Saturday, February 19, 2011

The WaPo's Glass-Is-Half-Full Report About Tahrir Square Chicks

The delusional Washington Post espies glimmers of women's lib in, of all places, Tahrir Square. The WaPo gal reporter concedes, however, that chicks in Egypt do have some distance to go until they achieve real equality:
Women are far better off in Egypt than some parts of the Arab world. There are no religious police enforcing dress codes as in Iran, or prohibitions against driving as in Saudi Arabia. But Egyptian women are greatly underrepresented in public life and inferior to men before the law. They hold cabinet posts, but no judgeships. They are members of parliament, but have few seats. They occupy many professions, but not all.
Divorces are difficult to obtain and favor men, as do property rights. Women are encouraged to marry and have children early: The legal age of marriage was only recently raised from 16 to 18.

And, every day as they walk down the street, they are reminded of their low status - until Tahrir Square. Egyptian women are sexually harassed to an astonishing degree, groped, ogled, followed by catcalls, behavior that no law forbids. In a 2008 survey, the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights in Cairo found that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women had been harassed at some point.

Though the American television reporter Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted as pro-Mubarak forces whipped up anti-American and anti-journalist frenzy in Tahrir Square, that attack was the brutal exception. Egyptian women who were in the square say they were treated with a tolerance they hardly expected. Woman after woman marveled at that...
I wonder if they "marveled" at the sight of their misogynistic men brutalizing Logan as they (along with members of the army) rescued her from the frenzied mob. I suspect not.

Way to put things in perspective, though, WaPo scribbler. Lara Logan getting roughed up and violated by a throng of men screaming "Jew, Jew"--no biggie; a "brutal exception." De-clitted chicks in abayas, hijabs and niqabs "marveling" at their menfolk's supposed "tolerance" (bound to be a short-lived phenomenon once the far from "tolerant" Brothers grasp the reigns of power) in tolerating their presence during protests--that's supposed to mega-impress us?

Give me a freaking break!

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