A Terrible Day for Women in the News
As I scanned my Facebook news feed this morning, the headlines revealed a disturbing trend: Misogyny, alive and well around the world, from Cairo to the U.S. to the Congo to Pakistan. The more I scrolled, the worse it got.
Storified by Marie K. Shanahan · Fri, Nov 02 2012 11:53:20
“Over the recent four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, more than 1,000 sexual harassment complaints were filed in Egypt.”
In response to the growing incidents of sexual harassment in Cairo — and to police indifference — activists launched a “Be a Man” campaign, and vigilante activists are taking to the streets and attacking harassers with spray paint.
“I learned quickly that the enlisted females who do well are the ones who keep their mouths shut,” said Sergeant Smith, who filed a formal complaint last month charging that the Air Force has turned a blind eye to pervasive sexual attacks and harassment against women. “It’s a career-ender to come forward.”
This story, shared by the Women’s Media Center left me in tears. It is difficult to read.
“When a girl is asking for water in such a way, she wants sex,” one man, aged 58, told the researchers of a girl who’d entered his shop looking for water. “So I took her in the middle of my shop. I think she liked it, because her body accepted me to enter.” He said that her voice provoked him.
Nearly a third of men told the researchers that women “sometimes want to be raped and that when a woman is raped she may enjoy it.” Nearly half of all men surveyed think “if a woman does not physically resist when forced to have sex that it is not rape.” Nearly half of the men surveyed said a man should reject his wife if she has been raped.”
From ABC News: Parents Attack Daughter With Acid For Talking to Boy
A teenage girl in Kotli, a small town in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was allegedly killed by her parents after they attacked her with acid for talking to a boy.
“In many rural areas of Pakistan, deeply conservative social traditions forbid girls to speak or be seen with boys who are not related by blood.”
It is 2012. For how many more centuries will women and girls suffer due to ignorance and oppression?