although women have entered previously forbidden workplaces (radio stations, government etc.) they often face threats and violence for doing so.
3) Despite the hopes that education would open up for women, some of the schools opened for them were quickly shut down again.
4) Men who teach women face violence, as do female teachers.
5) Although the Taliban were removed from government, there are still thousands of sympathisers who continue to exert control ofver the lives of outspoken women.
6) Warlords, tribal leaders etc. command great control, and practices such as trading of women like goods to settle disputes are still in use.

In other words, there has been some improvement, but not a great deal of it. Yet another unfinished job from the Western Liberation Forces Against Evil And Nasty Things from our side of the world.

Well, I guess I was asking to be robbed and my house burned to the ground with my family inside...

... I mean, I left a window open. I was asking for it.

Does that argument stand up, to you? Would you let someone off the hook for something like that on those grounds?

I wouldn't, and I'm usually a pretty forgiving person. Unfortunately, we are seeing similar kinds of arguments every month, only on the subject of rape.

'Oh, she was drunk/walking home alone/wearing a short skirt, guv. She was asking for it.'

What's more, despite the law being changed to be just a tiny bit more helpful to rape victims in court, excuses like this are still being accepted every day, all over Britain, by otherwise competent juries and judges. Somehow, women are being made responsible for being attacked. They did something 'unladylike', which provoked a man. And as we all know, men are useless at controlling themselves and can't be held responsible for their actions at all. (Yes, boys, that's what you're being made to look like while the women are called whores. You are subhuman and severely lacking in any self-restraint or moral character.) So the blame falls on the shoulders of the victim, who is defamed AND punished for defaming the poor little rapist.
Oh, aside from her actions at the time of the event being twisted like this, our victim may also be judged by her sexual history. Despite laws against this now, it is still happening. Some of you may have heard the infamous comments made by an anti-choice politician in America saying that rape only happens to young white devoutly Christian virgins who have been horribly ravaged and sodomised - the implication being that anything else just ain't rape. Here, if you aren't a virgin, your chances of winning your case decrease with every sexual encounter you have had in the past if the courtroom hears about it. Similarly, if you show no obvious physical signs of being viciously attacked, they'll assume you didn't put up much of a fight and thus it was all consensual.

So, lets just labour the point here.

Rape is NEVER the woman's fault.
No-one 'asks' to be raped.
Regardless of what she was doing or wearing, what happened to her was STILL rape. Drunk? Rape. 'Provocatively' dressed? Raped. Alone at night? Rape. Being female? Rape. Being male? Rape. Being an 'easy target' in any way? Rape. It doesn't matter how the victim responded to the attack, if it was non consensual, it was rape, and remains as illegal as if they were swaddled head to toe in thick winter clothes and had tried to beat the crap out of their attacker in their efforts to escape.


Why is has she chosen this subject today, you may well ask. The BBC reports the apology from a Muslim cleric about his sermon which compared non-hijab-wearing women to 'uncovered meat'.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" he asked.

The uncovered meat is the problem, he went on to say.

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred," he added.

Sheikh Hilali also condemned women who swayed suggestively and wore make-up, implying they attracted sexual assault.

He has apologised after an outcry by Muslim women in Australia, saying '...the sermon was targeted against men and women who engaged in extra-marital sex and did so through alluring types of clothes...'.
Try fitting that in. It doesn't quite fit with the wording, does it? Oh, for the record, women who wear the hijab and/or stay at home get raped too. In fact, the majority of sexual assaults and rapes are carried out by people, such as friends and family members, who knew the victim well - not by the stereotypical shadowy monster in a dark alleyway (though, of course, this happens too). In these cases, they cannot be safe in their rooms, and no amount of modest apparel will change that. Changing attitudes towards women will.