Today's New York Times has a riveting story about the courageous Afghan women who are risking their lives by defying the barbaric men who write male supremacist laws like the marital rape law.
It was not that long ago when marital rape was perfectly legal here in the U.S. It wasn't until the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970s that a husband's right to rape his wife was seriously challenged:
Until 1976, marital rape was legal in every state in the United States. Although marital rape is now a crime in all 50 states in the U.S., some states still don't consider it as serious as other forms of rape.
But this is what happens in barbaric countries where men get to write the laws. Here in Tennessee, we have a few women lawmakers (17%) and after a ten year battle in the barbaric male dominated Tennessee legislature, a law was finally passed making it illegal to rape your wife. That little feminist miracle happened in the year of 2005 (!).
New York Times:
“Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!”
The women scattered as the men moved in.
“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”
The women ran to the bus and dove inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.
“Whores!”
But the march continued anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.
With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.
“Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse,” said Fatima Husseini, 26, one of the marchers. “It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants.”
Update: Afghan Women Attacked for Protesting Marriage Law: Dozens of young women braved crowds of bearded men screaming "dogs!" on Wednesday to protest an Afghan law that lets husbands demand sex from their wives. Some of the men picked up small stones and pelted the women.
Feminist Politics Misogyny News Gender Marital Rape Law Afghanistan Tennessee Women's History
