Tag Archive for: women

Report: Muslim Woman Secretly Films Life in Raqqa, Syria under the Islamic State

/in , , , /by

A Syrian woman agreed to carry a hidden camera to film how life is like inside Syria’s northern city of Raqqa, which has been under the control of the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIL or ISIS).

The Clarion Project has published a report titled “Women’s Rights Under Sharia: An overview of the lack of equality and oppression of women under Sharia – the position of women in Muslim majority societies.” The Clarion Project reports:

Sharia law is an Islamic legal system which provides an Islamic alternative to secular models of governance. Women in societies governed by sharia have far fewer rights than women in the West.

Muslim-majority societies have varying degrees of sharia integrated into their law codes, but almost all use sharia to govern family affairs. Sharia courts also exist in a number of Western countries, particularly to adjudicate family law for Muslim citizens.

There is no one overarching authority which determines sharia, nor is there one conception of how women’s rights fit into sharia law.

Different interpretations and laws depending on which of the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence is being used, and the customs of the sects and country in question.

The report was aired on France 2. It shows some French women who decided to move indefinitely to Syria while abandoning their previous lives in France.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from the Facebook page of a Muslim woman living under shariah law. Photo courtesy of  The Clarion Project.

Liberal BBC Asks, “Is Sport Sexist?” While Promoting Inequality

/in , , /by

It long ago became clear to me that, despite all the pretense, protesting and politicking, no one who has ever seriously thought about equality actually believes in it. When making this case, one could point to how Eric Holder’s DOJ is currently suing the Pennsylvania State Police for treating women equally (how dare they!), but there’s perhaps no better example than a recent BBC writer who asks, “Is sport sexist?”

The author, Aimee Lewis, poses the question because there are still sports where the women’s categories don’t precisely correspond to the men’s; for example, she mentions how women gymnasts and swimmers don’t always compete in the same kinds of events, the no-contact rule in women’s lacrosse and how in tennis, “While men play five sets at Grand Slams, women can only compete over three sets.”

Now, the last example well illustrates the convoluted thinking underpinning much of the equality movement. Is the correct way of framing this that “women can only compete over three sets”?

Or it is that men must compete over five?

This is especially relevant since the equality police long ago lobbied for, and succeeded in getting, equal prize money for women at the Grand Slams (Wimbledon, French Open, U.S. Open, Australian Open). In other words, the male players must now work longer for the same pay and thus are actually earning less per hour than the women.

Equality?

The head of the Women’s Tennis Association, Stacey Allaster, was asked about this recently, called it “an old discussion” and said, “[W]e’re ready, willing and able to play five sets if that’s what they’d like us to play.”

Question: Years ago, did Allaster merely say, “We’re ready, willing and able to accept equal prize money if that’s what they’d like to offer”?

No, she zealously lobbied for it.

Why isn’t she lobbying now for equal work for her players’ equal pay? Sure, it’s human nature to want the benefits others have but not their liabilities. But if you really believe in Equality™, you don’t just shout the word in an effort to institute a different model of inequality, one that benefits you or your agenda.

Having said this, I agree with Lewis’ implication: sport is “sexist.” After all, there is a separate realm of athletics that’s protected from the best competition and is only available to one sex. It is, of course, called women’s sports.

This isn’t just snark. There’s a simple answer to any feminist complaint about inequality in sports: You want the men’s money, exposure, standards, respect or something else?

Compete in men’s sports.

And women have the opportunity. Golfers Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have received “sponsor’s exemptions” to play in PGA (men’s) events. Women have tried out for the NBA and have attempted to work their way up to baseball’s major leagues through the farm system. The door, Ms. Allaster, is open — you just have to be ready, willing and, most importantly, able to walk through it.

The point is this: It’s silly and hypocritical to lobby for equality within an inherently unequal system while simultaneously supporting that system. And if you do, do you really believe in equality in principle? Or only as ploy?

To arbitrarily say that female athletes should earn the same as male ones is like saying that lightweight boxers should have the same purses as heavyweights. It’s like saying the best handicapped “differently abled” athletes (as in the Special Olympics) should not only get paid, but they should earn the same as the able-bodied. And what of elite high-school athletes? The mile record for 15-year-old boys is better than the women’s world record, and the boys’ American high-school record is considerably better. And with some variation, these gaps hold across sports, yet most of these hard-working male athletes will never succeed in the men’s professional ranks and will never earn even what the women do. Should these young sportsmen not only be paid but be compensated as handsomely as the pros?

The answer is simple: If the market — which is just economic democracy expressed through purchasing decisions — valued events for the handicapped or juniors as highly as it does professional men’s sports, those arenas would command the same revenues. The same is true of women’s sports, of course, but in that case we’re expected to offer a special dispensation from the market forces that apply to anyone and everyone else. We’re also supposed to ignore professions in which women are paid more, such as modeling, in which 2013’s 10 top-earning female models commanded 10 times as much as their male counterparts.

Equality?

The reason why heavyweight boxers have always received more money and exposure (satisfied the market more) than lightweights is because the heavyweight world champion is the world champion. This is the same reason men’s professional sports command greater revenue and exposure than athletic arenas for juniors, the handicapped or collegians — or for women. The best male athletes are the best athletes. Other sports categories exist to provide other people with opportunities to compete, have fun and build character. They are not jobs programs.

The truth is that not just sport but all of nature’s and man’s world is a place defined by varying degrees of quality, not equality. This is no doubt why the Bible barely mentions the notion, except when referring to weights and measures. It’s also why I tend to doubt that anyone who has ever pondered equality deeply actually believes in it. It sure is a great rallying cry, though, when trying to overturn the status quo and institute a special-interest-group favoring system of inequality.

For this reason it actually would be beneficial to eliminate sex-specific categories in sports, let everyone compete together and allow the cream to rise to the top. After all, to use a twist on Lincoln’s observation about laws, the best way to eliminate a bad social movement is to apply its tenets strictly. If we actually had to live with the reality of “equality” instead of just its rhetoric, lobbying for equality might go out the window really, really fast.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Liberated Women and the Traditional Family

/in , , , , /by

Photo from Best of Feminist Memes.

My generation, born in the late 1930s and the 1940s, has witnessed a dramatic change in the role and the rights of women in America. A significant result of the women’s liberation movement is a change in the role of traditional marriage that was reported in early September.

If you count a generation as spanning 20 years,” wrote Terence P. Jeffery, an editor of CNSNews.com, “then approximately 36 percent of the American generation born from 1993 through 2012—which has begun turning 21 this year and will continue turning 21 through 2033—were born to unmarried mothers.”

By comparison, Jeffrey noted that “Back in 1940, only 3.8 percent of American babies were born to unmarried mothers. By 1960, it was still only 5.3 percent.” There was a time when being a single mother was regarded as a reflection of the woman’s moral values. How a society deals with issues affecting the family as its single most important factor reflects its attitudes regarding marriage.

“It is a statistical fact that the institution of the family,” wrote Jeffrey, “has been collapsing in American over the past 45 years.”

Another statistic has significance as well. Today 51% of the U.S. population is single. A new generation of Americans, men and women, have decided that a committed relationship holds little allure.

The call for women’s rights has a long history. In 1794, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” She would have felt at home in today’s society. After affairs with two men, giving birth to a daughter by one of them, she married William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. She died ten days after giving birth to a daughter, Mary Shelley, who grew up to be the author of “Frankenstein.”

Militant political action in Britain began with the formation of the Woman’s Social and Political Union in 1903. Following World War I when women participated in the war industries and support services, they were granted the right to vote in 1918, but it would take until 1928 for the age to be lowered to 21. In the United States in 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton led a Women’s Rights Convention followed in 1863 of the Women’s National Loyal League by Susan B. Anthony who wrote and submitted a proposed right-to-vote amendment in 1878. It would take until 1920 for it to be ratified as the 19th Amendment.

feminist-meme23

Photo courtesy of Best of Feminist Memes.

The women’s rights movement as we know it gained momentum in the 1960s. It was led by a feminist, fellow writer and friend, Betty Friedan, who was also a committed Leftist and, in 1966, she would help create the National Organization for Women (NOW). In 1971, the National Women’s Political Caucus emerged, led by Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem. Other groups were created as well. The effort to secure an Equal Rights Amendment, however, failed.

Aside from political rights, the issue that most concerned feminists was reproductive rights with the repeal of laws against abortion being the priority. The issue was decided, not by Congress or the states, but by a 1973 decision of the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, that ruled 7-2 that the 14th Amendment extended a right of privacy and by extension the right of a woman to opt for an abortion.

That decision freed women both within and outside of marriage to abort an unwanted child. Unforeseen by the Court, was the rise of single-parent families led primarily by women.

As Jeffery noted “In the latest annual report to Congress on “Welfare Indicators and High Risk Factors,” the Department of health and Human Services pointed to the high rate of births to unmarried mothers, saying ‘data on non-marital births are important since historically a high proportion of welfare recipients first became parents outside of marriage.’”

We have reached a point in just over a few decades in which the government, through bad economic policies and a myriad number of programs, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, and others, has produced 109,631,000 people receiving benefits. They represent 35.4 percent of the overall population.

That’s a long way from the traditional family and it means that half of the working population is providing the funds for those who are unemployed or have stopped looking for work thanks to a stagnate economy.

The single-parent family led by women has denied generations of the young men they are raising the male role models they need to understand that being a father is as great a responsibility as being a mother.

Men have become dispensable except as sperm donors.

Male values of courage, comradeship, and leadership have to be learned from sources outside the single-mother unit.

Then, too, the feminist goal of being in the workplace also frequently means that pre-school children’s early formative years are handed over to strangers in childcare centers whether they come from one or two-parent families. The economy has required that both parents have to work—if work can be found in a society where more than 92 million Americans are unemployed or have, as noted above, ceased looking for a job.

This is not a screed against women’s rights. It is a look at the consequences of the goals feminists have fought to achieve over the past decades.

It’s not about their right to vote or to secure an education to achieve success in the business sector.

It’s about generations of young men and women growing up in a society where a “father” is not an integral part of the “family” and the price our society pays for that.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Traditional families are still best

The War on Poverty Has Been a Colossal Flop

Carly Fiorina is redefining feminism

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from the Best Feminist Memes.

Sarasota, Florida hosting Female Wounded Warriors Retreat on September 16-19, 2014

/in , , , , , /by

“Women veterans are increasing in numbers for military service and will continue to do so….”

Georgie Alfano-Cronk

Georgie Alfano-Cronk

Annually the Sarasota County Veterans Commission (SCVC) recognizes the Veteran of the Year, Woman Veteran of the Year and Auxiliary Person of the Year. In 2010, the Female Veteran of the Year Award went to Ms. Georgie Alfano-Cronk.

Far too often, when someone receives an award they tend to quietly return home and place their award on a shelf to just collect dust. But not so with Alfano-Cronk. Alfano-Cronk is a U.S. Army disabled woman veteran.

Alfano-Cronk states, “We have many ‘women warriors’ that need our recognition and assistance in transitioning back into their communities or back into the work force”. Alfano-Cronk has become a passionate advocate for America’s women veterans.

Alfano-Crock notes, “No matter where our female veterans are in their lives; whenever they need help navigating the VA system or just need an ear to listen to one of their concerns, they dial my phone number. As a former police officer and retired New York State Correction Sergeant I can easily look at a veteran’s life and view their problems without passing judgment on them.” She knows how hard the road of life can be because she herself has been there and done that.

By 2011, she had convinced the SCVC that a special committee should be named and formed to assist woman veterans after military service. She was nominated for and became the Chairwoman of this newly formed committee.

Fast forward from November 2011 to the present when Alfano-Crock discovered a not-for-profit organization, which loves veterans and their families as much as she does, and partnered with them. This organization is the Professionals Assisting Military Families & Friends (PAMFF). Working together the SCVC and PAMFF decided to have a free retreat for America’s women warriors. The retreat allows women wounded warriors a safe environment to share their transitional concerns and receive free counseling and access to support groups after the retreat is over.

Then there was that little problem of fundraising for the retreat.

SCVC and PAMFF knew early on that they wanted to make this a totally free event. The PAMFF committees, without any major contacts or knowledge of grants or fundraising, began to solicit donations from veterans’ organizations and community members. But would that be enough financial support? As the applications starting rolling in from women veterans across America, the PAMFF selection committee, decided that none of the women veterans should be turned away and so the original number of 10 applicants allowed to participate in the event increased to 15 women veterans. There is still a waiting list and applications are no longer being accepted.

The reaction from women veterans clearly shows a need to support, recognize, and help them as much as there is for their male counterparts.

Alfano-Crock notes that since women veterans were trained to be strong and independent, like their male counterparts, that often a women veteran will not ask for help until she is in a full blown, major crisis. And often they do not know where to find the proper resources to help them or to move ahead. Women veterans have a tendency to fall through the cracks of an already saturated VA health care system.

Alfano-Crock is adamant that female veteran’s needs are “totally different” than the needs of our male veterans and wounded warriors.

Women naturally process life’s ups and downs differently than men do and need a different type of an environment to vent and must have a trust system in place with a counselor prior to sharing their personal stories and unique concerns.

From Tuesday, September 16th to Friday, September 19th, 2014 fifteen “woman warriors” will share their lives with each other, and with PAMFF’s licensed clinicians and female community volunteers and form “battle buddy relationships” that will hopefully blossom and grow. “After all,” says Alfano-Crock, “the most therapeutic sharing sessions are those that are done in a nurturing environment with other veterans present who have gone through the same sequence of events and realize the type of traumas that often accompany military life and war. No one understands a veteran better than another veteran who has ‘walked the walk’.”

RETREAT INFORMATION:

Event Title: “A Season of Change – You Can!” 1st Annual Retreat for Female Veterans.
What: Topics for discussion will be: MST, TBI, PTS, Balance in One’s Life, Heeding the Red Flags, Interviewing and Job Hunting Techniques, Meditation, Resources, and many more.
When: September 16th – 19th
Where: Christian Retreat Conference Center in Bradenton, FL

EDITORS NOTE: Applications are closed for this retreat. For any additional questions or information you may contact Georgie Alfano-Cronk at (941) 266-2769 or PAMFF at (941) 224-1094. PAMFF still needs financial assistance to keep the retreat free for the 15 attendees. PAMFF must secure approximately $400.00 per person in donations. If you wish you may send a donation to PAMFF, P.O. Box 2171, Sarasota, FL 34230. The featured image is of Ladda Tammy Duckworth an American woman wounded warrior and politician who has been the U.S. Representative for Illinois’s 8th congressional district since 2013.

Nothing Essential About Essence

/in , , /by

I wrote a column three years ago titled, “Black Women No Longer Have Their Essence.” My point was that Essence, the pre-eminent magazine for Black women, had become irrelevant and an embarrassment to the Black community.

Unfortunately, Essence has continued its decent into irrelevancy.

For 20 years, Essence has sponsored an annual party during the July 4th holiday known as the Essence Music Festival (EMF). According to their website, the EMF, “known as the party with a purpose, is an annual music festival which started in 1995 as a one-time event to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Essence, a magazine aimed primarily towards African-American women. It is the largest event celebrating African-American culture and music in the United States.”

According to media accounts, “…In 2008, for the first time since its 1995 inception, the festival was not produced by the original producer team. Instead, Essence Communications, owner of the festival and the Essence magazine, contracted Rehage Entertainment Inc. A new main stage facelift was designed by production designer Stefan Beese.” Essence Communications and Essence Magazine are no longer Black-owned, they are owned by Time Inc.

Maybe this would explain why EMF contracted with Rehage Entertainment Inc. and Stefan Beese to produce the event and to build a new stage. They couldn’t find a Black firm capable of taking on these contracts? If they need some referrals, I would be glad to send them a list of Black people who could do the job, if they are truly interested in the “empowerment” of the Black community as they claim.

There was also no diversity in the programming. Of their 86 “empowerment” speakers during their various daytime panels, all were media personalities, journalist, or liberal politicians. There were maybe three people who one could argue were businessmen, but that’s a stretch. As far as I can tell, there were no Republicans invited to participate, as though Essence has no Black female Republican readers?

One panel was about the hair texture of Jay Z and Beyoncé’s baby. Yes, you heard me right; Essence had a whole panel to discuss a child’s nappy hair. One news account said, “Essence Magazine recently hosted an Empowerment Beauty of Confidence panel to comment on the backlash [over the child’s hair]. Essence asked Cynthia Bailey, Kim Kimble, Chenoa Maxwell, Tomiko Frasier Hines, Soledad O’Brien and Wendy Raquel Robinson to comment on the backlash.”

There were no empowerment panels on the women who work in the White House for Obama being paid less than their male counterparts; there were no empowerment panels on why Obama never interviewed a Black female lawyer for the two Supreme Court nominations he made to the Court; there were no empowerment panels on the number of Black kids languishing in the foster care system while Obama wants to throw billions of dollars to support children coming to this country illegally.

In essence, Essence’s continued march towards irrelevancy has nothing to do with them being White-owned. They were well down that road before they were sold. One could make the argument that the articles in Essence have become less substantive after Time Inc. assumed leadership, not that substance was ever their hallmark. How can you talk about “empowerment” without talking about Lynn Hutchings, a State Representative in the Wyoming legislature? She is the first Black female Republican to serve in the state’s history.

How can you talk about “empowerment” without talking about J’Tia Taylor, who has a Ph.D in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois; she started college at the age of 15. How can you talk about “empowerment” without talking about Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, the State Department’s Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs? Ambassador Jenkins has a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Virginia, an LL.M. in international and comparative law from the Georgetown University Law Center, an M.P.A. from the State University of New York at Albany, a J.D. from Albany Law School; and a B.A. from Amherst College. She also attended The Hague Academy for International Law.

You have such accomplished women – Democrats and Republicans – yet Essence is talking about the texture of a child’s hair.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blacks Should Be Thankful There Was An America To Come To