Willothewisp

Archive for the ‘women's rights’ Category

Dogma over common sense

I went into town during the week to deal with paperwork regarding our oldest two children and their respective disabilities. I will not tell you which particular arm of government department  I was dealing with because I have lodged a formal complaint, so until that is dealt with I think giving specifics would not be fair.

With Hilke and Nicholas off to school, Mariaske in playgroup in Looierstraat I put Joost into his pram, harnessed up Sissi and trekked into town. Upon finding the building I wanted I went up to the front desk in the lobby. The young man there was very helpful, recognising immediately from Sissi’s uniformed presence that I was deaf and partly sighted. Instead of just directing me to correct part of the building he made a phone call, got a large print floor plan out and marked on it where I would need to go and also very thoughtfully marked out the baby facilities and the lady’s wc and also where we could go for refreshments and gave me the map. By this time a colleague had arrived and she took over his position so that he could escort us to where we had to go. He always took care to speak to my face, he controlled his hands using them to make only meaningful gestures, he was at no time condescending or belittling, in short he was a perfect model of help and assistance to a person with impaired senses.

After a going through many corridors and up an couple of floors we arrived at the right department. My escort explained my needs to the girl at the recption desk before departing with my grateful and sincere thanks. The young lady directed me to take a seat in the waiting area, along with about a dozen people. She informed me where the baby facilities were and the wc and asked me if my guide dog need anything. She was not as careful as the young man had been in talking to my face but her heart was in the right place and she was considerate.

So far so good. After almost an hour the number on the large TV screen in the waiting area finally matched my little ticket and directed me to room four so rounding up Sissi and securing Joost off I went.

Now I should explain that despite being lesbian, despite having a few disabilities, even despite being a woman, that I am not into all this politically correct silliness. I am deaf so call me deaf, not “hearing impaired” for goodness sake ! As long as people are not out rightly insulting I really do not mind how I am described. There is nothing more likely to get me annoyed than having to watch someone tying themselves into knots trying to work out how they should be speaking to this deaf, partly sighted lesbian mother of children with disabilities of their own. Just have a little thought, like the young man above because that is wonderful, don’t play the game of PC linguistics invented by middle class sociology degree graduates with no real role in life.

So I sit us down in the interview room and just as I am settling down a woman comes in. I say a woman but in fact it could have been anything underneath all that idiotic black clothing. From head to floor it was covered in shapeless black islamic dress, all that was visible was a little slit with two eyes showing. My heart sank.

How do you like talking to the back of my head ? Well that is what talking to a veiled face is like for me

I can of course see the funny side, lips, face and entire body hidden behind a black mask interviewing a lip reader, pretty comical really, but when you are dealing with your children’s welfare I prefer to leave the comdey out. I asked her to remove her head covering, explaining that I was deaf and needed to see her face and read her lips. I do not know if she said anything, I imagine she did, but the negative shake of her head provided her answer. Holding onto my irritation I repeated myself, and again there was a nod of her head and this time she waved a little book at me. I looked at the book and sure enough it was a copy of the quran, she was waving it like it was some sort of get out of jail free card from Monopoly. Rather than get annoyed any further I just asked her to get her supervisor in here.

After a few minutes another woman comes in, clearly not a muslim this time. I told her that I was deaf and had to lip read and had therefore asked the lady to remove her head covering and that she had refused thus rendering her useless to me and unable to do her job effectively. The supervisor looked uncomfortable and told me that she could not ask her colleague to remove any of her attire because it was part of her religious belief. I asked her to show me the part in the quran that specified where it said that she had to be covered head to toe, thus cutting her off from the outside world and normal interaction with human beings. I pointed out that her colleague kept a copy of the quran under the folds of her clothing as she had been waving it in my face a few minutes earlier, now she looked very, very uncomfortable, and so she should. She told me that she had to respect the beliefs  of her colleague, clearly thinking that would in some way shield her from any further comment from me. She was wrong, very wrong, it was an approach that was not going to fly with me.

I got out the map the nice young man had given me earlier along with a broacher about service offered by this government department. While waiting for an hour to be seen I had looked through it, including the part that proudly stated that their charter required them to  ”strive to meet the needs of their clients regardless of age, ability, gender or race”.  Giving a deaf lip reader an interviewer who insisted on hiding like some coward behind layers of cloth was not going to help them meet the noble goals of their charter. Her solution was to ask me to go back to the waiting area for a different member of staff to be available. I refused, pointing out I had already been waiting over an hour and that I was not prepared to be penalised just because of the selfish actions of one of her staff. I wanted to have my interview and I could be having it if she were doing her job properly and demanding that her idiot colleague remove her head gear and DO HER BLOODY JOB. Instead I was now faced with two government employees who were refusing to do their jobs, one because she had chosen to imprison herself behind a mask and hide behind a religion that really has no place in European society and the other who was too much of a coward to stand up to an irrational religion.

The supervisor than said that she could call security to escort me from the building. I agreed that she certainly could do that, except for two points; 1. I had not done anything wrong, but she and her colleague had.

2. Throwing a deaf, partly sighted mother with baby and guide dog out by force for merely asking that she be able to lip read her interviewer was not going to look good on the local TV news that evening, and it would make my lawyer very happy as she liked nothing more than suing for a civil rights breach.

It was the tipping point, that moment when she could do something sensible or do something incredibly stupid. She chose sensible, in other words she interviewed me herself and sent her colleague away. Finally I could get down to business and go through the paperwork. I could read her face and lips as she took care to speak at a normal pace to my face and so in just twenty minutes we had completed all that was required. I thanked her for the assistance that she had given, and added that I would be making a formal complaint about the incident as soon as the rage I was currently experiencing subsided.

In the end my letter consisted of two parts, one praising the consideration of the two receptionists and one damning the stupidity of the muslim woman and levelling a charge of cowardice at her supervisor. I also left a card and a gift of handmade chocolates to the front desk because good actions need to be encouraged. I am now awaiting the response to my complaint, I will let you know how it goes.

Footnote: Oddly enough this little incident did not worsen my general level of anxiety. It had been a big mental effort to overcome my worries over being out and on unfamiliar ground but the dispute of the idiocy of the muslim woman did not worsen matters as I feared it might. In fact I think my anger may have been something of a counterweight to the anxiety, and so I wonder if perhaps I have found a tool I can use to regain some of my lost ground.

Author: Judith

In Europe we often wander just why we are invloved in fighting in Afghanistan but now we know, it is to allow muslim men to rape their wives.

A law that lets Afghan husbands starve their wives if they refuse to obey their sexual demands has been quietly slipped into effect, despite promises from Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, that it would be reviewed and rigorously debated in the country’s parliament.

A law that lets Afghan husbands starve their wives if they refuse to obey their sexual demands has been quietly slipped into effect, despite promises from Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, that it would be reviewed and rigorously debated in the country’s parliament. Our suspicions that Karzai was liar have been shown to be correct, like so very many men raised under the yoke of islam he has been indoctrinated to be a misogynist. Karzai has previously claimed to be a moderate in the area of human rights for women, well if this is an example of a moderate muslim’s approach to women’s rights it goes an awfully long way to explaining the problems at the heart of islam and it’s conflict with human rights. He has abandoned human rights for women in a bid to appease hardline muslim clerics who wanted the law, in exchange for votes in the presidential elections.

This law removes the need for consent within marriage, provided the husband with a licence to rape his wife while she has no legal protection. The law included a requirement that a wife have sex with her husband at least every four days, as well as a range of other measures that imposed drastic restrictions on the freedoms of Shia women. When hundreds of Afghan women took to the streets to protest against the legislation they were met by mobs of angry men outside parliament who pelted them with spit and stones. It seems that the Islamic mans connection with stoning women is a deep and abiding one, normally they bury the women to the waist before stoning them so at least this time I guess we can be thankful they gave the women a sporting chance !

Human Rights Watch demanded that Afghanistan’s international paymasters intervene to protect the country’s oppressed women. Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of muslim fundamentalists in the August

The law, which regulates the personal affairs of Afghanistan’s minority Shia muslim community, still includes clauses which allow rapists to marry their victims as a way of absolving their crime. This is the sort of sickening solution that only a religion could produce. It also tacitly approves child marriage.

Afghanistan is a stone age country ruled over by a medieval religion with a severely misogynistic society and its only useful purpose is that it so clearly show the world what life for women would be like if islam ever came to dominate the world.

Author: Judith.

Imagine this: You are 16 years old when you are raped by your older brother, father or uncle. You go to your doctor to seek a termination of the pregnancy but the doctor tells you that you cannot have a termination. They then proceed to tell you that you have a anencephalic pregnancy (a condition which means the foetus cannot possibly survive). You then learn that you will be compelled to carry the pregnancy to full term despite the fact it is doomed to die anyway despite its devastating physiological and psychological impact on you. In fact should your life be threatened by the pregnancy at any time you will not be permitted ANY treatment that will put the life of the foetus at risk. Should your pregnancy abort naturally and you miscarry you can be subject to arrest and imprisonment.

In short, in addition to the violation of you at the hands of a relative you learn that you have no rights, no right to life saving treatment or any self determination at all over your own body.

This is an obscene piece of legislation that would have been worthy of the “Christian Right” in the US during the Bush era, but this piece of oppression is happening in Nicaragua, a product the current misogynist holding the presidency, Daniel Ortega.

Read the Amnesty International article here.

Download the report here.

Author: Tyjardia