Important Moral Guidance from the Vice Prime Minister of Turkey: Women Must Not Laugh In Public, As It Is Indecent

From a French source.

Bit of a #WarOnWomen here.

"A woman must keep her moral rectitude, she must not laugh out loud in public," stated the Turkish Vice Prime Minister, Bulent Arinc, sparking a controversy Tuesday in Turkey...

"A man must be moral, and a woman too;, she must know that which is decent and that which is not," said, on Monday Bulent Arinc, and influential memeber of the Islamist government, of which he is also the spokesman...

And he added: "She must not laugh out loud in front of everyone, [she] must absolutely keep her decency at all times." This little sentence provoked an avalanche of reactions -- for the most part, indignant -- on the social networks where internet-users denounced the the intervention "more and more flagrant" of the Turkish regime into the private sphere...

A dozen days from the [upcoming] presidential elections from August 10th to the 24th, which for the first time will include universal suffrage the candidate of the oppostion, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, had immediately responded.

"We have a real need to hear the gay laughter of the women," he wrote... on Twitter.

The article says "rire fort." I've translated this as "laugh openly," though it probably means something like "burst into laughter." I guess maybe gentle ladylike titters are permissible.

Before anyone says it, I saw Gentle Ladylike Titters open for 4 Non Blondes in 1995.

I commenter suggests "laugh out loud." Perfect. I changed it.

Oh is that all? Fruminous Bandersnatch checks a German paper (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) for this clarification:

Aric (acting head of government) is only limiting laughter, not banning it. They may laugh as lustily as they want to in private, but may not laugh loudly in public.

Wow. Thank you, Lord Aric.

posted by Ace at 02:41 PM

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