Oh No!

(Ow!
That hurt!
I poked my nose into feminist again.
When will I learn?)

The scales have dropped from my eyes! I'm so ashamed I didn't realize that the playing field is already level and women should stop agitating for Special Treatment! The status quo is Right and Normal and wanting something different is asking to upset the Natural Balance.

Now I understand that the heteropatriarchy would just give us everything we need if we'd sit down and Ask Nicely. Or even just sit down -- because they know what we need, better than we do! But since we're Mean Feminists and won't listen when they tell us what we really need, they're going to withhold their approval, because we've proven we Don't Deserve It.

And we could All Get Along if women would just stop Rocking the Boat. Pointing out so-called "inequalities" is just Attacking Men.

I've been so confused and wrong! I'll just have to Sit Down And Shut Up, now!

Kisses!
Stepford Sevoo

This apology dedicated to yakkette.

ick.

Cheney, regarding Afghanistan: "Women are even allowed to run for office there."

THE CLUE PHONE'S RINGING FOR YOU, DICKHEAD CHENEY.

Afghanistan isn't some poor backwards country that needed us to teach it how to put women in office. Dr. Sohaila Naseem was a central leader of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The 1964 loya jirga, which approved an early Afghani constitution in the waning days of its monarchy, included women such as Dr. S.M. Raheen. Roquia Habib was a member of Parliament. Dr. Anahita Ratebzad ran for parliament in 1965.

And they had a fucking equal rights clause in their constitution in October 1964. Remember the ERA? That equal rights clause we *still* don't have?

Women achieved the right to vote in afghanistan FORTY YEARS AGO. And retained it 'till the Mujahedin jihadists took power in 1992. Which the complacent white men in power over here failed to notice for nearly a decade. Why? Oh, right, because until they started blowing up statues in 2001, the violence in the region was directed largely against women.

Those compelling images of Afghani women enveloped in burqa and unable to leave their homes without escort are *recent*. Prior to the nineties, this was a country whose professionals were half female (ranging from 40% of doctors to 70% of teachers). Where plenty of women were the primary breadwinners for their families. Where women had the right to vote four years earlier than we did in Switzerland. In whose capital women wore miniskirts, and in the course of my lifetime whose revolving-door-governments replaced them with burquas.

If we hadn't buried our heads in the sand for this long, we might have been able to effect change in Afghanistan without blowing things up. Maybe next time we won't fuck it up so badly.

(While I'm hoping for the unlikely, it would be nice if the US would sign the International Women's Bill of Rights. Nearly everybody else has already...)

No, I'm not free of blame, here. One wonders whether I can justify getting so upset about this now, when I went ahead and prioritized other causes above this one. When the jihadists took power, I was still enough of an idealist to think that we could right all wrongs with sweet reason, and there appeared to be people more knowledgeable and articulate than I than I doing just that. And when the taliban took power, I'd become enough of a pessimist that I wondered whether I'd be able to address the wrongs in my own community, much less in the world.

The wrongs that will be righted in my lifetime are a drop in the bucket; so much remains.

(sound familiar? a bunch of this is cribbed from something I wrote in january 2002. it's still true. and I posted much of it as a comment in feminist_rage tonight.)

(I really shouldn't watch the debates. All they do is remind me that "my" over-privileged wealthy white heterosexual men are still evil; only somewhat less so than *their* over-privileged wealthy white heterosexual men.)

(don't fucking complain at me that 1965 - 2004 is only 39 years, okay? pedantry is only attractive when it's intelligently targeted.)