Ok, I saw in the peanut gallery that people have been asking for facts. And given that you've posted plenty of fucking ESSAY-length replies for me to read, here's some text back for you:
(it's nearly 2am and I have work to do tomorrow so this was pretty rushed , but I have included sources if you want to further research anything yourself. Apologies in advance for any typos etc
Women's inferior status and violence toward women in Iraq :
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Rise of so -called "pleasure marriages" (basically, OK-ed prostitution)
This isn't quite the same as "normal" prostitution though. The woman (unsurprisingly) has less of a say in the whole thing than the man does.
1. Married men can enter into it, although married women can't
2. Men can end the contract at any time, the woman can't
3. often the women are threatened or blackmailed into accepting it to avoid rape or violence
This is also related to a massive trafficking problem in Iraq and across the middle east
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-05-04-pleasure-marriage_x.htm*****
Female Genital Mutilation
Practised on girls as young as 4 and involves the removal of the clitoris, but occasionally also the inner and outer labia.
THe very fact that this is done to control women's desires, make them "clean" and make them more attractive to men is enough to show that this is sexist, even when you ignore the actual violence of it:
“She has told me about the terrible pain, how much she bled that night and how ashamed she was to tell her family she was hurting. She couldn’t talk to her mother, because her mother was the one who’d taken her to be cut. She felt alone and scared.” (this is from someone growing up in Kirkuk, Iraq)
Long-term health consequences can result from the procedures, including infection, painful sexual intercourse, psychological trauma, and sterility.
Campaigner against FGM in Iraq - I think this speaks for itself. Clearly this is a society strongly AGAINST what this person is fighting for:
“I’ve had threats via text message, by phone, by letter, on the internet,” she says. “People come up to me in the street and insult me and political parties have issued threats.”
Her offices were broken into in July last year, and insults daubed on the wall. “I can’t really say what was written because it was too obscene. But one of the things written was ‘You should be scared for your lives, watch out’.”
Requests to the police to provide protection have so far been fruitless.
(and before you snipe back with a "not all Iraqi men support FGM", yes, I know that. Iraq =/= all Iraqis. We're talking legally & politically as well as socially.
http://www.madre.org/index/press-room-4/news/culture-alone-fails-to-account-for-female-genital-mutilation-420.htmlhttp://www.rferl.org/content/Female_Genital_Mutilation_Said_To_Be_Widespread_In_Iraqs_Irans_Kurdistan/1507621.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/fighting-against-female-genital-mutilation-in-iraq-8640121.htmlhttp://en.wadi-online.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1041:press-release--female-genital-mutilation-in-iraq-study-shows-fgm-common-in-kirkuk&catid=15:presseerklaerungen&Itemid=109*****
Forced marriages
Yes, forced marriage. Not just "arranged marriages"
These women - sorry, girls, in many cases - have no say.
The rates of forced marriages of under 16s have also increased. This, in turn, can lead to higher rates of death during childbirth, as “girls between 15 and 18 are twice as likely to die during pregnancy and while giving birth than women between the ages of 20 and 24.”
Please don't tell me 14 yer old girls want or understand what they're getting into here. They're being given away by their fathers. At 15? Is that really necessary? Whatever pathetic justifications you try to spin on this ("oh, the father is just thinking, now I will pass you on to a good man who will take care of you"), that is completely ridiculous when we're talking about girls who haven't yet even reached the age of 18. A decent father would keep his children at home wherever possible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/world/middleeast/more-suicides-in-iraq-region-where-arranged-marriage-is-common.html?_r=0http://witnesshr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/forced-marriages-of-girls-rise-in-iraq.html*****
Legal position of women
When Yusra* arrived at one of our shelters, she told a harrowing story of brutal abuse at the hands of her husband and her father. The shelter was the one place she could turn. Under the new constitution, she knew she wouldn’t get justice from the religious courts, where her testimony is worth half of her husband’s and where the laws allow the husband to “discipline” his wife.
That's not sexist? A woman's testimony is worth only half of that of her husband?
They came for Dr Khaula al-Tallal in a white Opel car after she took a taxi home to the middle class district of Qadissiya in Iraq's holy city of Najaf. She worked for the medical committee that examined patients to assess them for welfare benefit. Crucially, however, she was a woman in a country where being a female professional increasingly invites a death sentence.
As al-Tallal, 50, walked towards her house, one of three men in the Opel stepped out and raked her with bullets.
I suppose you'd say that the reason women don't have jobs in Iraq is just to keep them safe in the home right? Safe from the bullets and bombs?
If you really believe that, just becuase women are less likely to be killed by a sniper, they are being kept safe from violence, then have a read of this:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/08/iraq.peterbeaumont*****
Honor killings and domestic violence
If the women of Iraq are happy with being away from the bombs and the bullets and think it's all fucking great and brilliant, why the need for so many women's shelters and underground railroads to help them flee the country?
A UNICEF survey of adolescent girls aged 15–19, covering the years 2002-2009, asked them if they think that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances; 57% responded yes.
In 2011, nearly half of girls aged 10 to 14 were exposed to violence at least once by a family member, and nearly half of married women were exposed to at least one form of spousal violence, mostly emotional, but also physical and sexual, according to a survey by the government and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).
Often ends in death:
2012
a man drenched his three daughters in boiling water and then shot them because he suspected them of having sex. An autopsy later showed they were all virgins. He received a sentence of just two years because of a stipulation in Iraq’s penal code which reduces murder to a maximum of three years in prison if a man surprises his wife or female dependants “in a state of adultery”Please read that again, Les. Even if that had been an isolated case (hmm...), the fact that he received such a short sentence, the REASON why he received a short sentence, and the very fact that it was even deemed necessary to check if they were virgins afterwards... all this points towards women being the inferior class in Iraq.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/feature-stories/trapped-violence-women-iraq-20090420*****
War-related violence
Another "point" you've made is that women are kept safe in their homes away from the dangers of war. Sure, they may be statistically much less likely to be hit by a sniper, but a bomb in a mosque or a market place is pretty indescriminatory, and there's plenty of evidence to show that women WERE direct victims of the war
Yanar Mohammed comes to the following conclusion :
"According to our estimates, no fewer than 30 women were executed by the militias in Bagdad and in the suburbs. During the first ten days of November 2007, more than 150 unclaimed women's corpses, most of them decapitated, mutilated, or having evidence of extreme torture, were processed through the Bagdad morgue."
Anyway, is it REALLY just out of kind-heartedness and a desire to protect the women that they're kept in the kitchen?
Nuha Salim :
"The insurgents and militias do not want us in the professional sphere for various reasons: some because they believe women were born to stay at home - and cook and clean -- and others because they say that it is contrary to Islam that a man and woman should find themselves in the same place if they are not related."
When women;s illiteracy rates are more than double that of the male population, I think it's pretty clear that it's not just to protect the women. It's a cultural thing, yes, but it's a sexist cultural thing. Just as the "separate spheres" of Victorian men and women were sexist. A different culture or a different era, of course. But that doesn't make it any less sexist. Just more understandable.
Besides, even if women HAD been protected from the bullets and bombs, does that justify the rest of the abuse and gender-specific crimes and violations they've been subject to (and still are subject to)?
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/18/opinion/iraq-war-women-salbihttp://www.madre.org/index/press-room-4/news/a-decade-of-occupation-for-iraqi-women-862.htmlhttp://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/monitoring-violence-against-women-iraqhttp://x.dawn.com/2013/04/09/post-conflict-women-iraq-hope-and-violence/Looking forward to your response.
