Where misogyny rules . . .

FOREIGN POLICY has a fascinating display, worthy of your attention, of just what a raw deal women are given in various parts of the world, in an article by Valerie Hudson, "The Worst Places to Be a Woman: Mapping the places where the war on women is still being fought".

Mapped out for your edification: 1) Discrepancy in Education; 2) Inequity in Family Law/Practice; 3) Governmental Participation by Women; 4) Child Marriage for Girls: Practice and Law; 5) Maternal Mortality; 6) Women's Physical Security; 7) Polygyny; 8) Son Preference and Sex Ratios; and 9) Trafficking in Females. 

In another FP article, Mona Eltahawy asks, "Why Do They Hate Us? The real war on women is in the Middle East." Obviously, God wants it that way.

Afghan marital rape law being ... revised

CBC : "Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said he was informed Sunday by his counterpart in Afghanistan that a new family law, which critics say legalizes marital rape, has been halted and will be revised."

You can just imagine how that conversation went ...

~Look, what you people do behind closed doors is your business but we've got an occupation to run here and it's supposedly based on our soldiers dying so little schoolgirls can go to classes. It's bad enough 75% of them get forced into marriage between the ages of 5 and 15 to old geezers to pay off family debts but you can't be passing laws saying it's ok to rape 'em as well ....

No word yet on whether the revision will also rescind the bit about women having to obtain their husband's permission to go outside.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Next. Let's hire a witch-finder.

There's a buzz coming out of Coweta County, Georgia. (Warning. Slow PDF. But I'll explain if you're impatient.)

First though, take a look at this Google search using the term sex toy laws. You might notice the direction it takes. The vast majority of the responses on the first page of that search will lead you to stories of laws in the US banning the sale of sex toys; putting people on trial for selling sex toys and even, (yes, because there's nothing more important), the US Supreme Court telling its citizens that what they do in the privacy of their own homes is the business of the government if that thing that buzzes and uses a pair of AA batteries vibrates off the counter and towards any region of one's body that might find it... stimulating.

Why?

Because if a person is going to get pleasure from some rapidly moving mechanical device, especially if that person is a woman, it must be wrong.

So let's say you actually agree with that absurd notion. Let's go with the unpowered stuff. You know. Warming goo, ribbed condoms and confectionary flavoured lubes.

No harm... right?

Wrong! In Coweta County it's against the law!

The sale of sex toys, and perhaps even the sale of some condoms and lubricants, is now prohibited in Coweta County.

The Coweta County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to approve a new obscenity ordinance and a new ordinance regulating sexually-oriented businesses at a specially-called meeting Monday afternoon.

The obscenity ordinance prohibits sale or distribution of obscenity, and prohibits anyone from “knowingly” selling, or possessing with the intent to sell, “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

Quick discussion.... most devices designed to provide stimulation are designed to stimulate which of the sexes?

Bingo!

The Board of Commissioners is comprised of how many women? ZERO!

They're all men. Funny how that works, isn't it?

So, given this new ordinance the fat old men running Coweta County seem so intent on passing it begs a question. Given that sildenafil citrate is sold in drug stores, does that mean the pharmacies have to stop selling it? I mean, it is designed and marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs and is the active ingredient in Viagra. Let's face it, sildenafil citrate is marketed for one purpose and one purpose only.

Or were the Coweta County commissioners only referring to items which would be useful for the stimulation of female human genital organs?

Oh the horrors! That women, especially the women of Coweta County, Georgia, might actually be having it on... in private... alone... without their man!!! By passing an ordinance, women will have to get all their sexual pleasure from their men... directly. Because if those men know what they're doing, sexually I mean, those women won't need any of those obscene, genitial stimulatin' thangies.

(Yes, women, I will enlighten the fat, old, sexually unenlightened commissioners.)

Note to commissioners: Even if you were voted stud of the year not one of you can do what a vibrator does. Not one of you. And I'll take odds that this comment was written by a man.

Makes you wonder what happens in places where how hot to make the fire is the decision of those who are naked. One change to the Google search term... sex toy laws canada.

Anyone notice the difference?

Too good to pass up: On the 26th of January, the Commissioners of Coweta County passed their ordinance making pocket rockets illegal. On the 29th of January something out there replied. Oral Roberts might have something to say about that. Coincidence?

Hat tip Cheryl for some stimulating input.

Killed, wounded and living in fear

I know what you think you're going to read. Put that aside. This is not about some grubby hole 10,000 miles from where you sit. This could be next door. It might even be where you live.

Compare the raw numbers. In the same seven-year period when 4,588 U.S. soldiers and police officers were killed by hostiles or by accident, more than 8,000 women – nearly twice as many – were shot, stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. In Canada, compared to the 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers killed, more than 500 women – nearly five times as many – met the same fate.

Those are the deaths. Then there are the wounded. In the same period, about 24,000 U.S. military were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, while about 80 Canadians were wounded in Afghanistan.

In the United States, it's conservatively estimated that in addition to the 1,200 to 1,300 women killed each year by intimate partners, another 5.3 million, age 18 and older, are victims of non-lethal domestic abuse.

Based on those numbers, the violence costs the country more than $5.8 billion annually – nearly $4.1 billion in direct medical and mental health care, and $1.8 billion in lost productivity and lost earnings due to homicide.

These numbers are believed to underestimate the problem for several reasons, and additional efforts are needed to determine more accurately the full cost of intimate-partner victimization of women in the United States.

In Canada, the federal government estimates the annual cost of violence against women at $1.1 billion in direct medical costs alone. That figure rises to more than $4 billion a year when social services, lost productivity, lost earnings, and police, court, and prison costs are factored in.

Wars usually produce large numbers of refugees: witness the United Nations camps scattered around the world. And the War on Women has its own refugee camps, in the form of the 2,500 or so shelters for battered women and their children across North America.

In the United States, more than 300,000 women and children seek safety in shelters each year. In Canada, the number is between 90,000 and 100,000.

That is an excerpt from the book The War on Women: Elly Armour, Jane Hurshman, and Criminal Violence in Canadian Homes, by Brian Vallée.

Antonia has more. A lot more. Go read.