2. That WOMEN are in DANGER of LOSING to FUNDAMENTALISM

A wierd, insidious fundamentalism is creeping into women's affairs. Not just (and most outstandingly) in Islamic countries, where our best buds the Saudis still won't allow women to drive their own cars, but into everyday life in communities around the world. On the face of it, you wouldn't acknowledge it such strong terms, but you must agree that these attempts to erode women's rights, indeed, to disavow the fact that women are human beings, can (left unchecked) lead to a larger conflagration.
The publication Marie Claire is known as a fashion magazine, but is less widely-acknowledged as a consistent activist/educator with regard to women's rights. In the October 2004 issue, some countries were highlighted as being soft to apparently criminal on domestic violence.
- 89% of Phillipine women are in abusive relationships, yet few seek help due to the pervasive attitude that women must be "docile and subservient in their intimate relationships" .(Taylor, Marie Claire, Oct 04, P32)
- In Belgium, the police force are lax about investigating complaints of domestic violence, so much so that "a majority of domestic violence complaints go unprosecuted". (Taylor, Marie Claire, Oct 04, P32)
Additionally, in the Congo, little girls are tortured and abused for the crime of witchcraft, a situation highlighted in a Marie Claire article by Jan Goodwin in the Sept 04 issue. It seems that anything from untimely death to sudden weather changes are blamed on pre-school girls, who are then painfully (and profitably) "exorcised" by charlatan preachers.
In our own America, the accession to power of an admittedly, rabidly religious President has mushroomed a threat to women's rights that is unprecedented since Roe vs Wade. For the first time, the reproductive rights of women are being challenged. I submit to you that the unstated agenda behind all of this is to put women in their place, to make it known to us that our bodies belong not to ourselves, but the cowboys in government. The issue also has larger implications for the wider society. In 1989, Colette Hodes, a postdoctoral associate at MIT,submitted this post to MIT's online newspaper "The Tech":
"I believe many, like me, are afraid that the passive erosion of women's rights that characterized the Reagan years may become an active attack on basic human rights under George Bush's administration. When Bush, during his first day in office, sent both a telegram of support and his vice president to the anti-abortionists (I refuse the hypocrisy of calling any group which prevents women from getting health care, destroys clinics, and has recently resumed pumping bullets into "Jane Roe's" family's car and home, "pro-life") marching on Washington, I remember thinking "What is he going to do tomorrow? Address a rally of the Ku Klux Klan?" Which leads me to what I took home as the central message from Jesse Jackson's speech: an individual"s absolute right to control over one's body was made constitutional with the abolition of slavery. It is un-American to demand otherwise."
(Colette Hodes, The Tech, 4/21/89)
Seems to me that Dad's work is continuing apace. According to the National Organization for Women,
"More than three decades after Roe, we face a deeply threatening political environment. A virtual tidal wave of anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation is weeping across the 50 states, resulting in 380 new state laws since 1995 that limit or deny access to reproductive health services." (Jan Erickson, National NOW Times, Spring 04)
How can we not come together as women to prevent our rights being legislated into the ether? When will women finally decide that we are the masters of our fate? That we have brains to read, research, process and understand? When will we recognize that the dogmatic, hyper-religious claptrap we tend to regurgitate is brainwashing? Have you realized that all the religious books were written by men, and that history (and laws) are written from the point of view of the conqueror?
OK. I'm done now.