Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The continuing erasure of women - Afghanistan

58 replies

DomesticatedZombie · 07/05/2022 22:48

'...the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue announced that all women would have to cover their face in public, and laid out an escalating set of punishments for anyone refusing to comply.'

Solidarity with the women of Afghanistan.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-61363969

OP posts:
Fishwishy · 08/05/2022 09:18

It's heartbreaking but this section of Mumsnet was all ready to allign themselves with groups like this with access to single sex toilets last week. I said last week we needed to be careful alligning ourselves with advocates of requiring fave covering or veil and here we are.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 08/05/2022 09:50

Fishwishy · 08/05/2022 09:18

It's heartbreaking but this section of Mumsnet was all ready to allign themselves with groups like this with access to single sex toilets last week. I said last week we needed to be careful alligning ourselves with advocates of requiring fave covering or veil and here we are.

Please provide evidence showing where women on here were aligning themselves with the Taliban?

Or are you suggesting that feminists should start discriminating against Muslim women because we have different perspectives on face coverings etc?

RufustheFloralmissingreindeer · 08/05/2022 09:55

mrsoverton

women having singles sex toilets for over a century and wishing to retain that single sex right laid down in the law of their country are EXACTLY like the taliban

MrsOvertonsWindow · 08/05/2022 10:04

Oh Rufus, I had to read that several times.... I need a coffee.

Whatwouldscullydo · 08/05/2022 10:17

It just never ends does it. Always soke other way to opress or excuse the assault ir murder if women . What are these men so afraid of if women go to a park ffs

Fucks sake.

DomesticatedZombie · 08/05/2022 10:32

aweegc · 07/05/2022 23:43

BBC R4 managed to report it as burka earlier today and then "women have to veil" multiple times throughout the day, with "face veil" also used (I've been ill in bed all day with the radio on all day). I don't know who writes the news but "veil" and "face veil" (hijab and niqab) are not the same as burqa.

It seemed like someone didn't know the first thing about Muslim attire (not hard to find out) or they were trying to soften it somehow. And my ill brain could not twist itself around why.

the BBC article had a visual aid with all different types of veil/face covering shown and named. Frankly, I don't think the finer details matter too much - the issue is whether this is a freely made choice or whether it's compelled.

OP posts:
RufustheFloralmissingreindeer · 08/05/2022 10:34

MrsOvertonsWindow · 08/05/2022 10:04

Oh Rufus, I had to read that several times.... I need a coffee.

Oh it’s horrible when that happens, apologies ☕️

we so need an official sarcasm emoji 😒

DomesticatedZombie · 08/05/2022 10:35

Fishwishy · 08/05/2022 09:18

It's heartbreaking but this section of Mumsnet was all ready to allign themselves with groups like this with access to single sex toilets last week. I said last week we needed to be careful alligning ourselves with advocates of requiring fave covering or veil and here we are.

Eh?

Feminists are 'aligned with the Taliban' now, are we?

Fantastic. Pals with Vlad, funded by the American Xtian Right and now the Taliban! We're just missing a Christmas card from Kim Jong-il and maybe a secret handshake from the Westboro Baptist Church, and I think MN feminists will be the most-befriended group of middle aged women in the world. Amazing. We could practically run the UN.

OP posts:
Pyewhacket · 08/05/2022 10:42

NotAGirl · 08/05/2022 00:02

Heartbreaking its so hard to know what we can do

There is absolutely nothing we can do.

We wasted years on a fruitless military intervention. It cost the lives of 405 British service personel and nearly 3000 injured , some severly , - these where overwhelmingly men. It also cost us £billions. And all for nothing. The Taliban walked back in and are in the process of taking that country back to the middle ages.

Even to give money is pointless. It won't do any good and Afghanistan is just about the most corrupt place on earth.

There are other areas of the world where women are at risk and we can do something, Ukraine is one.

SickSadWorld · 08/05/2022 11:04

It's heartbreaking and infuriating. So many men in this world so desperate to control and possess women. And then you get arseholes blaming women for their own oppression.

theemperorhasnoclothes · 08/05/2022 11:16

DomesticatedZombie · 07/05/2022 23:08

There is this: womenforwomen.org.uk/work-we-do/afghanistan-response

But: 'Afghanistan is currently one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to identify as a woman.' - FRO

It's so offensive.

If gender was a real thing and you could really identify as the opposite 'gender' then there would be no women in Afghanistan, no women, no girls only men and boys.

No-one would identify out of the right to education, out of the right to bodily autonomy, even to the autonomy to decide what to wear.

This is so blindly obvious and yet this sort of offensive crap is spouted. It's imperialist and misogynist and racist. And victim blaming.

You can't identify out of sex based oppression. Sex is more important than gender.

theemperorhasnoclothes · 08/05/2022 11:24

It's the TRAs that are like the Taliban - both wish to remove a biological woman's right to say no.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 08/05/2022 12:07

One of the harms around the language of gender ideology is that it's marred the clear reporting of this news and just what it means for women in Afghanistan. Does the writer even care?

theemperorhasnoclothes · 08/05/2022 12:19

I mean the utter stupidity of that statement.

That statement implies anyone who is treated as a woman in Afghanistan has identified as one and therefore has chosen the way they are treated. That women and girls are choosing not to get an education or that they have an inner belief of their gender as oppressed and unworthy of basic human right.

It's so cruel and offensive and - seems to me - quite similar to the type of thinking the Taliban are using.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 08/05/2022 12:23

Fishwishy may be somewhat distracted from making an appropriate assessment of FWR because of concerns around the parlous state in which men find themselves if they're interested in casual sex.

Through misandry in the medical industry [men] don't have access to hormonal contraceptives and are reliant on condoms for contraception.

It's certainly an interesting viewpoint for someone somehow setting themselves up as an informed arbiter of what individual posters of FWR may/not align with in the matter of political, faith-based, or social terms.

I can't find where you commented last week but that's neither here nor there. To be clear, I decline to be force-teamed with you, Fishwishy, and I reject your characterisation.

luciatrope · 08/05/2022 13:17

Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue

Fucking hell.

DomesticatedZombie · 08/05/2022 16:11

Article from MSF:

msf.org.uk/article/number-patients-unprecedented-my-return-afghanistan?dclid=CO-CuKWW0PcCFQakUQod8T4PYQ

'MSF is running five medical projects in Afghanistan today, several of them women and children focused'

OP posts:
TheABC · 09/05/2022 10:58

Amazing. We could practically run the UN.

We'd do a better job than the current lot.

Grantanow · 09/05/2022 11:03

The Taliban are a backward and uneducated cult but for the moment it's their country to run as they see fit.

RhannionKPSS · 09/05/2022 11:29

Fishwishy · 08/05/2022 09:18

It's heartbreaking but this section of Mumsnet was all ready to allign themselves with groups like this with access to single sex toilets last week. I said last week we needed to be careful alligning ourselves with advocates of requiring fave covering or veil and here we are.

How dare you compare the women on here with the Taliban. 🤬

endofthelinefinally · 09/05/2022 11:35

Not allowed education. Not allowed to have a job. So no female doctors nurses or midwives.
Not allowed to be treated by a male doctor.
No contraception or health care for women.
Married off at a young age to older men.
Women and girls are going to be dying in childbirth and from other conditions not diagnosed/ treated.
It is barbaric.
I am certain none of them are identifying into being girls or women.

Plexie · 09/05/2022 13:40

Did anyone see this programme on ITV last night?

www.itv.com/hub/afghanistan-no-country-for-women-exposure/10a2083a0001

One aspect of which I was unaware, is the fate of women in abusive relationships. They don't have access to refuges and some are committing suicide - or trying to. The reporter visited a hospital where one woman had tried to kill herself by setting herself on fire (she died a month later) and another had drunk bleach. Horrific.

TeamSukhareva · 09/05/2022 19:27

My reading of Afghan women's tweets is that these fine details do matter.
1: the new law is directed at the mahram, (male relative) not the woman. Afghan women are not only being imprisoned in their homes, but reduced to total dependence on men.
2: the blue nylon chador with a mesh to see through was occasionally worn by a small number of women, but for most Afghan women it's not traditional.

3: the black abayas with a hood to cover the face completely, worn with a niqab (facemask) are completely foreign. Specifically they are Saudi style.

4: (not exactly a detail) the Taliban are from schools in Pakistan and many Afghans feel they are being invaded by Pakistan.

Artichokeleaves · 09/05/2022 19:30

Yeah let's see a group of female people put on pronoun badges, cut their hair and put on trousers, announce that they identify as men and be immediately excused the misogynistic punishment for the sin of being born female.

Fuck off with this insulting nonsense, it's worn far too bloody thin now. This is reality for women, not a game for spoiled and overprivileged western males to play.

MissMarplesNiece · 09/05/2022 19:38

@Plexie I watched the ITV programme. I cried at the part where the reporter was in hospital with the victims of domestic violence. It's horrific what's happening to women in Afghanistan. I wish there was someway that I could support them, especially those brave women who are doing their best to protest against what the Taliban is doing. I don't know of any organisations in the UK that is either raising money or giving publicity to the conditions women have to endure.