Academic

Feminists Don?t Care About The Women In Iran, And The Sexualized Mockery Of A Powerful Woman Politician Has Nothing To Do With The Stonings Of Women Who Are Deemed Too Sexual.

By Ann Bartow

Or so says Kathleen Parker in the WaPo. Who needs to start here. And then go here, and here, and here, and here, and here, where a reporter notes:

Currently, in Iran, there are nine women sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery, compared to two men for the same offence — highlighting the fact that this barbaric mode of execution is primarily a women’s issue.

Whether these 11 unfortunate people can be saved from the brutality and humiliation involved depends on the success of a campaign, launched two months ago, by a group of lawyers and women’s rights activists to have the stoning law abolished altogether from the Islamic Penal Code of this country.

Stoning is more a women’s issue because, according to Islamic laws, a man can have four permanent wives and any number of temporary wives.

When caught in adulterous relationships, men can always claim to have been in a temporary marriage contract with the woman involved –provided she is not already married to someone else. Temporary marriage contracts, for hours or months or years, can be easily made between the partners. A married woman cannot escape stoning in the same way.

“The stoning law affects women more than men. So, as feminists, we naturally have to address it as well as other issues, such as polygamy, lack of right of divorce for women, forced marriages, domestic violence and poverty that greatly contribute to situations leading to stoning. We also hope that the campaign to abolish stoning can mobilise the women’s movement,” Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a feminist activist and advocacy group member of the ?Campaign to Stop Stoning Forever’, told IPS.

“The nature of the feminist movement in Iran is political because feminists have to target the laws, like (those on) polygamy and stoning, that sustain the patriarchal view of the society. They have to challenge the religious and political establishment that supports those laws,” Abbasgholizadeh added.

Could someone fill me in on all the efforts Kathleen Parker has made on behalf of women in Iran? Because all my googling turned up was this diatribe by her against “allowing” women to serve in the military.

–Ann Bartow

ETA: Violet Socks also explained the situation pretty well, writing:

Sexism is a deeply learned behavior with a thousand manifestations. You can?t quarantine the big pieces of it ? rape, legal discrimination ? as if they exist in a vacuum apart from the rest of society?s values. From frat boy joke to date rape, from gangsta rap to domestic violence, from pink housework toys at Wal-Mart to the boss who won?t promote a woman into top management, from ?Math is hard? Barbie to the physics lab where men harass their female colleagues relentlessly, from Girls Gone Wild videos to the jury that acquits a rapist because the victim was wearing a short skirt ? it?s a system. A giant, all-encompassing, self-reinforcing system.

No one thinks that Jon Favreau is personally responsible for crimes against women. What we think ? what we know ? is that his frat-boy grope is one lurid thread in a larger pattern. It?s symptomatic of a culture in which women are routinely sexualized, diminished, and harassed; a culture in which violence against women is normalized as mainstream fun; a culture in which powerful, accomplished women are ridiculed as b**ches and c**ts who just need a good f***ing.

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on December 14, 2008 (boomark / email).