This could not be a more appropriate occasion for a declaration by the United Nations for celebrating are female children.
Earlier this week bearded thugs with guns, threatened by a 14 year old girl in Pakistan who was armed only with words and ideas for peace and equality, shot her and are now threatening her father.
Men who are threatened by equality with women are weak, and frightened, resorting to violence because they have nothing else on their side.
They are the worst kind of coward, they are the worst kind of men. They are however, not really any different than the fundamentalist conservatives in our own country, differing in degree but not in kind.
Those conservatives in our country are anti-contraception, they are anti-science like Todd Akin, they wage culture war on women, like those Republicans and Tea Partiers who enacted unnecessary and invasive medical requirements for trans-vaginal ultrasounds, or who legislated that women be lied to about breast cancer risks, or who legislated that it is legal for doctors to lie to women about their health status in pregnancies if a woman might make a different choice about that pregnancy than her doctor's morality requires.
Nothing says disrespect and disregard for women quite like imposing a doctor's morality on her without her consent or knowledge. Nothing says that women are not valued as human beings quite like legislating that her health decisions, including life-threatening health conditions, be denied at the whim of someone else.
Nothing says that women are treated with contempt as disposable human beings like the decision to deny women reliable information on sex and pregnancy, through ignorance only (abstinence only) sex ed --- because conservatives do not trust women with control over their own bodies.
Nothing says that women are treated as inferior human beings quite like the right wing war on women that promotes allowing employers to pay them less on the sole basis of gender for equal work.
Nothing says that women are regarded as inferior like the medical quacks who claim that women can't get pregnant from rape - that if she does, she must have 'wanted sex' instead of recognizing that she refused consent. Nothing treats women with contempt like those who try to redefine rape to rule out statutory rape. What International Day of the Girl Child would be complete without pointing an accusing finger at the right wing nuts like Paul Ryan and Chip Cravaack and ALL THE OTHER MANY SUPPORTERS of denying statutory rape of girls too young to give consent is really rape?
Earlier this week bearded thugs with guns, threatened by a 14 year old girl in Pakistan who was armed only with words and ideas for peace and equality, shot her and are now threatening her father.
Men who are threatened by equality with women are weak, and frightened, resorting to violence because they have nothing else on their side.
They are the worst kind of coward, they are the worst kind of men. They are however, not really any different than the fundamentalist conservatives in our own country, differing in degree but not in kind.
Those conservatives in our country are anti-contraception, they are anti-science like Todd Akin, they wage culture war on women, like those Republicans and Tea Partiers who enacted unnecessary and invasive medical requirements for trans-vaginal ultrasounds, or who legislated that women be lied to about breast cancer risks, or who legislated that it is legal for doctors to lie to women about their health status in pregnancies if a woman might make a different choice about that pregnancy than her doctor's morality requires.
Nothing says disrespect and disregard for women quite like imposing a doctor's morality on her without her consent or knowledge. Nothing says that women are not valued as human beings quite like legislating that her health decisions, including life-threatening health conditions, be denied at the whim of someone else.
Nothing says that women are treated with contempt as disposable human beings like the decision to deny women reliable information on sex and pregnancy, through ignorance only (abstinence only) sex ed --- because conservatives do not trust women with control over their own bodies.
Nothing says that women are treated as inferior human beings quite like the right wing war on women that promotes allowing employers to pay them less on the sole basis of gender for equal work.
Nothing says that women are regarded as inferior like the medical quacks who claim that women can't get pregnant from rape - that if she does, she must have 'wanted sex' instead of recognizing that she refused consent. Nothing treats women with contempt like those who try to redefine rape to rule out statutory rape. What International Day of the Girl Child would be complete without pointing an accusing finger at the right wing nuts like Paul Ryan and Chip Cravaack and ALL THE OTHER MANY SUPPORTERS of denying statutory rape of girls too young to give consent is really rape?
The reality is that fetuses and infants are aborted solely on the basis of gender, because girl children are not valued in too many parts of the world. We still have sex trafficking, primarily in girls and women in too many parts of the world. We still have the practice of slavery where predominantly girl children are SOLD because poor families cannot feed them. We have a dramatic increase in the marriages of underage girls to adult men for the same reason -- their families cannot feed them in parts of the world where there is increasing famine, in part due to global warming.
So long as we have a problem in our own military with 1 in 3 women being raped, we are as much a part of the problem as any nation exercising primitive Shariah law like the Taliban.
From an article in the New York Times back in 2006:
How could this possibly be true? Here are some of the factors:
In countries where the birth of a boy is considered a gift and the birth of a girl a curse from the gods, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.
Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons.
In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners. These are called "honor" killings, though honor has nothing to do with it.
Young brides are killed if their fathers do not pay sufficient money to the men who have married them. These are called "dowry deaths," although they are not just deaths, they are murders.
The brutal international sex trade in young girls kills uncounted numbers of them.
Domestic violence is a major cause of death of women in every country.
So little value is placed on women's health that every year roughly 600,000 women die giving birth.
Six thousand girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the World Health Organization. Many die; others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain.
According to the WHO, one woman out of every five worldwide is likely to be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
What is happening to women and girls in many places across the globe is genocide. All the victims scream their suffering. It is not so much that the world doesn't hear them; it is that fellow human beings choose not to pay attention.
It is much more comfortable for us to ignore these issues. And by "us," I also mean women. Too often, we are the first to look away. We may even participate, by favoring our sons and neglecting the care of our daughters. All these figures are estimates; registering precise numbers for violence against women is not a priority in most countries.
China is an example of a misogynist society - but so is the U.S.
From ChinaDaily.com, earlier this year:
It is estimated that, by 2020, there will be 24 million more men than women at marriage age in China.
And the serious gender imbalance is not only a population problem, but also a grave social problem, Zhang noted.
Between August 2011 and March 2012, six governmental departments including the NPFPC and the ministries of health and public security launched special campaigns to crack down on illegal gender tests and abortions.
Also, in 2011, local authorities in east China's Jiangxi province solved 2,064 cases of such violations, revoked the licenses of 312 medical workers involved, and detained and sentenced 83 people.
Experts have also proposed enhanced efforts to promote equal opportunities and the social status of females as a fundamental solution to the problem.
The preference for boys in Chinese society became conventional in China's era of under-development, when boys were favored as stronger laborers.
The problem lingers in modern China, though. Even in some of the country's affluent coastal areas, gender ratio figures are climbing, the article noted.
Excepting improvement in education levels of girls and women, females are still left behind their male counterparts in job opportunities, career positions and salary, said Yang Juhua, a demographic professor with Renmin University of China.
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