Just another nerd.
I’ve been reading a lot of the back-and-forth lately over whether RSS will be/should be used to replace e-mail newsletters. All I know is that for all of the e-mail newsletters that I subscribe to, when the proprietors have offered RSS feeds that duplicate the content of the newsletter, I’ve unsubscribed from the e-mail version and subscribed to the RSS feed.
And, in that spirt, the RSS feed below offers the full text of all entries on this weblog:
In August, Sudan pledged to ban female genital mutilation in that country.
According to a story carried by the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks,
At the end of a regional three-day symposium held last week in Khartoum, Health Minister Ahmed Osman Bilal expressed his government’s commitment to eradicate FGM at all levels, according to a summary of proceedings provided by UNICEF.
According to the Sudanese government, as many as 90 percent of women in its northern, largely-Muslim states are victims of female genital mutilation. Moreover, female genital mutilation in Sudan is the worst form of the practice involving the removal of most or all of the external genitalia and then the sewing of the vaginal opening — all done on young girls aged 7-11.
Source:
Government to ban female genital mutilation. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, September 3, 2003.
Sudan: Genital mutilation rises. Agence-France Presse, August 24, 2003.
Kevin Meyers had an interesting op-ed piece in the Daily Telegraph in August about the lack of outrage over leniency shown to false rape accuser Alison Welfare.
Welfare create an elaborate ruse to try to falsely convict her boyfriend of rape. Meyers describes the bizarre lengths which Welfare went to appear a victim of rape,
She sent herself threatening e-mails, and then told the police they came from him [her boyfriend].
She tore her clothes, daubed herself with paint, bound and gagged herself, and allowed herself to be found in a “distressed” condition in a McDonald’s lavatory in Peckham, south London, having been “raped” at knifepoint.
Her boyfriend, Christopher Wheeler, was arrested and spent two months in jail before the ruse was finally discovered.
Yet after being convicted of such an outrageous deception, Welfare was sentenced to only 1 year in jail and could be released after only 6 months. Meyers writes,
There has been no outcry at the leniency shown to Alison Welfare. However, there was an outcry in the last case that I remember in which a woman was charged with making malevolent and baseless accusations of rape. That was from feminists, denouncing the fact that the woman was sentenced to a couple of months’ imprisonment for making false rape charges against two Irish soldiers in Cyprus.
“This case will deter genuine rape victims from reporting rape,” screamed the Irish Rape Crisis Centre, demanding the release of the Irishwoman responsible.
The illogic was breath-taking, for we rightly reserve particular opprobrium for rapists. But by making light of the false accusation of rape, women’s groups are trivializing rape itself. You cannot debase a currency for some of the time; once debased, it stays debased.
. . .
False allegations of rape, however, are about power, for they mobilize the proper revulsion society feels about the crime against the unfortunate target. So we should protect the powerful societal taboo on rape by treating those who falsely allege rape with the severity with which we treat rapists. That is the least the true victims of rape deserve.
Certainly people such as Welfare who go to such extraordinary lengths to subvert legal and cultural taboos against rape for their own purposes should be severely punished. A one-year sentence for such an elaborate ruse is a bad joke.
Source:
Malicious accusers are as bad as rapists. Kevin Meyers, The Daily Telegraph, August 17, 2003.
Jon Holbrook recently wrote an interesting analysis (The law and the ‘one in four’) about British government claims that 1 in 4 women in Great Britain have been the victims of domestic violence. According to Holbrook, the government figures intentionally exaggerate domestic violence incidence in order to recast how domestic violence is perceived in that country.
Holbrook writes,
It is interesting that [Home Secretary, David] Blunkett has not relied on the Home Office’s own research of 1999, which dealt in detail with victims’ perceptions of domestic violence. What this showed was not that people thought domestic violence was acceptable, but that only 17 percent of most recent domestic violence incidents were considered by their victims to have been crimes.
Probably part of the reason for victims being reluctant to criminalize their partner’s violent behavior is the fact that, as the researchers say, many of the incidents were perceived ‘as too trivial in intent or action to warrant the attention of the criminal justice system.’
Holbrook notes, for example, that the overwhelming majority of incidents used to support the 1 in 4 claim did not result in any sort of injury, but was instead characterized as either a push, shove or grab.
Such actions are not appropriate, but do they rise to the level of criminal behavior? Clearly most of the “victims” of such acts did not think so. As Holbrook puts it,
But another related factor is that victims of domestic violence, and no doubt other members of the public as well, are able to distinguish between something that is wrong and something that is criminal. Or to put it another way, they are able to distinguish between something that is a private matter to be sorted out by those affected and something that warrants criminal justice intervention.
But, of course, such ideas presumes the sort of autonomy on the part of women which domestic violence rhetoric tends to diminish and deny. Can a woman really decide on her own whether or not to prosecute when her husband or boyfriend grabs her during a heated argument? The answer, of course, is no if you buy into current domestic violence ideology (ironically, when men are the victims of such behavior, the feminist line is that this isn’t really domestic violence at all).
Sources:
WorldNetDaily.Com reported in August about a California high school teacher who was recently arrested while moonlighting as a prostitute.
Shannon Williams, 37, defended her work as a prostitute arguing that, “As a feminist I believe in every woman’s right to self-determination, and that includes sexually and economically. Women who work in the sex industry are entrepreneurs and should be granted the same rights as other business people.”
Williams was arrested in her apartment in August after agreeing to have sex for money with an undercover cop.
Williams was offered a plea bargain whereby she would have plead guilty to a misdemeanor and in exchange would only have paid a small fine. Instead she chose to plead innocent to the charge of prostitution, and apparently plans to defend herself by arguing that she has a right to prostitute herself.
Sources:
Feminist teacher defends her prostitution. WorldNetDaily.Com, August 28, 2003.
Supporters rally for teacher charged with prostitution. John Geluardi, Contra Costa Times, August 28, 2003.
Nik Aziz Nik Mat, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Kelantan, created a controversy in September with his declaration that Muslim women should avoid wearing lipstick or perfume outside the home because it could stir up sexual passions and increase the risk of them being raped.
Nik Aziz has a habit of making such statements about women, including his argument that the state should only employ ugly women because they would be unlikely to get married and leave their jobs.
Dr. Ng Yen Yen of the Malaysian Association of Youth Club said of Nik Aziz’s statement,
I find it ridiculous that a leader of today can have that perception of violence against women. Little girls with no make up and perfume have became rape victims.
He never fails to shock me over how little he understands gender issues. What sort of society is he creating in Kelantan and Terengganu?
What sort of society, indeed.
Malaysian minister: ‘Lipstick invites rape’. Jonathan Kent, The BBC, September 2, 2003.
Lipstick-rape comment raises a stink. Izatun Shari, The Star.Com, September 2, 2003.