This is just plain wrong.

[chaotic_nipple]

Forwarded from schrathe:

Iran to hang teenage girl attacked by rapists.

"Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.

Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless.

She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for Nazanin to be hanged to death."

Someone explain to me again how Western Culture is supposed to be so sexist and evil?

Clarification to snarky comment: No, I don't think that Western Culture is perfect. It has a wide variety of problems that will take lifetimes to fix. I maintain that we have come farther towards the goal of universal equality than any other contemporary (or most historical) society, and claiming that we're "just as bad", or worse, than the rest of the world, is counterproductive, and only serves to alienate or discourage people whao want to make our society better than it already is. Also, it encourages run-on sentences.

Note: It would be most appreciated if everyone were to make at least a token effort towards civil discussion, and _not_ immediately assume that disagreement and/or criticism is tantamount to a personal attack. Thank you.

Funny, both of the flame wars that have taken place on my blog were instigated by the same person. What are the odds?

Comments

[jackytar.livejournal.com]

I haven't see Gin accuse you of anything overt along those lines.

However, the problem is deeper than that. It's not enough to refrain from saying things like that.

Case in point: Why is it that two junior sailors, one male, one female, both otherwise pretty well identical when it comes to trade knowledge, turn-out, etc., etc., when ranked, were not ranked the same? The guy was ranked higher, and the woman wanted to know why. Her immediate supervisor, also female, brought the question up to the Chief and was told (not in so man words, of course) to go away and not bother him with it. I got dragged in because although not in the same trade, I'm in the same trade group. I reviewed the two junior bodies' files and came to the same conclusion the young woman had. I should point out, also, that at the time I got dragged in, I didn't know about her question; I was asked simply to review the scoring of their files.

Surprise, surprise - when I talked about it with the Chief, it suddenly merited looking into.

That's an example, in an organization which, on paper, does not discriminate between male and female personnel. No, it's not a woman being condemned to death for having the temerity to defend herself against rape. It's born of the same mindset in men, though.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

I agree that the example you gave is a Bad Thing (tm), I just don't think it's _as_ bad. In my mind, saying that "Situation B is worse than Situation A" is not the same as saying that "Situation A is perfect and good in every way, so quit complaining." If other people hear the second statement when I say teh first one, that's unfortunate, but not really my problem, especially when I explain repeatedly that the two statements are not semantically equivalent. :-)

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Christ, except I've said repeatedly that I'm not saying they're the same, but that saying the West is so much better is comforting for men. get a load of dipshit below, who tells me I'm blinded by my ideology and it's not about women----when we're talking about rape, women's rights, and so forth. Well, you know what? It IS about women. You and him both seem entirely unwilling to grasp the concept that judging what condition women's rights are in is not a job for men. It's for women. Furthermore, saying we're lucky is dismissing our actual assessment and it minimizes what's actually going on for women in this country. Once again, this is what the comparision accomplishes. You appear fixated on the knowledge that intent matters when one has been thoughtless in one's language. "I didn't think I was doing it, therefore, I'm home free."

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

You have some good points. If they'd been presented in a less hostile manner, I probably would have conceded them earlier.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

You know, you keep ignoring that my initial response was snarky rather than hostile and that the delightful duo's response was genuinely offensive. You don't get to act as if I acted in a vacuum, and it's interesting that you have repeatedly refused to compare and contrast. wehn you get close to it, you minimize their attitude in favor of maximizing mine.

I don't see any point in wasting further time on this. I don't have much regard for your judgement after watching you repeatedly ignore the hostility of your friends in order to focus on the behavior of the people they were hostile to.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's possible I _was_ unfair. Maybe if you hadn't flamed my journal before (http://chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com/51241.html), I'd have been inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt instead of them. Funny how that works, isn't it?