Afghan women forced to wear burqa

Years ago I read a book called "My Forbidden Face", a young lady named Latifa was documenting how her life and the lives of other women were uprooted by the taliban. It was a chilling read and my heart breaks knowing that Afghani women will once again go through this.

The UK and the US has caused this.

Chaotica...that's not a plus! Having to hide books wtf? Women are like cats (or actually, cats are like women which I guess is why they're called feline)...we need to be free to truly live.

I am no fan of the burqa, but you can hide yourself and other things under one if things get bad. Last time the Taliban were in power, women could hide books when they were studying or cameras to report on what was happening.

Orchestra it just brings home to me how weak men are...they expect women to do more to stop the brothers of men, their own kind, from killing and abusing us. They never ask the same of each other.

When do you ever see a man stand against his own? Fucking never.

I'm so sad and afraid for the innocents in Afghanistan.

As for the burqa, as with any other aspect of choice feminism: if it's a choice, why aren't men choosing it?

No-one is trying to be flippant or to trivialise this. We have been told for years now that who is a man and who is a woman is a nebulous, confusing and nuanced issue. And yet we have millennia of evidence that there is absolute clarity from men in recognising women when it comes to sex-based oppression. Afghanistan is a very current and very urgent example of this. When they are deciding who to sell into sex-slavery or who to shoot for going to school, then your identity, your personality and your feelings won't count for shit. Any of our famous trans lesbians could just wipe off the performative femininity and disappear into maleness. (Does anyone know the Taliban's stance on transgenderism? Because, as we know, Pakistan and Iran are big cheerleaders for transing the gay away.) This is a good example of how identity politics only works for those with power because you can never identify your way out of the bottom of a hierarchy. Gender creates the hierarchy and it needs to go.

There's probably some shit-for-brains TRA on Twitter right now, arguing that people in Central Asia had no concept of biological sex until it was imposed on them by colonialists. The fuckwits who go on about women-only spaces and genital inspections won't have the decency to shut up either, despite being faced with an horrific real-world example of people being divided into men and women and no inspections necessary.

I'm so sorry for the typos....shaking with anger.

I hate men tonight. My stomach has been churning all day for my sisters in Afghanistan and I feel sick with fear for them so can't imagine ho they must be feeling...the fear that must be paralysing them. Yet every comment under every article has stupids useless men laughing bait the MeToo movement being silent. These are MEN'S fucking crimes. It is MEN doing this yet they laugh at women's lack of power to stop it. Fuck them.

The not so recent history of Afghanistan has been very effectively erased. If you can find pictures of Kabul in the 70s before the Soviet invasion, you will see busy streets full of women in miniskirts, and not a veil in sight on anyone under 60.

Some of the women at least who have fought for their freedoms were actually allowed to be treated as boys when there was no boy in the family . This allowed them the education they needed to begin to change things when they returned to be young women at puberty. There was a programme I think on the world service( ?) a few years ago . Terrifying for the even younger girls and women now and awful to watch them dreading what will happen.

Women cannot opt out of oppression

Quite, something often conviniently never mentioned in some spheres.

It's absolutely heartbreaking, there is a glimmer of hope in that many women have seen that there is an alternative, which wasn't the case before as oppression there runs centuries deep; but I fear its praying for a miracle that it makes much difference.

This is

I think is where it becomes clear that identity and gender is the privilege of western people

I remember being lectured in the past by a woman friend about how we should respect cultural traditions and many women "want" to wear a burqua. Also that doing so, frees them from the attention of predatory males which is in fact liberating for them. As a feminist, there is no way I could buy into this and knowing that so many freedoms women had in Afghanistan prior to this are now being relentlessly undone is so bloody depressing.

I cannot imagine how scary it must be right now to be a progressive woman in Afghanistan.

It's never been funny Etulosba, that's the point. No one is laughing, not even before the resurgence of the Taliban.