At Democracy Arsenal, Suzanne Nossel writes:
Latest word is that Iraq’s draft constitution will roll back the rights and freedoms of women in the name of Shaaria (Koranic law). The draft provides that family law matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance would be governed by religious law based on the sect to which the woman’s family belongs.
This would require Shiite women to get their families’ permission to marry and give men, but not women, liberal rights to divorce. This would replace a body of law that has for the past few decades been among the region’s most progressive in its treatment of women, according them freedom to marry who they please and requiring judicial oversight of divorces.
Iraqi women are understandably up in arms, taking to the streets to protest. There’s still a chance that public and international outcry may lead to revisions in the draft before its adopted.
Apropos of all the discussion about the Bush Administration’s meddling in the Iraqi electoral process, its worth remembering that letting countries alone to set up their own democracies can open the door for infringement on principles we hold dear, even to the point of undermining what we see as precepts fundamental to democracy.
The conflict between democracy and women’s fundamental human rights is something that’s come up on this blog before (1 2 3 4). As I wrote a couple of years ago, I’m afraid I can’t even see it as a tough question. Maintaining the freedom for women – all women – to walk where they want, when they want, with whom they want, wearing what they want is what really counts. Next to that, the right to vote for a government that will most likely crush women’s rights and revoke future elections just doesn’t seem terribly essential.
I’m not saying Democracy isn’t important – it is. But there are prices too high to pay, even for Democracy. At the risk of sounding like a libertarian, fundamental liberties have to be secured first; only then is the right to vote meaningful.
Many conservatives have tried to justify the invasion of Iraq by saying that it spreads freedom. I But if the eventual result of our invasion is a curtailment of women’s freedoms, then the invasion of Iraq has reduced freedom, not spread it. The longer our occupation goes on, the more skeptical I am of the proposition that military invasion is an effective way of creating real freedom and democracy.
Of course, that’s all assuming – for argument’s sake – that the real purpose of this war was to spread freedom. Earlier, we were told that the purpose of the war was to curtail Saddam Hussain’s threat to the United States, but we now know that pretext was nonsense. Personally, I’m convinced that this was The War to Make Republican Penises Larger. That’s why they strapped George W. into a big ol’ codpiece and then posed him in front of a banner declaring “mission accomplished” – people have criticized that banner, but that’s because they failed to understand which mission it referred to. Looking at the codpiece, we could all rest assured that the real mission had indeed been accomplished.
The problem with making Republican Dicks Bigger is that those big wangs – neat as they are – come at a heavy cost to the world, without actually spreading freedom and democracy or making America safer. Plus, it’s a budget-buster. I wish they’d take up some cheaper, less destructive way of convincing themselves that their members are big enough. Maybe we should bring back dueling.
Lest I be accused of partisanship, by the way, let me point out that the Democrats are pretty obsessed with dick size, too. That’s what Democrats meant every time they said Kerry was “electable.” “Electable,” in this case, was a code word which meant “he’s shot people to death, so his dick must therefore be pretty big.” And who can forget Al Gore’s “how big is my package” Rolling Stone cover? I sure can’t.
The Democrats keep on hoping that if they find a candidate with a big enough penis, then they’ll at last be able to move back into the White House, and then maybe they won’t be totally irrelevant anymore. I think this strategy is wrongheaded – but even if it wasn’t, the Dems would still be screwing it up. They think dick size is about things like having actually had the guts to fight in a war and win medals and stuff like that; but actually, dick size is determined by things like a macho squints and perpetual sneers and the adoring wifely gaze. In contrast, nothing says “tiny dick” like an irrepressible wife, a Boston accent and a fluffy (fluffy!) hairdo. The hair alone was enough to damn Kerry to perpetual pansyhood, regardless of how many people he’d killed.
Frankly, I agree. And instead of killing people, candidates should simply submit to the ruler test and have the results publicized before the election. That would cut down on campaign costs and if we agree to let them use a fluffer, I’ll bet the candidates would be all for it.
Hilary’s staunch pro-war stance and her penchant for toxic dumps, etc. would seem to indicate that she’d be no slouch in these competitions either. Maybe a tie-in with Good Vibrations on the primary trail/trial is in order ? PJ Harvey’s “Man-Size” could be the campaign song…
I like Amanda’s idea, however, I think that some very important questions have to be addressed first.
Will thickness be a factor? Testicle size? If thickness is a factor, then how will, say, a medium-length yet thick dick rate against a long yet thin one? What about curved penises, how will they be measured? I think we should work out the specifics of this plan before we implement it.
I have another idea, how about we rate candidates on the amount of “pussy” they get? I assume the candidates’ own sexual performance doesn’t matter (who cares what women have to say, anyway?). But then again, would the attractiveness of their partners be a factor? Would prostitutes not be counted, or would they just be counted as a half-point?
Man, this is hard.
That’s why a basic length test should do. That’s all most penis-anxious men care about anyway. You just get it hard and measure it from body to tip from the top side. To quote Dan Savage, insertable inches only count. Measuring your balls is cheating.
I have to say that this whole subject makes me too angry to post a rational response. All I can say is that if it were up to me, any woman with any kind of influence or authority who supported the war should wear a veil for the rest of their lives in sympathetic shame to show how badly they have betrayed Iraqi women. Those who take it off should be subject to the kinds of abuse Iranian, and now increasingly, Iraqi women face: like having acid thrown in their face by private vigilantes or being denied the right to go to class.
Every time I think about Laura Bush crowing about the righs of Afghani women I have unkind and evil fantasies. There aren’t enough obscenities and they aren’t sufficiently vulgar or shocking to describe how I feel about this. Freedom means freedom for men. That’s all.
So, would “fluffer” be an elected job, or an appointed one? Or would each candidate have to hire their own fluffer? Can a candidate have multiple fluffers?
Will lengthening surgeries be permitted? What about impotent men who are none-the-less quite large (I heard about some guy who was 15 inches, flaccid)? What would happen in the unlikely event that both candidates have the same length? Would thickness then be used as a tie-breaker? Would this mean that we’d finally have an African-American President?
Why am I spending so much time talking about penises? Is this some sort of Freudian thing?
Although it won’t help the horrible situation Dick and George have gotten us all into, I think it might help the discussion if people didn’t use a definition of democracy that includes tyranny-by-vote. Anywhere where you have serious pre-existing power imbalances — be they folks with guns or folks with money (and hence guns) or folk whom God has told you to obey implicitly, voting and democracy are nowhere near the same thing. No one would ever say, for example, that North Korea is a democracy, even if if could be proved that their universal turnout and overwhelming-majority numbers accurately reflected what went into the ballot box. Calling what’s happened so far in Iraq “democracy” is perhaps a little less laughable, but it’s still not really accurate.
Yeah, this opens the door for all kinds of folks to sit around comfortably dissing what happens in lots of other cuontries as “not real democracy” — but then I’m not sure what we have here deserves the appellation either these days. And it gets people out of a lot of verbal gymnastics. (There are also some obvious criteria — any time you’re going to systematically reduce the rights of a particular class of adult citizens, you’re going to have to show something like a compelling state interest, rather than “the folks who currently command a majority of votes want to do it this way.”)
Whenever our government tries to talk about how this war is about “freedom” from an oppresive regime, I always think of how we have so closely allied ourselves with Saudi Arabia. Now *that* is a country where women have no rights. They can’t even DRIVE for crying out loud.
But then women won’t be able to get elected to the presidency any more…oh, wait…
Iraq is a military dictatorship. The US, unable to forestall an election any longer, determined who could run for office, and what positions they were allowed to hold, and voters weren’t allowed to know who the candidates actually were. And the US has been trying to encourage sectarian divisions, to set up the classic “the primitives can’t govern themselves” justification for colonialism.
There’s no point in talking about some abstract possibility of a conflict between democracy and women’s rights, when Iraq is not even remotely democratic.
Not to mention that the US government manipulated the election. Pelosi was entirely right to argue against it. She really should speak up more.
Women’s rights are often jettisoned for expediency. A Palestinian prfoessor wrote an op-ed piece in our local papers recently stating that college student’s who questioned a conference speaker about women’s equality in Palestine should get real when “even” men there don’t have human rights yet. Her point seemed to be: “shut up feminists, you’re ruining everything”. I’m certain the prevailing attitude in the putative Iraqi government framers is that women rights are for a noisy special interest group, and to be dealt with at a later date.
“Pen” there is spam.
Pretty subtle spam, since it’s a quote from an earlier comment. I’m not sure how you’d guard against it, really.
If the “ruler test” is used, men who are circumcised would automatically be at a disadvantage. We would be opening ourselves up to charges of anti-Semitism.