Tag Archives: Women

News

Afghan teen imprisoned by in-laws for 5 months for refusing prostitution

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Map of the Middle East
Map of the Middle East

From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Sahar Gul, 15, was found in the basement of her husband’s house in northeastern Baghlan province late on Monday after her parents reported her disappearance to the police.

“She was beaten, her fingernails were removed and her arm was broken,” district police chief Fazel Rahman told AFP.

Three women including the teenager’s mother in-law had been arrested in connection with the case but her husband had fled the area, he added.

The case highlights how women continue to suffer in Afghanistan despite the billions of pounds of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war.

“The 15-year-old girl was brought to hospital with severe shock,” said Pul-i-Khurmeri hospital chief Dr Gul Mohammad Wardak.

“She had injuries to her legs and face and the nails on her left had been removed.”

Sahar Gul was married to her husband seven months ago in the neighbouring province of Badakhshan, but she was brought to Baghlan to live with her husband, said Rahima Zareefi, the provincial head of women affairs.

During this time her parents were unable to contact her, she said.

[…]And according to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.

I wonder if any of the billions of pounds of international aid has been spent on introducing Christianity as an alternative to Islam in these countries? Or is that not an option for solving the problem of the mistreatment of women? I know that Christian taxpayers are taxed to pay for this aid money. What’s the goal here, and are all options on the table?

Commentary

Why do men become feminists? Why do men support feminism?

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This is a must-read from Stuart Schneiderman.

Excerpt: (links removed)

How does a man become a feminist? What would lead a normally constituted American male to throw in with an ideology that appears to be unfriendly to men?

The answer is: gratitude.

True enough, very few men openly identify themselves as feminists. Still, many men happily mouth the basic tenets of the feminist credo. They may not understand what they are saying, but they support the cause because they feel grateful for what feminism has done for them.

Take Hugo Schwyzer. He has been married four times. He has had countless casual sexual encounters and no small number of relationships. Manifestly, he feels grateful and perhaps endebted to feminism for having provided him with so much free love.

So, he defends the feminist party line.

In debating Neely Steinberg Schwyzer does not dispute that feminism, especially sex-positive feminism, has helped create the hookup culture.

Yet, Schwyzer thinks it’s a good thing, for him, for his fourth wife, and for everyone who wants to learn from experience.

[…]Steinberg explains what feminism has done for men: “Instead of embracing the emotional and biological differences between men and women, or at least considering them, sex-positive feminists buried their heads in the sand, unintentionally creating, in the meantime, a veritable sexual playground for men, often times at the expense of women, many of whom just wanted relationships that were both sexually and emotionally satisfying. Women were told they could have their cake and eat it too, but the dessert in many ways has been a better payoff for men.”

How does feminism create male adherents to its cause? It provides them with an endless supply of young women.

Of course, this assumes that men want nothing more from women than free sex. If men are looking for marriage and family, the hookup culture detracts from this goal. It teaches men to respect women less. It teaches women to respect themselves less.

It should not surprise anyone that fewer and fewer Americans are getting married today.

That’s the excerpt, read the whole thing – but watch out for the F word, which occurs once. I think you’ll notice that he is talking about some of the same things I talk about.

Commentary

James Dobson lists ten potential sources of depression for wives

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I’ve been reading this interesting book by James Dobson, entitled “What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women“. In the book he asks the reader to rank the 10 common sources of depression for wives in order:

  • low self-esteem
  • fatigue and time pressure
  • loneliness, isolation, and boredom
  • absence of romantic love in marriage
  • financial difficulties
  • sexual problems in marriage
  • menstrual and physiological problems
  • problems with the children
  • aging
  • in-law problems

He has surveyed a whole bunch of Christian and the order above is the order that they gave him from most severe to least severe.

There is room in the book for ranking these and my ranking was like his, pretty much, except that I had two things reversed. I had the financial difficulties and in-law problems reversed, because I have this idea that women are really bad with money and that they care more about relationships. I also had aging and sexual problems reversed because I don’t think that sex is very important to women, and they are sort of unaware of how much of a problem it is for men. However, I think they are terribly concerned about aging.

Note: Commenter Maureen points out to me that women are better than men with money these days. I can’t go against this evidence showing that she is right.

So I thought I would post this to see if anyone else has any thoughts about this list. Does it seem right to you?

I noticed in this article that more and more women are suffering from depression, so it’s important to know why they do that.

Excerpt:

One in four women aged between 45 and 64 now experience some form of mental disorder – an increase of 20 per cent in the last 15 years.

This decline in mental health is greater than any other age or gender group, according to the research.

The study also found that women in general suffer more mental problems – or talk about it more -with 21.5 per cent complaining of stress or depression compared to 13.6 per cent of men.

Mental health charity Mind said women in their 40s and 50s were becoming increasingly affected by trying to manage the responsibilities of family, home and work.

The figures emerged as the independent psychiatric Capio Nightingale Hospital reported a 20 per cent rise in enquiries relating to depression since the start of the year, many related to financial pressures.

The NHS Information Centre report, entitled the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007, was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and the University of Leicester and questioned 7,461 adults.

It followed on from two similar NHS studies carried out in England in 1993 and 2000.

The report concluded that the number of 45 to 64 year old women with a common mental disorder rose from 20.5 per cent in 1993 to 25.2 per cent in 2007.

The survey also found that the number of women aged between 16 and 74 who reported thinking suicidal thoughts in the previous year rose from 4.2 per cent in 2000 to 5.5 per cent in 2007.

Dr Peter Byrne, director of public education at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the role of woman had changed significantly in the last 15 years.

“This particular age group was probably reared by their stay-at-home mothers and they are almost certainly now working mothers, who face the financial pressure of being part of a two income family,” he said.

It’s also important to pick a woman who can be made happy by things that the man can do. I think the wise man has to be careful to choose a woman whose interests are not based on her emotions but on a plan with outward-facing goals. Someone who likes to work at projects and get things done, rather than be dominated by her feelings. Someone who tries to control her feelings when she sees that they are not rooted in reality.

I think it’s a better situation for a man where he is in a relationship with a woman where he can do things in the world and that will drive her emotions. The situation to avoid is where a woman’s emotions are not rooted in anything in the real world and she in’t impressed by what a man does that accomplishes tasks to achieve specific goals that she is passionate about. You want to avoid a woman who is concerns about Betty Friedan’s “the problem that has no name” and one who is impressed with the apologetics course that you are teaching at the church.

You don’t want a woman who says “I’m depressed and since I don’t care about anything except my feelings and victimhood, nothing you can do for me impresses me”. You want a woman who says “I’m depressed but if you do things in the real world that help to achieve goals that I care about, then I’ll feel better”. This is something that has to be tested for in the courtship. At the very least, women ought to know how to identify when they are being tricked by their emotions. They have to be able to talk it out and see that there is nothing specific that is bothering them, and then realize that their feelings are playing tricks on them.