Yeah, you might have noticed already. I’m in a Truthiness mood tonight, as Stephen Colbert might say. Remember all the loud denunciations I copped from Harry Clarke, Tim Blair et al et al etc. - all the feminists of total convenience - for not denouncing the female genital mutilation loudly enough? Coz it’s all about teh Islam and threats to Western Civ, etc., and that mob are all on the side of women’s rights, and that manly man of steel John Howard is taking us to war to free Afghani women from burqas. And George W. Bush is going to hunt those Al-Qaeda evildoers down. (And Islam is not a race, and some of my best friends… oops, hang on?) While Laura and Condi look after the oppressed women. Or something… Oh yeah, it isn’t 2003 any more… Remember that word fistula - you might not have read that on teh Blair blog - being a word of three syllables and all. And in Latin.
But I talked about it at the time. Now that Pamela Bone is dead (and God rest her soul, may she be blessed with eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon her), where are the voices with the loud condemn? What’s with that Australian crusade for women’s rights in benighted Islamic Middle Eastern countries? After all, we - Dolly Downer and John Howard and Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt and Planet Janet told us so - are all (post?) feminists now. It’s on the citizenship test, dude - and dudette a la 50s pinup style no doubt. (Ps - don’t use that politically correct, activist judge f-word though…)
Well, never mind. Here’s a post from The Global Sociology Blog for the benefit of anyone who wanted to continue highlighting the horrors perpetrated on women in the developing world even if there’s not a convenient culture wars damn the left angle in it. (And that’s not to say that women in the developed world don’t still cop a lot - but there’s something to celebrate about a very large majority of Australians agreeing - at least in theory when asked by pollsters - that women have rights over their own choices and bodies - even if that masks continued gender inequality in oh, so many ways…).
You can donate to Medicins San Frontieres here.
And you might be interested in the fact that rape has finally been recognised by the UN as a war crime, something I wrote about last year, but something the keyboard warriors seem to… well, gloss over is far too kind. Because the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of war seems to be recognised neither by the pro-war Right nor the “humanitarian intervention” so-called Left. That might be worth remembering that next time the calls for Western Intervention are trumpeted. And it might be worth - for men and women of good faith - adding your voice to calling on the Australian government to hold those who destroy and mutilate and end the lives of women and children in the name of “peace” to account. Even if they can’t be painted as teh evil Muslims and their suffering neatly mobilised in a hundred Planet Janet op/eds.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Ps I concede in advance for any Boltas or Blairs or RWDBs who might take an interest in their sincerely held quest for women’s rights in any country other than this one that I’m an uppity lesbian etc. blah blah blah and a despicable leftie. So?
Kim:
“I’m an uppity lesbian( watch copywrite on that!)and a despicable lefty”.
Perhaps you’re just someone who can still feel something, or has the character to feel something, when you see an underdog kicked when they’re down.
I was being a bit sarcastic in the postscript, but cheers Paul - really much appreciated!
I understand Stephen Colbert has trademarked the term “Truthiness” (listen to his very funny speech to the Press Club with George W in attendence for proof).
Top post, even if it was written by an uppity lesbian
I bet all those mentioned will be out protesting today for your right as a woman to marry (boo hiss to the patriarchy), access fertility treatments blah blah blah.
Just on “rape as a war crime”: Hilary Charlesworth pointed out last week that it was somewhat strange that the US supported this UN resolution, when “rape in war as a crime against humanity” was ALREADY recognised in the statutes of the International Criminal Court at the Hague. But this ICC is an institution the US has refused to endorse.
(Along with dozens of other nations, Australia HAS ratified its support of the ICC). The ICC will be more powerful once the US and Japan have joined up.
What I want to know is, why aren’t we arresting and prosecuting piercing establishments and cosmetic surgeons for clitoral piercings and labiaplasty because:
Oh wait… that law was designed for Mozlem women only - Western women can instead have their FGM celebrated in Fairfax media.
“Because the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of war seems to be recognised neither by the pro-war Right nor the “humanitarian intervention” so-called Left. That might be worth remembering that next time the calls for Western Intervention are trumpeted. And it might be worth - for men and women of good faith - adding your voice to calling on the Australian government to hold those who destroy and mutilate and end the lives of women and children in the name of “peace” to account.”
Anyone with rudimentary research skills can find out whether rape is a war crime under Australian law.
umm, why don’t you quote the rest of the song, about where all the young men have gone (to soldiers and hence to graveyards, every one). I don’t reckon war is so much a feminist issue - it’s bad for all living things, as the hippies used to say.
I guess when you decide to miss the point, DD, any point that you make as a result of missing the point, is well…pointless.
“Anyone with rudimentary research skills can find out whether rape is a war crime under Australian law.”
They’ll also need a shitload of patience for bad web design.
Section 268.59 of the Criminal Code
Yeah, I found it eventually - just thought maybe that menu on the sidebar might have been better laid out. Actually I was kindasorts impressed with some of the content. On paper at least we’ve got a pretty tight ship there.
Someone with rudimentary research skills might also follow the link in the post, Bismarck, and realise that the reference is to international law.
Not that this is some kind of “race” or anything Kim, but the ICC got there before the UN….. see post [4] above, noting recent comments by professor of international law, H. Charlesworth. Pedantic, moi?
Thanks, Ambigulous. I do think the UN resolution is important though.
Kim: yes indeed, it’s VERY important. There are still MANY nations that haven’t ratified the ICC. Perhaps they’ll take notice of this UN resolution, let’s hope so.
“Someone with rudimentary research skills might also follow the link in the post, Bismarck, and realise that the reference is to international law.”
Yeah, I saw that. But the Commonwealth Criminal Code provisions relating to war crimes and crimes against humanity enact the prohibitions in the Rome Statute (2002) which, by the way, is a UN treaty albeit that it now has its own secretariat. That means it is settled international law which has been ratified and enacted into domestic law. So, it is not the case that the UN has finally recognised rape as a war crime, nor that Australian governments have been heedless of the fact.
Yasmin, sorry I’m not clear, are you saying the law is too restrictive and narrowly defined, or are you equating female circumcision with labiaplasty and clitoral piercings?
If a), then I agree. If b) I don’t know, I think that’s a pretty long bow to draw. There seems to be quite a few differences there.
You’re right Bismarck, it’s agreed international law, but as it stands the Statute of the ICC may at present be applied only to nationals of nations that have ratified the ICC, n’est-ce pas? So it applies in Australia and dozens of other countries but not in (for example) Japan and the USA?
The value of the UN resolution is perhaps as a declaration and recognition, rather than a decision that can lead to the prosecution of a soldier-rapist, IMO. But still, it does no harm to put these bastard rapists on notice, eh?
What?
Umm Yasmin,
How one can make a moral equivalence argument between voluntary genital ‘enhancement’ which is aimed at enhancing sexual experience and involuntary FGM which is aimed at exactly the opposite is beyond the ken of this RWDB.
…that I’m an uppity lesbian etc. blah blah blah and a despicable leftie…
On the right we don’t care if you’re gay, straight, blonde, brunette, bald, black, white, yellow, tall, short, thin or fat. We care that you’re a decent person. We don’t assume that you’re not decent simply because you’re on the opposite side of the political fence.
You on the left should try it sometime.
“We care that you’re a decent person.”
Precisely: you only like lefties if they’re ‘decents’.
Are you sure that women are overwhelmingly the victims of war? It seems an unlikely claim.
Civilian casualties from famine or bombardment or massacre would have been nearly equally shared between males and females. Women would have been most vulnerable to sexual assault. But military casualties would have been overwhelmingly male.
Overall, it seems more accurate to say that young men bear the highest cost of war, as they are the ones most likely to be killed or wounded.
Patrickg @17 and Jack @ 20
Depending on which cultural group within the Muslim world you are looking at, female genital cutting practices differ (as they do in different cultures who practice different types of male genital cuttings i.e. some remove the foreskin, others flay the penis). And it’s often assumed that FGC refers to the extremely rare practice of infibulation, which is untrue.
I was trying to point out that even in a place like Australia, we still have an Orientalist obsession with the Muslimwoman as the objectified Other. I.e. we criminalise one set of behaviours (for Muslim women) and glorify them for others (Western women) and yet they are essentially the same thing - cutting and modifying the genitals of women.
How is labiaplasty any better than female genital cutting practised in (some) Muslim cultures? If Ralph, Playboy etc. airbrush out any evidence of the labia minora in photos of women, and then when women are having plastic surgery to cut away parts of their genitals so they will be more sexually attractive to men - how is this *any* different to women in Egypt having their clitoral hoods cut in order to ‘curb’ their sexual appetite so that they will not be prone to infringe on the honor of their husbands?
With lefties its all about feeling moral superiority with only a very slim link to actual reality.
They construct whatever twisted logic they need in order to build a moral high ground for themselves. They then climb up and sneer down at everyone else.
Trying to argue a moral equivalence between voluntary cosmetic genital surgery and involuntary surgery to inhibit pleasure is a perfect example. Much easier to argue this than deal with the ugly reality.
Its all about “feeling good”, not doing good which is clumsy, messy and shaded grey.
Doing good just doesnt have the false moral purity they can enjoy by adjusting reality to suit.
Umm Yasmin, you use the word “women” throughout your comment. But isn’t FGM usually inflicted on girls? And generally with no consent (not that a child could consent to such a thing anyway).
That’s a pretty big difference, isn’t it? On one hand, adult women choosing to have cosmetic surgery, or Playboy altering a photo. On the other hand, children being forced to have something cruel and terrifying done to their bodies.
It’s bizarre that anyone would equate one with the other.
As people have pointed out in previous threads here, FGM occurs in some non-Muslim areas, so using it as a rhetorical stick to beat Muslims with may not be justified. That might be a better line of argument than suggesting FGM is just fine and dandy because Western women allegedly do similar things.
#5 Umm Yasmin, cosmetic surgery is not genital mutilation, and a visit to some maternity hospitals will show you that in this country we do actually deal with FGM.
Yes, it is illegal, but there are still women who have had it done to them, and need to be cut open to give birth.
A lot of those women also wish to be sewn back up again, and I think you will find that they get their wish. It’s not unknown in this country any more.
And the vast majority of women who have been mutilated are muslim.
That is a long way from getting a ring through your labia, or a bit of trimming of the flesh for some weird cosmetic reason.
I personally disagree with both, but I reserve my utter condemnation and disgust for those that would inflict it on women and girls.
Umm Yasmin says:
“I was trying to point out that even in a place like Australia, we still have an Orientalist obsession with the Muslimwoman as the objectified Other. I.e. we criminalise one set of behaviours (for Muslim women) and glorify them for others (Western women) and yet they are essentially the same thing - cutting and modifying the genitals of women.”
The difference is that one form of behaviour is very rare, entirely voluntary and not acceptable to the dominant culture whereas the other is an oppressive cultural expectation.
“If Ralph, Playboy etc. airbrush out any evidence of the labia minora in photos of women, and then when women are having plastic surgery to cut away parts of their genitals so they will be more sexually attractive to men…”
You obviously have no idea what men want. Most men want a woman who who has all the bits and pieces she was born with intact.
Why am I not surprised that you’re an academic!
I’m not sure if Umm Yasmin is quite as wide of the mark as some would hope. The sort of nonsense that goes down in America re cosmetic surgery is hardly cause for celebration and least of all because some of the more outlandish procedures are “chosen” by their supposedly adult victims.
What we’re talking about is commodification almost in the literal sense, where people spend their lives with their head half up their butts in quest of a permanently deferred, yet lucrative for others, behavioural pattern instilled at youth snd reinforced by mass advertising.
In a sense it was what an “other” muslim cleric Sheik Hillaly was really getting at , as to his notorious and utterly misunderstood,
“hung out like meat” comments.
This is the house the Shake built.
This is the meat that lay in the house the Shake built.
This is the cat that ate the meat that lay in the house the Shake built.
This is the dog that chased the cat…..
[old Aussie refrain]
“… where people spend their lives with their head half up their butts …”
That sounds even more painful than a flayed penis.
Depends on the size of their heads.
What is Kim writing about?
“You obviously have no idea what men want. Most men want a woman who who has all the bits and pieces she was born with intact.”
Ah yes, what men want is obviously the most important aspect of any discussion of women’s bodies. How foolish of me to think otherwise.
“What is Kim writing about?”
This question says far more about you than it does about Kim.
This is a little off topic, but since the thread has already gone that way… Playboy etc. don’t airbrush out the labia minora because they or men or the patriarchy think women are more attractive that way. They do it because in this country for a magazine to be able to be sold without a plastic wrapper those parts of normal genitalia have to be obscured. Which then results in women looking at those doctored images, comparing them to their own genitalia and feeling that there’s something wrong with themselves. At which point some of them decide THEY need to be ‘doctored’, literally.
It’s a horrid state of affairs and it is one that to my knowledge is opposed by all the relevant publishers, who would like to see it overturned. Cleo (or maybe Cosmo?) tried to publish an article on it a few years back but ran into the Catch-22 that even though they weren’t doing the article for prongraphic purposes, they weren’t allowed to print ‘before’ pics either. The blame for that particular mess lies with whatever the censorship/classification board is now called.
Oh, and Ralph doesn’t do frontal nudity. They don’t even show nipples, so labia of either kind is completely not present.
Having said all that, I do find the similarities between genital procedures that Yasmin highlighted to be an interesting and compelling one.
My first impression (and second and third) is that this thread needs some moderation…
I must i’m uncomfortable with the vigorous calls from some for polygamy in Aust. Moslem, Mormon or animist, i’m thinking it sounds like a very backward step into an overwhelmingly patriarchal construct. (Not that ‘traditional’ marriage is blameless, mind you).
‘legalised’ polygamy i mean.
Dude, it is the, not teh. Get it right.
This would be intolerant and offensive if it were, first, at all readable.
The original post seems to be a lot of randomly cobbled-together thoughts with a tenuous theme linking them.
Feminism, Bush Bashing, Howard Bashing, Downer Bashing, Blair/Bolt Bashing, Pamela Bone (wtf?), Stephen Colbert, a false incinuation that western nations don’t think rape in war is wrong.
What was the overarching point of the post?
Also, why is rape worse in war than in peace time? Should people who rape in peace time get a shorter gaol sentence than people who rape in war? Does it really need a seperate penalty and recognition of its own?
#33 Klaus K
I agree (with your sarcastic meaning, that is), and I wish people wouldn’t cite women’s preferences when it comes to the mutilation of baby boys.
“This would be intolerant and offensive if it were, first, at all readable.”
If you can’t read it, how do you know if it’s intolerant or offensive?
Just to clarify before I comment on the age question - I’m not using Western women’s experiences to promote FGC, I’m simply pointing out the hypocritical double-standard. IMHO we should be protecting Western women from FGC as much as we pay attention to women from the Global South.
Paulus @25 wrote:
You made the point about age. And it’s a good one, although again it depends on which particular culture you are talking about (for example the experiences of adult women in South-East Asia who choose female circumcision is very different from infant girls). But how are we not as outraged about the lack of choice of infant boys and circumcision practices? Why the double-standard again?
Nilk @26
Infibulation is very rare form of female genital cutting. Most women who undergo FGC, have cutting of the clitoral hood (not entirely dissimilar to the type of piercing practice of Western women’s clitoral hoods) and sometimes partial/total excision of the outer part of the clitoris or possibly cutting of the labia minora (again not dissimilar to Western women’s labiaplasties).
“And the vast majority of women who have been mutilated are muslim.”
Actually, it depends again on which cultural group and type of FGC practice you are talking about.
Essentially, those places where FGC is practiced, it is practiced by Muslims, Christians and Animists of the region. And variously Muslim and Christian religious texts have been used to support the practice by those religious groups, even though Muslims and Christians who do not practice FGC reject these interpretations.
Con @ 27
“You obviously have no idea what men want.”
FGC is a minority practice within the Muslim world as well, so we can similarly say (with ironic apologies to Kim for indulging the sentiment) that most Muslim men also like their women with all their bits and pieces intact.
Have you had a gander at the types of justification for labiaplasties?
Rod C @ 35
So why doctor *inside* images?
“Ah yes, what men want is obviously the most important aspect of any discussion of women’s bodies. How foolish of me to think otherwise.”
I think if it wasn’t for men, most of these practices wouldn’t occur especially in the case of FGM.
Personally I agree with Katz at 37. Kim is apparently not around at the moment so I’m closing comments for her consideration when she returns.