Afghan women forced to wear burqa

Why has the middle east been taken over by fundamentalists? Is there an idiots guide i can read? Not intending to derail there is just so much i don't know

Bidens first act was to sign away women’s sports rights

Yes, that was a disgrace. School sports offered American girls (and boys) from low-income backgrounds the chance to go to university on a sports scholarship, as well as all the other rewards of making it into elite sports. Now boys are taking the medals, and rewards, in girls' sports.

So no surprise that he's throwing Afghanistan to the wolves.

It's pretty obvious the point they're trying to make

There was a secular republic from 73-78, and that was as good as it got. The Communist coup was in 78, followed by the Soviet invasion over Christmas 79. The country was still making progress in the early 80s, if in an East German sort of way, but progress nonetheless. Then the Americans started supplying advanced weapons to bin Laden and co and it all went downhill from there.

What was life like in Soviet occupied Afghanistan?

Pictures I saw from Afghanistan in the pre-Taliban 1980s showed women in western clothes, heads and faces uncovered. Like much of the Middle East before islamic fundamentalism took over. It could have been Turkey, or Iran before the ayatollahs took over.

I'm sure rural areas were more traditional, as in many countries. But remember that fundamentalist clothing is not traditional. These women's mothers may have worn scarves, but not covered their faces.

One picture that stays in mind was of women soldiers in army uniform proudly marching in a parade through Kabul, carrying their rifles, ready to defend their country. I often wonder if any of them who weren't killed in the fighting were able to hide, keep their heads down, survive in the basic way the Taliban allowed to women. Or was that too unbearable after they had known freedom?

It’s the problem when celebrities try and give their hot take on every issue Lilly Cole they know nothing usually

If I was in the us I would not have voted democrats Bidens first act was to sign away women’s sports rights

Biden is awful.

I'm not particularly articulate or academic or intelligent but how thick do you have to be to not understand that what is happening in Afghanistan is exactly what we have been pointing out from the start of all this. As PP have said, women and girls are oppressed because of their sex. Our sex based protections can not be overruled by Gender Ideology because women and girls will lose those protections. It's never been about being anti Trans. It's always been about the importance of sex. Sex matters greatly and this truly horrendous situation is the horrible reality of that for many many women.

Lots of fighting age men 'rescued' on the US aircraft, could count a few women, literally 1 or 2. Not surprising, but sad. Even more so that we lost men and women out there, yet they have fled leaving the most vulnerable there and evidently arent prepared to fight for their own country.

Thinking more about this, posters such as on page 2 continually post in ways that monster women discussing the oppression they are experts on due to a life’s experience. Thankfully those posts are deleted. But those posting in such a way simply seem to not be able to comprehend that women have a living and constantly updating knowledge of this type of oppression. To deny this would be the act of a misogynist.

The prejudice displayed by those posters, including the snide implications of supporting right wing and now the fucking Taliban, is rather stark in comparison to the evidenced and usually very considered posts by women on this board.

We discuss the impacts on ourselves, our daughters, our sisters, all women (obviously there will always be a NAWALT poster) of prioritising gender not sex. Maybe that is the biggest issue they have, us not centring the males in our discussion, only females, and for that they monster us. Make us out to be the wickedest evil twisted witches of all time - for not centring males and for ever thinking of women and girls and what they go through.

I am rather taken aback with the idea that those posters actually think that they are on the ‘right side of history’ with these posts, because all it does it shines the spotlight on where the hate is coming from.

And it isn’t feminists.

What was life like in Soviet occupied Afghanistan? I've tried looking this up but on'y get statistics about the lives lost in the conflict. But I'm curious about what day to day life was like in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, etc?

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.

I remember that well.

But Jaysmith, please don’t call the Soviet presence an invasion. They were invited in by the government of Afghanistan specifically to counteract the religious fundamentalist insurgents. The woman-hating insurgents were supported by many western governments and individuals— who then acted all shocked when the Taliban duly took over and abolished women’s rights.

In what world have women supporting sex based rights said that people should face discrimination and hate because of their identity. This is exactly the simplistic thinking shown upthread telling us that showing the non existent foundations of gender ideology was not appropriate on this thread and based on hate (with red pills and other denigrating terms used).

Of course it is also horrendous that LGBT people will suffer as well. Even a young teenager pointed this out to me yesterday after seeing numerous tik toks displaying similar ill conceived concepts.

I guess though that is what happens when you think in mantras and thought bites that work on twitter and tik tok. You lose your ability to think critically. You outsource it to self identified thought leaders who repeat trope you wish to hear and make it entertaining rather than actually seeking to find a grain of truth and build on it.

Any person who thinks a woman discussing sex/gender approves of the Taliban’s attitude towards LGBT people needs to start thinking for themselves and reading what women are actually saying. This is a great example of just how misogynistic the trans movement can be and if you believe it, you too are soaked in ideological thinking.

Time to reclaim perspective. I hope it is not too late.

Should anyone wonder about how Biden feels about women, there was a telling passage in the BBC today:

In his memoir Richard Holbrooke, who was special envoy to Afghanistan in the early Obama years, remembered Mr Biden angrily telling him he was "not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of [Afghan] women's rights... That's not what they're there for".

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58224399

The tribe with talking about sex/gender in Afghanistan is that it all too easily looks like approval for the taliban approach of executing the LGBTQ community (often by brutal methods).

The "don't talk about sex/gender" rhetoric, when women are starkly being oppressed precisely because of their sex, is much like the "don't talk about gun control" rhetoric whenever there's a mass shooting by some nutter who should never have been in possession of a firearm. Of course they don't want us to talk about it, in he same way as the NRA don't want to talk about gun control, when an atrocity that could have been prevented by gun control occurs. These people need to live in a world where they can both deny that sex and sex based oppression is real and square that with not looking like absolute monsters in the face of the most viscous and visceral form of sex based women hating imaginable.

@NonnyMouse1337, your beautiful words need to be on billboards across the country, and projected onto all the houses of government in the UK and the BBC headquarters. I can't stand watching people like Lisa Nandy wringing their hands about Afghanistan, when they contribute to the evisceration of women's rights domestically in their slavish devotion to trans rights activism.

Also wanted to add to those that are sputtering that western sex based rights don't matter to consider going a little bit further with their concern regarding the women of Afganistan. Right now the public is screaming (rightly so) for the women and children to be brought to the UK and North America. So by their logic it would be just fine to rescue these women/girls but yet subject them to continued trauma by forcing them to share change rooms/toilets with males. Have no say in having a male provide counselling or intimate exams even within a rape shelter. Not being able to identify as a pregnant woman, mother, etc. Is that ok for them because now they are no longer in Afganistan, so you no longer care?

I see that on Twitter, the TRA response to gender critical people pointing out the flamin' obvious (ie. That the Taliban, like all other oppressive men that have gone before them for millenia, have no problems figuring out what a woman is) is to say that that means gender critical posters support the Taliban. I mean, come the fuck on!

Plus one idiot who texted the BBC in response to Maya Forstater's interview on radio 5 this morning.