Ace, you're kidding, right?

The first moment I personally witnessed female sexuality in full bloom I felt more free than Nelson Mandela leaving prison.

And, after all the fits and starts and pain and suffering involved in getting to that point, I can assure you, that was the very definition of "progress," baby.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

All kidding aside...

Ultimate victory in the war on terrorism will only be achieved with the liberation of Arab women. The misogyny of Islam is at the core of all the problems we face in the Arab world. The irony is that the administration has understood this from the very beginning of the conflict and people like Fern Holland have died trying to ensure women get involved in these fledgling democracies. All completely ignored by the left! When you bring it up in discussion with a leftie or worse a feminista you can see a brief flash of recognition and eventually anger or defensiveness when they realize they are on the wrong side of that little debate.

It is the great irony of all political infighting in this country. The left wants to leave these Arab women high and dry and the right wants to empower them. The left can’t see that ultimate goal here is spreading gender equality! Who would have thunk? It constantly reminds me of those scenes in PCU with the causeheads.
http://www.mutantreviewers.com/ppcu.html
The left doesn’t even know what it is fighting for anymore. They’ve become the party supporting repression by viewing everything through the prism of realpolitik.

The revolution will be televised -- and sexy.

Ace, that article is 8 DAYS OLD!!!

Positively ancient in blogging terms...slow news day?

Cross dressing?!

Geez, what happened to 'Like a Viking'?

You can still salvage it with a nice horned helmet, though.

Hey, it was new to me.

I remember my father, wise old bird that he is, saying twenty years ago that the downfall of Islamic tyranny would come via women's lib. Funny, since I'd never really tagged him as a feminist until then. But I guess, like GWB bringing democracy to Iraq, babes in short skirts with kickin' racks is in our own self-interest.

The mistake is to think that the left is for freedom or liberation in any way. They use those terms, like thier fellow travels in the former east block used "People's Democratic Whatever" in all their names. For the left, justice and fairness is when everyone is equally miserable, except for them of course, so a regime like the Mullahs have in Iran is right up their alley.
The reason they don't come out and say they're for the Mullahs, is that they're still uncomfortable with anything wrapped in religion. If they finally wake up and realize the power Islam affords the ruling class they will be rushing to implement Sharia faster than Ace can hit the Tequila and Ben-Gay. As of now they're still clinging to Marxist-Leninism.

THE VIRGINS object to the "new attitudes" in Iran for they willl bring feminism and the "Oprahization" of our ferocious Jihadis until they become weak, compliant weenies like the men in the US.

Deaja vu all over again?

If one can, err, enjoy another man "like a Viking," can he not also feel pretty like a Viking?

Well, those fabulous furs and long braids they wear should tip you off.

When the men start wearing pink, we'll know Iran has come out of the authoritarian closet.

I've always said that liberty cannot flourish without titty bars.

We can't wait until the Iranian women are all in Penthouse, and have become slutty dressed silicone and botox bimbos, who according to the locker-room libertarians is what freedom is all about for women. Or they will have turned into macho lesbiunns, who need to cross-dress to show how "powerful" and not full of hang-ups they are. Homo-obsessed libertarians believe that's freedom too, can we blame them for being so smart? And where's all the female alcoholism? you mean women are not allowed to become alcoholics in Iran? The thought of it... and where's the date rape? Oh, the oppression of not being able to drink and get raped...

Here's to the liberation of Iran to a new level of moronic ideals of freedom! Let's drink a beer to seeing women going from one yoke to another.

Hmmm, Alessandra, how about wanting the right to be SEEN? Does that make Iranian women Western Sluts?
How about the right to say 'no?'
Did you know that they hang and stone women who have been raped? Because, you know, its all her fault. And don't get me started on the daily, systemic physical and mental abuse of women in Islamic regimes.

Do you think wearing pink and showing their hair is expressing their desire to become shameless whores, or do you think it is a defiant symbol of their rejection of the fucking smothering oppression they have to live under?

Go read something. Try Human Rights Watch, I'm sure they have pages on Iran and women there.

If you don't feel like actually learning something, then please;
Have a Hot Cup

Hmmm, Alessandra, how about wanting the right to be SEEN? Does that make Iranian women Western Sluts?
==================
Actually this question doesn't make too much sense to begin with - the right to be seen - seen as what? Are silicone bimbos more liberated than other women? What is the right to be seen that silicone bimbos are employing?

"And don't get me started on the daily, systemic physical and mental abuse of women in Islamic regimes."

Are you going to start on that because you are completely ignorant on the systemic physical and mental abuse of women in Western liberal countries? And why not talk about the gross abuse of kids in the our parts of the world too? Is that because of the oppressive clothing we have for children in society?

"Do you think wearing pink and showing their hair is expressing their desire to become shameless whores, or do you think it is a defiant symbol of their rejection of the fucking smothering oppression they have to live under?"

I can see that women can be oppressed with a variety of clothing, from nothing, to some, to full-covered, and that includes Western clothing as well. The amount of clothing is actually immaterial, it's the culture and attitudes and behaviors that entail oppression. And seeing how much women are battered, and demeaned, and sexually objectified, and ridiculed, and raped, and prostituted, and pornographied in liberal democracies proves to me that your "liberation" talk is full of it.

"try Human Rights Watch" - are they a right-wing organization now? By the comments here apparently there is a competition between the right and the left to proclaim who can liberate women the most, and by making them silicone bimbos, no less.

*smacks forehead*

Damn.
I don't usually talk to crazy people, but....DAMN.

Please explain where in that article anybody said anything about wanting to become silicone bimbos? Or prostitutes?

What is the matter with you? Do you truly believe that Western women are more abused than women in Islamic countries?
What are you smoking? Or maybe you watch Lifetime cable channel all day?

Most of us are not prostitutes and strippers you know.

The vast majority of us lead productive and free lives. I know I do. We can choose our own husbands, or leave our husbands if they are bad to us; work wherever we please, choose to have children or not, be elected to public office, drive a car, play sports, vote in elections...in short, anything we want to do, we can do.

Yes, indeed, our cup of misery and oppression runneth over, and we should envy the happy Iranian woman in her protective chains!

I feel sorry for you.

RE: The right to be seen

What is a society where half the members are shrouded, amorphous, and faceless?

I see the burka and the abaya as a powerful symbol of female anonymity. You do not exist as individuals, you are as alike as sheep and nearly as valuable.

lauraw:
"What is the matter with you? Do you truly believe that Western women are more abused than women in Islamic countries? "

From worlwide stats, the competition of violence against women and children is a tragic tie. Don't distort me into a reverse caricature of your selfish blindness - I am not blind to violence in Iran, as you are with violence in the Western world.

I usually don't go to the trouble of posting stat examples to people who clearly love to ignore them, but if you are going to make speeches on the oppression of women, you should look beyond your arrogant obnoxious navel. You're part of the reason why so many women and children are battered and raped and trashed in Western wonderland, because you're so egotistically and irresponsibly blind.
=========
US- 572,000 reports of assault on women by intimates are officially reported to federal officials each year, the most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year. Every year approximately 132,000 women report that they have been victims of rape or attempted rape, and more than half of them knew their attackers. It's estimated that two to six times that many women are raped, but do not report it. Every year 1.2 million women are forcibly raped by their current or former male partners, some more than once.

South African rape statistics include 52,975 rapes reported in 2000, the age group 12 to 17 years was the most vulnerable, with 472 reported rapes per 100,000 in that group; among 18 to 49 year-olds there were 286 rapes per 100,000; and for girls under 12 years 131 per 100,000.

The Council of Europe has stated that domestic violence is the major cause of death and disability for women aged 16 to 44 and accounts for more death and ill-health than cancer or traffic accidents.

The United Nations now lists Mexico as the number one center for the supply of young children to North America.
Mexico is one of the favored destinations of pedophile sex tourists from Europe and the United States. In 1996 U.S. Postal Service announced that Mexico City was one of the leading producers of child pornography videos.

I could go on, this is just a sample of what your ignorance entails...
============

Thanks to people like you, who obnoxiously never noticed any of that huge amount of violence happening in Western countries, it goes on and on.

"The vast majority of us lead productive and free lives. I know I do."

And if 1 billion women and children got raped and battered, what would you care, right? It´s not you, and they wouldn't be the majority, so, to hell with them...

You have failed to compare that hodgepodge of stats with the rape and abuse statistics from Islamic countries. Without such a comparison, your rambling list is pointless.

But of course, unlike open western societies, you cannot trust any state-provided stats from Islamic countries. Also, few women come forward there because reporting on their abusers will likely cost them their own heads!

And much of what we call 'abuse' here in the West is perfectly legal in Middle Eastern states. So who would bother to compile 'crime' statistics on that which is legal?

Furthermore, my point is not that women are never abused in the Western nations. But that abuse and oppression are neither institutionalized nor lawful here, therefore necessarily more rare.

Tragedy is always around all of us, and the strong prey upon the weak as they ever have and always will.
But our chances of being a victim are far smaller when assailants are recognized as the criminals they are and duly punished.
We do not have any such thing as 'Honor Killing' here. The very thought is abhorrent.

A man in this country will not be excused of the crime of beating his wife merely because a judge deemed it an honorable beating.
A woman who is accused of adultery will not be stoned to death by her own community.
A 16 year old girl who is raped will not be sentenced to death by a judge and hung by the neck before her weeping family.
A 13 yr old girl who is raped and impregnated by her older brothers will not suffer death at the hands of her mother; and her mother will not be praised by the community for the slaying.
An American woman will not be dragged from her car by a policeman and LAWFULLY BEATEN WITH A ROD because her sleeve slipped down and part of her arm was showing.
A 14- year old girl in America will not be savaged with the rod while her mother tries futilely to shield her, because a policeman saw that her fingernails were painted.

If you cannot see the difference between a society which suffers violence committed by criminals (as all societies do), and that in which the depredations upon the weak are upheld and protected by the state itself, then you are truly the one who is blind.

A final note; your original leap of logic- that Iranian women will become drug-addled harlots as a natural result of their defiance to oppression- is still bizarre and crazy.

Please forgive a bit of snarkyness, but Alessandra is either a troll or one of Phil Hendrie's bizarre characters. For her sake, I hope it's the latter.
I'm now departing to accompany my wife whilst shopping...she's not allowed outside of our home without an adult male family member present.

Alessandra just got pwned, as I think you crazy youngsters say.

You have failed to compare that hodgepodge of stats with the rape and abuse statistics from Islamic countries. Without such a comparison, your rambling list is pointless.
=======================
As I said, I was just showing how ignorant you are of stats in the West. And every other form of violence and oppression there is in the West.

Any claim you make about comparative violence stats in Islamic countries is based on fantasy numbers because there are no reliable stats in those countries. But, hey, any fictional crap is your idea of precision and knowledge. If you don't know any reliable numbers how do you make a stat comparison? By beating your chest, I gather.

"If you cannot see the difference between a society which suffers violence committed by criminals (as all societies do), and that in which the depredations upon the weak are upheld and protected by the state itself, then you are truly the one who is blind."

If you think Arab countries are so bad, maybe you should start learning about how most cases of abuse and rape in the West don't ever go to trial. That's your wonderful sense of Western justice obviously. And Western state "protection."

And while you're making your speeches about how lawful the West is, why don't most child abusers in the West go to prison?

Did you throw out some horrible abuse and rape cases that involve the parents because you're too ignorant that happens in the West?

How about the girl abused for years and impregnated by the father, whose own mother threw acid on the girl's face to punish the girl for telling about it? How about the parents who beat a two yr old to such pulp the doctors had never seen a human body like that before?
That's your idea of the West being better?
How about babies having serious neck injuries for being orally raped? And the doctors not telling the police that it wasn't an accident? How about corrupt Western police orchestrating child prostitution rings? You didn't read about priests abusing kids with full oversight of the higher ups? Man, what a hole your head lives in.

"Please explain where in that article anybody said anything about wanting to become silicone bimbos? Or prostitutes?"

You've never noticed the enormous psychological problems women have in the West with body/weight issues? Why are there 8 million anorexia and bullimia sufferers in the US alone? Don't you think the number is a bit too big for a society that has such a wonderful unoppressive culture?

"If you cannot see the difference between a society which suffers violence committed by criminals (as all societies do), and that in which the depredations upon the weak are upheld and protected by the state itself, then you are truly the one who is blind."

Either women and children are the mighty now, or most of the victims we are talking about here consitute exactly the weak - and that's in the West. With all your state "protection," of course.

"We do not have any such thing as 'Honor Killing' here. The very thought is abhorrent."

There are so many trifling excuses why millions of rapists and murderers get off jail or conviction, passion killings, drunk killings and rapes, including equivalent Honor killings in the West. Or the fact that people kill others for a pair of tennis shoes, or crack, or sell their children for sexual abuse for a packet of cigarettes. Oh, I forget you don't think any of that is abhorrent, please continue rambling about how horrible Honor killings are...
it must make you feel so smart...