The Satanic plush toy and its evil paymaster.
Goddamnit.
By now you’ve probably heard about Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher in Sudan who’s facing up to 40 lashes for allowing her class of 7-year-olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed.
I’ve been hoping this idiocy would evaporate quickly and Ms. Gibbons would be released, but today the word is that she’s been formally charged with insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred.
In today’s piece over at the BBC, a spokesman from the Foreign Office is quoted as saying “the first step [is] to ‘understand the rationale behind the charge.’” Right. Because it sure as hell isn’t religious sensibilities.
I’ve been watching this case for a couple of days, and I simply don’t believe that it is really some kind of unthinkable offense in Islamic culture to name a stuffed animal Mohammed. Adel Darwish writes about his childhood in Alexandria, when Sudanese Muslim children routinely named their pets and toys Mohammed, Ali, Fatima, and so forth. At Comment Is Free, one of Gibbons’ colleagues in Khartoum writes that none of the parents at the school raised any objection at all to the children’s naming the bear Mohammed. And a seven-year-old boy in the class tells reporters that it was his idea to name the bear Mohammed (after himself, not the Prophet) and the other kids agreed.
Nevertheless,
.. Sudan’s top clerics have called for the full measure of the law to be used against Mrs Gibbons and labelled her actions part of a Western plot against Islam.
“What has happened was not haphazard or carried out of ignorance, but rather a calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam,” the Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas said a statement.
Yeah, right.
As the Foreign Office would have said if it weren’t the Foreign Office and thus constrained to be all diplomatic and shit, “What the fuck is going on here?”
Sudan is ruled by a murderous theocracy that relies on Islamic fanaticism and xenophobia to prop up its regime — as well as to maintain its genocidal war on its own citizens in Darfur. Ten years ago the New York Times described Sudan’s National Islamic Front as “an ingenious hybrid, a cross between a theocracy and a Mafia syndicate.” More than one person has suggested that this business with Gibbons is essentially a kidnapping, with the British schoolteacher serving as hostage for something the Sudanese government wants from Britain (though what, I don’t know). Or maybe it’s just an opportunity for the clerics to stir up some anti-West paranoia, all the better to distract the populace from the fact that they’re being ruled by a bunch of corrupt homicidal maniacs.
Whatever the case, Gillian Gibbons is a pawn with the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Brits need to get her the fuck out of there.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Godbags on November 28, 2007, 4:08 pm EST
18 Comments »
My family is trying to talk me into coming back to life. They liked having me alive — I guess it’s some kind of love thing — and with the holidays approaching they’ve been pressuring me pretty heavily to climb back into the ol’ meat suit. My mother keeps calling me up in the Smoking Lounge, talking about Thanksgiving dinner and Molly and Christmas trees and the various advantages to being alive as opposed to dead in a tent with an ex-parrot who has a pumpkin for a head.
Last night I got online again and cruised around the blogulofeminewsosphere, trying to reacquaint myself with the world. Having spent the past several weeks in a kind of self-induced psychotic break, it was a bit of a shock to be plunged back into the harsh glare:
A gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail because she was out without a male guardian. Her husband protests the ruling yet still claims that Saudi society — in which women have virtually no legal rights and are the wards and chattel of their male relatives — is “very respectful of women.”
Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., no doubt jealous of the Saudi success story, are brainwashing their daughters from birth to think of themselves as the property of their fathers.
Some freak in Texas editorializes that the wearing of pants and unveiled hair has “led to the slow whorification of ladyhood.”
An 11-year-old gang-rape victim in Georgia (U.S.) is accused of being a lying slut.
Rape victims in Hungary are denied justice by courts and police who maintain that women who are raped are really just prostitutes or (you guessed it) lying sluts.
Western expatriate sexist creeps in Moscow are thrilled to discover that “women’s lib never happened here.” Indeed: violence against women in Russia is so pervasive that 70% of married women are abused by their husbands. Political will and funding to deal with the problem are virtually non-existent. Moscow, a city of 10 million, does not have a single shelter for battered women.
At Jets games in New York male fans form gauntlets and demand that any passing woman expose her breasts; the women are spat on and pelted with beer bottles for refusing. (One woman who cooperated was subsequently threatened with arrest for indecent behavior — yes, she was reprimanded, not the hundreds of men surrounding her.)
The Australian teenagers who gang-raped a girl and then sold the video of it as homemade pornography are released without serving any jail time.
The rape nightmare in the Congo continues unabated; many hospitalized victims are so badly injured their internal plumbing no longer works.
A feminist activist in Iran is sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned as punishment for advocating women’s rights.
Less than 60% of Americans believe unequivocally that women should play an equal role with men in public life.
Maureen Dowd refers to Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix, Chris Matthews calls her a she-devil, and a McCain barnacle calls her a bitch. (I believe “lying slut” is reserved for rape victims.)
The U.N. reports that most of the 800 million illiterate adults in the world are women; most of the 100 million children not in school are girls. Women earn three-quarters of what men do and their unpaid labor would, if calculated, equal trillions of dollars. Women hold only 17% of the parliamentary seats in the world, but they constitute 70% of the people living in poverty.
Yep, the world is still a shit pie for women. And that’s by no means a systematic survey; it’s just what caught my eye in the hour or two I spent getting caught up around the tubes. My reaction is twofold:
- I want to go back into the tent with Raoul.
- We need more feminism in the world. A lot more.
On the first point I need not elaborate; long-time readers will have observed that I have a tendency to disappear (into a tent, the Smoking Lounge, France, what have you) when The Horror Of It All starts to be too much.
I don’t need to belabor the second point either, but I do have something to add. Look again at that list of news items. That’s why I have no tolerance for anti-feminists. None. Zero. Feminism is the belief that women are human; it is the movement to secure their full human rights. It’s about stopping the rapes and the lashings and the mutilations and the oppression and the abuse. If you think that the best way for you to spend your time in this world is by working against feminism, then I’ve got no time for you.
And that goes for all anti-feminists, whatever the variety. MRAs with miniature dicks? Check. Christian fundamentalists who think Saudi Arabia sounds like Big Rock Candy Mountain? Check. So-called liberal dudes who become annoyed every time they’re asked to consider women’s rights? Check.
And the women, too, alas — though I don’t mean those true believers who have been Stockholmed into accepting their own God-ordained inferiority. No, I mean the women who cynically capitalize on the popularity of anti-feminism for the sake of their own self-aggrandizement. (You know the shtick — from Ann Coulter to Wendy McElroy to Toni Bentley to the trolls who haunt the blogosphere posing as “feminist critics.”) Since they are also women under patriarchy I usually hold my fire, but do I have time for them? That would be no, Bob.
So the next time some anti-feminist goblin shows up here and I promptly zap its tiny ass into a smoldering cinder, you’ll know why. I got no time for those people.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Why We Still Need Feminism, Reclusive Leftist, Recommended, Holidays, Raoul on November 22, 2007, 2:11 pm EST
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Grendel’s Mother struts the runway in her Jimmy Choos at the 6th century Denmark Annual Fashion Show and Mead Fest.
Never mind, I already know the answer.
So there I was, working at the computer, glancing at the news, trying to get my filing papers in for the next cloning project, when across the bow came this ad for Beowulf, the exciting new shit movie by some shit director, featuring Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother. It’s Grendel’s Mother as you’ve never seen her before — indeed, as you never would have expected to see her in a gazillion years, given that she’s a lake monster whose salient characteristic is a ferocious tendency to rip people to shreds. Grendel’s Mother is many things (vengeful, powerful, terrifying), but sex-aaay ain’t one of them.
Until now.
The unwritten but unsecret rule in Hollywood, as in the rest of contemporary Western culture, is that if it’s female, it’s gotta be fuckable. Exceptions can be made, such as in the case of outer space creatures (Alien, for example, and while I haven’t seen the sequels I don’t believe the alien ever appears in stilettos and thong to do battle with Sigourney Weaver in a vat of baby oil, though I could be wrong), but these are rare. A powerful female who can’t be reduced to a butt naked fuck-me Barbie doll is a noxious and unnatural thing, too awful to contemplate, like Hillary Clinton or Janet Reno. So instead of Grendel’s Mother the Monster of the Mere, we get Grendel’s Mother the Super-Hot Naked MILF with Huge Breasts and Stiletto Heels That Appear To Be Growing Right Out Of Her Feet.
What the hell is up with those heels, anyway? Is she wearing shoes, or are those bone spurs? And where did the filmmakers get the idea that stilettos would be the appropriate fashion statement for a 6th century Danish monster?
But what am I saying? None of that matters. Literary fidelity, stylistic coherence, basic logic — these are trifles. Here’s all that matters:
In essence, Beowulf is porn for 13-year-olds, as it caters to two of the most basic, primal fantasies of hetero adolescent males: slaying a dragon and bedding Angelina Jolie…
Sexualized to the point of absurdity, this Beowulf is obsessed with heaving bosoms, vaginal caves, sultry demons stroking phallic swords that melt in their hands, and warriors fighting monsters in the buff, this last example composed in such a way that threats to the penis are plentiful but images of the member are always carefully obscured, Austin Powers-style. What this says about the film’s target audience is clear: boobs and violence are cool, shots of the male crotch are not.
Is he describing Beowulf or Western civilization?
As far as I’m concerned, this movie is just another data point for my thesis that popular culture is all geared towards 13-year-old boys. Boobsandviolence, boobsandviolence, boobsandviolence, relieved only by the occasional change-of-pace foray into violenceandboobs.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry, Recommended on November 19, 2007, 1:35 am EST
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Raoul sporting his new head. Thanks for the suggestion, Sis!
Raoul and I are back from the Himalayas. Got a bunch of stuff to catch up on, and I owe you guys an anthropology post, eh? Eh. (Vocal mannerism courtesy of two weeks in a tent with Raoul. When he was a parrot he lived with a family in Montreal.)
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Reclusive Leftist, Various and Sundry, Raoul on November 6, 2007, 1:46 am EST
36 Comments »
