Laurie Penney writes a very thought-provoking article over at the New Statesman today, highlighting the use of women's rights issues as a propaganda tool to justify UK and US foreign policy, including in Afghanistan and Iran.
She highlights the contradiction between the current outcry from the UK government over Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (covered extensively on WVON over the past few weeks - also here and here) with the more routine cases of women appealing to the UK government for asylum on the grounds that to return to their country will result in a similar fate - and how frequently such cases are refused.
"Had the unfortunate Ms Ashtiani been smuggled to the UK, it is fair to assume that she too would currently be detained in Yarl's Wood (a UK immigration removal centre), subjected to the indignity of pleading for her life with a government whose professed solidarity with Iranian women has not yet overcome its prejudice against immigrants to extend support to the hundreds of women who arrive on these shores fleeing violence every year - all of whom, unlike Ms Ashtiani, we could actually do something materially to help."
Laurie Penney also raises the state of women's rights in the UK, and our own track record on preventing violence against women.
"And in at least one European country, the defence of 'provocation to murder' - the so-called 'cuckold's defence' - was enshrined in law until just two years ago, allowing husbands to plead for a reduced sentence if the wife they had killed was unfaithful. The country in question was Great Britain. Were the US or UK to launch a systemic offensive against every country brutalising its female citizens because of their sex at the level of policy and culture, it'd be World War Three on Tuesday - and we would have to start by bombing our own cities."
Seriously worth a read this article, and not only because I'm close to becoming Laurie Penney's official number one fan.
For me, the article really underlines the importance - as activists for women's rights and as human beings - of not only gazing outward in judgement of the world (particularly at countries we may have a vested interest in pointing our fingers at, in terms of foreign policy), but also the importance of remembering to stop and ask ourselves where are we as a nation in our fight for women's rights? So much attention has been given to women's oppression lately in the nations of the burkha, but what oppression against women - including the systematic violence of rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence - are we hiding in this age of so-called sexual freedom and gender equality?
