Mum's the Word from American Women, in Supporting Lubna Ahmed Hussein and International Women's Rights

I just read and commented on Susie Mesure’s excellent piece in The Independent: Why is the sisterhood silent on Sudan?

Susie references the online petition supporting Lubna Ahmed Hussein and her move to change Article 152 of Sudanese Law. You can sign it here, but I’d like you to take a look at Tom’s column at Care2 News Network on your way.

Our warm exchange began over Tom’s mention of Susie’s question: where are the Western women feminists in the Lubna Ahmed Hussein case? Care2 News Network DOES care, and I look to collaborate with them in the future on women’s rights issues.

My own mood on feminism and Lubna Hussein has evolved from bewilderment to pleas to commenting wherever I can — almost always on a male blogger’s writeup on this Lubna topic — to mild anger.

Factually speaking, more men have written about Lubna than women. I follow every Google alert, and I’m confident in this statement.

Feminist Media Update

via Flickr’s yoshi 3329Digital housekeeping notes: wowowow.com did post Thurs. about Lubna’s trip to court on Tues. Feministing.com says zero. One of our young English bloggers posted in the feministing.com community, with no response yesterday am. Haven’t checked today.

Ms. Magazine has done a news bullet but no opinion piece. Alas, my criticisms of feminists and Lubna are all over Google first page. I must head for the hills!

I’m well aware that if women like me become antagonistic on this subject of standing up for Lubna, we will get nowhere. I don’t agree with PETA’s approach of throwing dead animals on Anna Wintour’s dinner plate.

Liberal Women Justify Silence as Lack of American Cultural Imperialism

Liberal women, the rare few who express an opinion, are saying that America should not be intervening in other people’s business. POTUS has bascially said that the days of America’s cultural imperialism are over.

In the few comments posted, President Obama’s words and our messes in Iraq and Afghanistan do come into view.

Tom’s column at Care2 News Network has been much more receptive to my own. Raising our voices is different than sending in the troops.

I truly doubt that President Obama has abandoned any concern for international women’s rights. And if he has — for whatever reason — I do not join him.

POTUS has a lot on his plate and while I may raise an eyebrow over some of his comments about burqas not being our business, I will escalate this discussion. For every woman affronted by my concern for her burqa, there’s 100,000 hoping to get out of theirs.

My concern for burqas and being flogged for wearing trousers is fueled by my democratic spirit, not cultural imperialism or fear of being called xenophobic towards Islam. I’m walking straight into the Muslim community in this conversation — respectfully and articulate.

The vast majority of women who wear burqas have no say in the matter. None. They write me and post on Facebook — “thank you, Anne, for caring about us. Please, please don’t desert us.”

I will not stand by and say nothing while women are flogged for wearing trousers. I haven’t lived my life with this set of values.

Saying nothing as an American woman is not the feminism I embraced.

Fundamentalism & Global Conflicts

Additonally, I fear where women’s lives are headed as fundamentalism encroaches one territory after another in the world.

This morning’s NYTimes piece on global conflicts resulting from environmental disasters is very disconcerting.

Officially, I want to stay focused on the women’s rights ball, because when the topic shifts to poverty and class or military challenges, the women get lost in the discussion.

However, it’s a fact that women lose ALWAYS, when conflicts threaten a region.

I was astonished to read that in Egypt, the vast majority of women say that if they wear proper Western clothes in public, young men feel free to grope them (as in physically touch them in a lewd manner) on the street.

The women sociologists explained that when unemployment runs high, young men must assert their manliness in some manner.

If we face an era of growing global conflicts (and we do) my great fear is that life will become worse for women, not better. My team will be trying to develop a big picture understanding of the actual state of women’s progress in the world.

In Sudan, women have lost rights in the last 30 years. We’re investigating this topic presently, thanks to the support of educated women who have lived in Sudan for decades. They will articulate ‘then and now’ in Sudan, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Fundamentalism takes root easily in the sands or back streets of poverty. I’ll let others worry about the poverty, unless we’re talking microloans for women. We will focus on women’s rights here at A of C. Officially, I acknowledge that poverty, joblessness, urban unemployment and the erosion of women’s rights are connected.

After all, American women became bitches in hiphop culture. I like Tupac, but I don’t like women being meat in any culture, including ours.

Controlling Female Sexuality

In no way am I abandoning my pursuit of the good life at Anne of Carversville. We must learn to savor and value life’s sensual pleasures in food, flowers, nature, travel, and global cultures. We only try to save what we value in life — whether it’s the environment, polar bears or women’s lives.

For my friends who think I’ve fallen off the deep end in this matter, I promise to continue my writing about being a chocolate mousse cake and eating succulent dates. However, my writing journey began with Angelina Jolie and Marianne Pearl, wife of beheaded Wall Street Journal reported Daniel Pearl.

From my point of view, the effort to stamp out female sensuality will escalate, even as New Eroticism gains momentum.

via Flickr’s Jordan PatternI don’t support all the sexual mores I feature on Sexy Futures. But I will not put women back in the box, because Western culture — and third wave feminists — are stripping women of their clothes.

I fear the downside of cultural attempts to manage and control female sexuality more than the indiscretions of women who take their clothes off everywhere.

Fundamentally, I believe we must learn to love and celebrate our bodies. I’ve written about this issue for the last two years, in a nonpolitical vein. Women hate their bodies, and for good reason — looking around the world.

I hated my own body, having been told that it was disgusting, vulgar, and names I simply cannot write in print. I understand well the psychology that Lubna is articulating.

As Lubna says, it’s not the flogging that’s so painful. It’s the humiliation of being flogged in a sea of men, and forever being branded as a flogged woman.(Let’s be clear here. Flogging is incredibly painful, even if Lubna is brave in her comments.)

One carries the physical scars — the flogging wounds DO leave scars — and the psychological scars.

Imagine years later trying to explain to your future Muslim husband how you got those scars. Every time you look in the mirror at your back, you see scars — faded but still there. Depending on your flogger guy, the scars can run deeper — regardless of the enlightened laws around ‘flogging light’.

Flogging women is another scarlet letter. Women have worn the label for centuries.

The argument that “the personal is political” was a core concept of the original feminist movements — waves one and two. I’m not sure about the third wave. Truthfully, I’m trying to grasp what it stands for. Anne